Is Business Contact Manager a serious contender to ACT?

[DAC Commercial]

I need to implement some form of management system for a small company who
has sales leads generated by many people in different countries but are all
managed us one or two people in the UK.
Mainstream offerings are ACT! but I would like to know more and get some
users feedback on their use and implementation of BCM as in theory it should
be a less painful migration being a Microsoft product.
Any comments, thoughts or experiences would be appreciated.

 

[Bryan]

You would think that MS would have a better grip on this type of thing, but
in this case they do not. Stay with Act (I've also heard good things about
Goldmine). We are in exactly the same boat as you (geographically spread out
with many people having a small role in client management) and we have
rolled back our implementation of BCM for its lack of syncronization as the
main concern, but even the rest of the app feels like a first generation
product and it has a long way to go.

The most baffling thing to me was why the database doesn't have the option
of being on Exchange! Then the syncronization issues disappear and it would
(I believe) kill Act. I don't see how that can be difficult to do for a
company like MS...

Microsoft - are you listening??

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

1) It is a first generation product
2) It's targeted to small offices that don't use Exchange. If you use
Exchange and BCM like features, you can use one of the many CRM apps
designed for Exchange or use public folders.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Author, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Coauthor, OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide)
Author, Google and Other Search Engines (Visual QuickStart Guide)



Join OneNote Tips mailing list: http://www.onenote-tips.net/

 

[stevelinden]

i've been following this thread and would like to know more.
we're a small co. currently running small business 2003 w/
exchange as our email. we've setup one public folder which
contains many other folders consisting of contact lists for
marketing purposes. i made a huge mistake in assuming
that we would be able to search multiple public folders
for any and all activities for a particluar contact using outlook 2k3.
as far as i've seen it cannot be done.
so here's my questions:
firstly, am i correct in my conclusions that i will be unable to search ALL
activities over multiple public folders using outlook 2k3 ?
secondly, would i be wasting my time (again) in attempting to implement BCM
to do the same thing ?
finally, does anybody know of anything that will work with exchange to allow
me to do this ? thanks.

1) It is a first generation product
2) It's targeted to small offices that don't use Exchange. If you use
Exchange and BCM like features, you can use one of the many CRM apps
designed for Exchange or use public folders.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Author, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Coauthor, OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide)
Author, Google and Other Search Engines (Visual QuickStart Guide)



Join OneNote Tips mailing list: http://www.onenote-tips.net/

You would think that MS would have a better grip on this type of thing,
but in this case they do not. Stay with Act (I've also heard good things
about Goldmine). We are in exactly the same boat as you (geographically
spread out with many people having a small role in client management) and
we have rolled back our implementation of BCM for its lack of
syncronization as the main concern, but even the rest of the app feels
like a first generation product and it has a long way to go.

The most baffling thing to me was why the database doesn't have the option
of being on Exchange! Then the syncronization issues disappear and it
would (I believe) kill Act. I don't see how that can be difficult to do
for a company like MS...

Microsoft - are you listening??