Tuesday, January 06, 2009
ACT!   »   Upgrade from ACT!    
Reason to Upgrade
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Any version of ACT! can be converted to WiredContact Enterprise thus giving you unrestricted access to your data and complete control over who can access it and where your data can be seen from. You can get the data onto most PDA's in minutes and there is no synchronisation to go wrong.

Are you fed up having to upgrade ACT! every year without real user benefits?

We have Clients who have converted from ACT! Premium for Web to WiredContact because of the ease of use and how simple it was to install and configure. Others have upgraded from ACT! Professional for Workgroups and many from earlier ACT! software such as ACT! 5, ACT! 2000 and ACT! 6. We will do the conversion from ACT! and the upgrade to ACT! for the Client as part of the ACT! Upgrade.

Many Online CRM hosted applications are written in SQL however some vendors put a .net "wrapper" around to prevent you getting at the underlying tables, this sounds like a good idea until you want access to your data and you get charged almost £1,000 for the System administrator password. Should you need to pay additional fees for the SA Password to do a backup of your own data? We don't think so.

Summary: Hosted CRM or Online CRM also called On Demand CRM or Online Hosted CRM, This is not SageCRM but you can migrate here from any version of ACT! including ACT! 2007 professional, ACT! by Sage, ACT! Professional for Workgroups also known as APFW, other versions we can convert include ACT! 6 then 7  8 or MS Access, and indeed most other database.

Have a look at the features of WiredContact


General issues
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Sage are no longer going to support earlier versions of ACT!
We will Support all versions, we always have; but you probably want the new features without the compulsory support.

Lower Cost of ownership
If you propose to keep the ACT! back end database then you will need one copy of ACT! for each user if you use WiredContact Enterprise (WCE) then you wont need ACT! at all as it runs off SQL or any other database you prefer.

We will not sell you compulsory support

Nothing to go wrong on the PC, With ACT! you have to consider .Net, Office, Word, service packs time to install on local machines, security (you can still run a  report on an ACT! database and take it with you to override the security).

WCE is faster on a like for like setup and its easier to get support than ACT!

Increased total control over every single aspect
Simple to use 1 hour to train staff yet very powerful and intuitive.
Security - Field level record level, Team based profile based - you name it you can have it with WiredContact.

Your users cannot delete your database and cannot see records you want to keep private.
User preferences are set centrally and they stick!
No Synchronisation (yes it's a security concern)
SQL can be supported without having to buy Compulsory support.

Attachments are not held in multiple ways in multiple locations with versions getting out of synch. All attachments are held in one location on the server with access restrictions simply managed to a high standard with ease.


More Reasons as if you needed them !
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Version 7 was so slow and flaky that many people who complained were given their money back throughout the year, many more went for free upgrades to version 8. Version 8 was a billable upgrade
Version 8 was a bit faster but still had serious issues and in our opinion required too much attention to keep it running. We chose not to sell it without a signed disclaimer. Version 9 was a billable upgrade
Version 9 is still slow and the "features" Clients wanted like Outlook integration simply do not work without buying more addons from ACT! Certified Consultants. Again we chose not to promote it. Version 10 was a billable upgrade,
Version 10, Dashboards are new, but the addition of more features without addressing the overall cost of ownership is probably short sighted. There are issues with synchronisation, attached documents, known issues and workarounds are still common place.
Version 11 Billable Upgrade?
Version 12 Any guesses?


Why are "Some new arrivals in the CRM arena" rushing out a release every year, are the features that good and are the costs reasonable for those perceived benefits?

Compare this with Microsoft Office but at least Microsoft still support older versions for 7 years!
Office 2000 - released January 27, 1999 (just over 2 years after Office 97)
Office XP - released May 31, 2001 (almost 2 1/2 years after Office 2000)
Office 2003 - released November 17, 2003 (almost 2 1/2 years after Office
XP)
Office 2007 - released January 30, 2007 (Just over 3 years after Office
2003)

As a classic example, there is a patch for Office 2003, which allows it to
open Office 2007 documents.  Also, there is a patch for Office 2003 which
makes it compatible with Windows Vista.  Also, there is a patch which makes
Outlook 2003 compatible with MS CRM 3.0.  Shall we go on?

Microsoft has set high standards and that's why people are happy to pay for upgrades WHEN THEY WANT THEM not when they are told to get them.

 
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Phone: 020 8099 3032 Fax: 0870 889 8888 Email: admin@wiredcontact.co.uk Contact us for licences, upgrades, web demonstrations and training - ask about our referral programme

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