rich@ibs4act.com

Overview of ACT 2000

From a user’s standpoint, ACT is very user friendly.  At first glance it could appear daunting and complex, however consider the following elementary features, that when integrated, provide an elegant Contact Management package.

1. ACT is a database (or file) where you can keep all your contacts. These are all your customers or your vendors, or your prospects or friends or whomever.  Each contact has many fields associated with it.  The contact together with its fields are called a record. To be a user of an ACT database, you must first be included in the list of contacts.  If you created the database you are automatically a user, and in fact, the ‘owner’ or ‘administrator’ of that database.  You should not create more than one database, except under unusual circumstances.
2. When you first open ACT, it will open on the record with your name which is called a “My Record” Each user has a My Record, and is sort of like the home position for that user.  The My Record helps ACT identify you as the writer of memos and emails and other features of ACT. If you or your company has previously transferred other databases into ACT, you can flip through the contacts or records by clicking on the right or left arrows at the top left of the screen or using the page up and page down keys on the keyboard. You can also look at all of the contacts in list form by clicking the second icon from the top on the left of the screen.  (Or if the menu is minimized, the second icon from the left of the set at the bottom right of the screen. Any user with Standard security access can enter new contacts into the database. (or delete them) These commands are under the contact menu item at the top of the screen. (New Contact, Delete Contact) .
3. You can enter fixed information about a contact or free form information. The fixed info is the labeled fields on the main screen or one of the four layout pages on the tabs.  These fields may have been specially chosen for the business your company is in or may be the standard supplied by Interact Commerce Corporation.  Many of the fields have drop down lists from which you should select the entry. Free form entries in such fields should be discouraged, since they will be spelled differently most of the time and hence missed in a Lookup.  Sometimes the fields have a required entry that your company may have designed into the entry process.  Free form information is inserted into the notes and history tab.  Here you can type in descriptions of your conversations with the contact, action items and you can insert a record of your correspondence (e-mails, faxes or letters) with the contact. The insert will include a shortcut to the item if your system has been set up to do that.  That way by going to the contact clicking on a note with a shortcut, you can immediately call up that particular document.
4. Of all the ACT features, the lookup tab is one of the more important ones. You will quickly see that you can select all of your Florida contacts, all of your hot prospects, your customers or just your suppliers or just those with e-mail addresses or etc. with just a few clicks and very quickly. Lookup helps you select exactly which set of people to whom you want to send that ‘thank you’ letter or ‘invitation’.  A Lookup can be done on a field with a drop down list.  For instance, you can categorize your contacts such as customer prospect, hot list, vendor in the ID/Status field using the drop downs.  In that manner you can look up all your prospects, then narrow the search to another field such as Los Angeles (city) and voila, you have all prospects in Los Angeles.
5. ACT also has a powerful calendar feature. Of course you can keep your own activities in the calendar, view it by the day, week or month or in list form.  But you can also make calendar entries for other users, for instance the VP may want all his sales people on a conference call at a certain time. You may be asked to set this up for him. Your ACT contacts and schedule can be downloaded to your Palm Pilot.
6. You can use ACT as your e-mail client and use it to send and receive e-mail. Or you can link Outlook Express and Eudora to ACT if you prefer a more robust e-mail client.  The mail merge feature is a highly productive way to send multiple e-mails or faxes. Symantec’s WinFax can be linked to ACT thus useing the ACT contacts as a phone book. You can set MS Word as the word processor you use with ACT. Or you can use ACT’s own internal WP.
7. The mail merge feature is powerful. If you write a standard letter and save it as an ACT template, you can merge it with a lookup of choice and have all the letters printed along with envelopes. Or it can be e-mailed or faxed to the contacts in the lookup.
8. An ACT database can be used by many users. In a typical office, the office staff will be set up to all use the same database. IE, the database will be setup on the SERVER and the ACT software on the users desk top will point to the central database, whenever ACT is opened.  For users who are not in the central office, the database will initially be replicated on the remote user’s workstation or laptop and then changes additions and deletions will be synchronized with the central database at whatever frequency is desired from daily to monthly. After synchronization, both databases including notes history and activities are identical. Synch Packets are normally sent by e-mail
9. The e-mail feature helps increase your productivity. To use e-mail (provided you have a compatible ISP, and AOL is not) Select view>email. Right Click on the e-mail inbasket and then click get/send mail.  To write an e-mail, click on Write>e-mail.  Or just click on the e-mail field. The e-mail composition screen pops up.
10. There are numerous report templates that are part of the standard ACT system. These reports can be modified, but many of them are useful as they are.  These reports can provide much of the information about a sales reps activities.
11. It is important to know that databases from other sources can be imported into ACT. For instance you may have an Excel database that you want to transfer to ACT.  Or perhaps someone in the office is already using ACT and you want to start with that one and make it the standard.  This exercise is usually done by the Administrator or the ACT Consultant.
12. ACT 2000 includes a new Sales Management and Reporting feature. You can monitor the sales opportunities you have at each stage of the sales development cycle and display this information in a report, or graphically in a sales funnel or graph. The sales funnel graphics are based on the Dale Carnegie Sales Advantage, a proprietary selling process and defines 11 stages in the Sales Development Cycle which you can customize to suit your own company needs.  You can track all sales opportunities at all stages of the cycle, keep product and competitors lists and prices. ACT provides a calculating feature that enables you to generate totals for the sales opportunities.
13. ACT 2000 includes a Group Feature and Subgroup Feature. This enables you for instance, to sort all contacts by Company as a Group and by Division as a subgroup.  The Group feature has many other uses, including compiling a list, for example, of Golfing buddies, sales award winners and many other lists unique to personal or business use.
14. An important feature often forgotten, is that any contact can be marked private by a user. Such a private contact will not be seen by others in a shared environment nor will it be included in a synch package.
15. ACT contacts can be dialed automatically with a single click. If your phone line is equipped with caller ID, when the call comes in ACT will lookup the contact if present in the database, and you can immediately see all relevant data about the caller.  Talk about relationship management! And productivity increases!  ACT has it all. You can also download your selected ACT contacts to your Cell Phone

---

The above is a list of the principal ACT 2000 features.  There are many attractions in addition to this feature, and to get the most productivity from ACT, one should use most of the above and let it drive his or her daily activities.

Good ACTing, and hire an ACC to help you!

Rich Heimann