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By David Sims

TMCnet Contributing Editor

 

Sage Software (News - Alert) has announced availability of the new ACT! by Sage 2008 product family including ACT! by Sage 2008 (10.0), ACT! by Sage Premium 2008 (10.0), and ACT! by Sage Premium for Web 2008 (10.0).

 

"New customizable dashboards anchor this year's product releases," company officials say, and "allow individuals and workgroups to access priority sales opportunity and activity details in a comprehensive graphical view."

 

Additional ACT! 2008 enhancements include editable list views2, multiple contact assignments per opportunity, and expanded workgroup security, among others.

 

Today's ACT! 2008 product announcements coincide with the 20th anniversary of ACT!. Sage officials like to say that ACT! "established the contact management software category" with its introduction in 1987. Whatever the history, there's certainly no denying that today ACT! is the number-one selling contact and customer management product with over 2.7 million registered users and over 41,000 additional corporate customers.

 

Joe Bergera, executive vice president and global general manager for Sage CRM Solutions, said the new dashboards "deliver rich visual analysis capabilities that were once only found in enterprise CRM systems. Now, with ACT!, they are available and affordable for small and mid-size business use."

 

The new dashboard features include a comprehensive visual overview of key activities and opportunities on a single screen. Users can set an ACT! dashboard as their startup view to begin each day with a snapshot of activities that require attention, and track their progress against company goals and key performance indicators. The dashboard allows users to track their individual activities and opportunities, and allows team members to track their individual activities and opportunities, while managers can also track group performance.

 

Each ACT! dashboard includes six customizable components: Schedule At-a-Glance, My Activities, My Opportunities, Opportunity Pipeline by Stage, Top 10 Opportunities, and Closed Opportunities. Users can also create new calls, meetings, to-dos, or add additional details to existing opportunities directly from the dashboard. The entire dashboard, or components, can be copied into any application including Microsoft (News - Alert) Office applications for use in e-mails, reports, etc.

 

In June Sage announced an enhanced organizational structure for its Global CRM Group, led by Bergera. The new structure brings together global product management and technology strategy functions that overlay product delivery teams based in North America and Europe.

 

Sage officials say the new structure is designed to increase scale of operations, accelerate time-to-market and create strategic synergies across Sage CRM Solution product lines. The company claims over 300,000 users at over 8,500 companies for Sage SalesLogix.

 

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David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page. 

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