ACT! 2011 is now available to pre-order at Preact.
Designed to help you get more of what you value most - time and money - ACT! 2011 automates many routine activities to boost your productivity. Read on to find out about the exciting new ACT Smart Tasks....

Our Top 5 improvements in ACT 2011 Pro Fully supported with Microsoft Office 2010 Synchronise contacts between ACT! & Outlook Import data directly from Excel & add new ACT! fields within the data import wizard Directly integrates with hoovers.com to bring fresh contact & company data into ACT! and new ACT! Smart Tasks

Pre-Order ACT! 2011 from just £112+VAT Upgrade from £80+VAT CALL 0800 381 1000

• Organise contact information - check business relationship detail in ACT! whenever you need to with complete customer & prospect information at your fingertips.

• Control your sales pipeline - manage prospects throughout your own sales process in ACT! for total visibility and complete control of your sales pipeline.

• Get more done - use ACT! calendars, smart tasks, dashboards, reminders & call lists to organise your working day and get more done.

• Stay in sync - coordinate efforts when speaking to customers by sharing the same relationship detail in ACT! across your team to keep in sync. READ MORE

New ACT Smart Tasks ACT 2011 Smart Tasks take care of everyday administration by sending emails, delivering alerts & automatically scheduling activities to save time & create proactive communications. Automatic & manually triggered Smart Tasks can easily be run to perform numerous ACT! functions that include: ACT! email alerts if opportunities are neglected Receive renewal reminders in advance of expiry dates Sending new customers automated welcome emails Scheduling a series of e-marketing communications to prospects Email notifications about new customers assigned to you By automating repetitive processes & driving more communications ACT! Smart Tasks give you more time to focus on the things that matter most like servicing your customers and selling. READ MORE

Choose from 10+ Smart Tasks or easily create your own Use ACT! queries to automatically apply Smart Tasks to matching contacts

We're delighted to announce that Sage have unveiled a brand new Sage CRM iPhone solution.

The Sage CRM for iPhone beta provides extended ability to work with CRM wherever you are from an iPhone.

The add-on uses native iPhone functions including the date spinner and the accelerometer to switch to a landscape view when the phone is turned on its side.

Best of all, you can use the full capabilities of the iPhone to call contacts directly from any CRM record. Preact's Senior CRM consultant, Tom Gregory explains 'As well as supplying Sage CRM our own team rely on iPhones so it's terrific to see Sage CRM fully accessible as a mobile add-on. The interface is slick to navigate and the ability to call people directly from CRM is a real time saver for all CRM' READ MORE

Sage CRM for iPhone at a glance

• Improves customer service by accessing real-time customer information, cases, opportunities and leads

• Easily search & update contacts, opportunities, leads & cases

• Run and view reports on the move

• Get started quickly with rapid deployment and set-up

Requirements

Equipped with all the existing Sage CRM mobile functionality, Sage CRM for iPhone beta is available free of charge for Sage CRM v6.2 and v7 customers that have a mobile user licence.

At this stage the new mobile solution is only available for iPhones but we expect to see the same technology available on Blackberry and Android devices soon.

Find out more

> Watch a demonstration video > Read the user guide

To find out more or to arrange a mobile user licence to access CRM for iPhone please call us on 0800 381 1000.

Microsoft has ended the secrecy about the next version of Dynamics CRM by announcing Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.

Ahead of its beta release in September and worldwide launch in December we can share some of the most exciting developments that have been unveiled so far in what is the biggest CRM release this year:

Making CRM more Outlook friendly

Native Outlook functionality is one of main reasons for the popularity of Dynamics CRM 4 and CRM 2011 further enhances the user experience.

Quite simply the new interface makes CRM look more like Outlook than ever!

Preview panes make it easier to access CRM detail, new options enable users to create personal views to suit individual preferences and a new CRM contextual ribbon delivers consistent Microsoft Office navigation.

Cloud development

One of the restrictions of Cloud (or hosted) CRM applications has been an inability to handle advanced customisation and integration because custom code can't readily be applied to a shared hosting environment.

However, with CRM 2011 custom code can be held in the Cloud to dramatically increase the functionality of hosted CRM. Furthermore, using the revolutionary Microsoft Azure operating system it'll be possible to host servers, software and data locally while receiving it all as a service and paying for it on a subscription basis!

CRM dashboards

An absence of dashboards in CRM 4 has long been a frustration so we're delighted to see that CRM 2011 includes multiple real-time contextual dashboards.

These can be adapted to roles and individual user settings to actively monitor performance and provide business intelligence for areas like sales, case management and marketing campaigns.

Role based access

The new role tailored client adapts the user interface and entire CRM experience to the user's role by including the essential functionality and data they need and removing the things they don't.

Custom activities and communications

CRM 4 only supports a fairly narrow range of communication types but the new release transforms this capability by enabling businesses to define activity and communications that are unique to the way their work.

SharePoint integration

Dynamics CRM 2011 and SharePoint are designed for native integration.

For organisations with Microsoft SharePoint Server, SharePoint document libraries can be created and embedded directly within Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 so its easy to keep on track of the supporting files for each relationship.

There are numerous other improvements and as we're still some weeks away from the beta release Microsoft have yet to confirm the exact feature list so we're expecting to hear about additional updates!

Microsoft Outlook Integration

GoldMine Premium 9.0 will provide out of the box integration with Microsoft Outlook. Through new robust integration users are now provided with a real-time preview of GoldMine information directly from Outlook without having switch back and forth between the two applications.

GoldMine data is not only viewable from Outlook as users can directly access GoldMine records from Outlook to make changes and schedule follow up activities. With access to wider relationship data in Outlook the new Version 9 edition makes it easier for users to handle everyday tasks and reduce processing time.

To find out more about GoldMine Premium Version 9 please call us on 0800 381 1000

High Quality ACT! Training for only £99

We now have over 70 unique training videos across all recent versions that users can follow at any time to accelerate their ACT! expertise and quickly achieve better results with the software.

• MIM Tab
  A real-time link displays the data directly from the Sage 50 database and allows users to view in Dynamics CRM including: customer details, credit limits, available balance, payment terms, accounts status, previously posted invoices, details of the payments made and Sage 50 stock levels.

Outsourced database administration - we'll remotely manage your everyday contact management admin including: importing contact data, configuring ACT! synchronisation, installing ACT! and creating new user accounts, customising your ACT! database layout, email & document template design & database development.

Tips for designing ACT! database layouts - Our layout master-class provides all the advice you’ll need to develop an effective database design. This includes tips on tab order, creating new ACT! screens, enforcing mandatory fields, drop down lists vs free-format fields, using tick boxes, creating field tables and user security field permissions.

ACT! Q & A clinic - A fully bespoke consultancy to answer any ACT! related questions. Different people want different things from CRM software so as well as resolving immediate ACT! requirements we also provide advice specific to your business and/or job role on how to get the best results from ACT!

Optimising ACT! for marketing campaigns - There are many ways that ACT! can support marketing activities so there’s a lot to consider. We’ll take a look at your database and identify areas that will enable you to better optimise ACT! for marketing. We’ll cover customer profiling, using ACT! groups, working with templates and tracking marketing responses.

Optimising ACT! for sales teams - Before sales teams can effectively use ACT! the database needs to be relevant to their working practices. We focus on helping sales teams optimise ACT! to manage the selling process including customisation of the sales cycle in ACT! and changing the sales layout. To demonstrate how business can be closed more effectively through ACT! pipeline management as well as forecasting and performance analysis we also cover sales dashboards, generating sales reports and the opportunity list view.

Tips for purchasing contact data - Buying data is the quickest way to expand a database but before importing contacts into ACT! there are several important points to consider. Our training and advice covers: formatting new data before import, de-duplicating data, mapping fields and how to keep track of data after the import process.

Automating ACT! to save time - With so many ACT! features a high proportion consistently get overlooked by users yet have the potential to save time and improve efficiency. We focus on a selection of ACT! functions that are frequently forgotten but can automate processes and save everyone time.

Gaining and holding user buy-in - Sometimes user adoption of ACT! can decline after implementation often due to a lack of training and staff turnover. We discuss how to avoid and overcome the barriers that users and administrators face in getting, and keeping sales teams and other team members on board with ACT!

How we can help you achieve better results with ACT!:

ACT! Fusion combines ACT! phone support, on-demand training and 10 hours of ACT! consultancy every month that can be used for database admin, report designing, database customisation, CRM project planning and much more. Find out more about ACT! Fusion