Entered CNET Catalog: 02/08/2005
SKU: ACTP2005RT
Manufacturer: Best Software, Inc.
Manufacturer description
Do you have 5 or more networked users? Scale up to 100, 000 contacts to support growing organizations. Each copy of ACT! 2005 Premium includes a license of Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition. ACT! 2005 Premium for Workgroups is a secure environment so your internal and remote users can safely share complete confidential customer information without concern. Scheduling activities, individually or for your workgroup, is a breeze.CNET editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 02/16/2005
With no other programs active, it took us a mere 15 seconds to load Act Premium, including the enclosed 3GB demo database. Slower machines, and those running resource-heavy applications at the same time, will require much longer. Once installed, Act also checks online for any program updates each time you load the software, a good first step for eliminating dangerous security breaches.
When you initially load Act, the program immediately checks for software updates.
Considering its many features, the Act interface is uncluttered. The left side of the screen displays a navigation bar with buttons for Contacts, Calendar, Task List, and E-mail Services, while the top displays menus and toolbars appropriate for the current screen. Act assigns many hot keys and key combinations, such as Shift+F11, making it easy to jump across views or start new activities. Given the scope of this contact manager, Act remains easy to use and reconfigure according to your needs. Act Premium for Workgroups 2005 excels as a customer-tracking database, especially when it comes to simple tracking and search-and-retrieval skills. For example, an auto mechanic's shop could use Act to track not only individual customers, but each of their cars, along with past repairs and attached product lists, automatically generating pop-up reminders when a vehicle's tune-up is due. Its ease of operation makes it practical for temporary personnel with little prior experience in contact management. Even better, the Premium version of Act, which we reviewed, also adds synchronization over the Web, so sales reps in the field can update customer files with Act while on the road. Even if the host database is unavailable, you can still queue files to be synced.
Within Act Premium for Workgroups, synchronization can occur over the Web or over a network, even when the Act database is offline.
Maximizer, however, maintains a slight edge over Act, thanks to its bundled customer relationship management (CRM) tools, which help communicate with customers as well as track them. For example, Maximizer includes Crystal Reports from Business Objects, a toolkit for the creation and viewing of custom customer and sales reports. Act, on the other hand, makes Crystal Reports available only as an add-on. Act also has an add-on for use with Peachtree Accounting. However, if you're currently using Act and feel you need to add sales invoicing and accounting features, Best Software offers SalesLogix.
That said, Act Premium for Workgroups 2005 makes its own reporting inroads with the Opportunity List View, a report generator-cum-searchable database. The Opportunity List View, accessible via the left-hand navigation bar, displays your contacts and customers in categories according to where they are in your sales cycle (categories include the likes of Initial Communication, for when you've just received a call from a potential client, and Closed/Won, for when you sign the contract). If you'd like to chart your customer standing to establish regional and seasonal trends, for example, or forecast probable sales revenues, just filter these lists by date, status, or probability of sale (you tell Act how likely the sale is). Act then spits out its Opportunity Pipeline Graph to give you a quick glance at your stats. A sales manager could use the results, for instance, to sense regional and seasonal trends, forecast probable sales revenues, and determine resource allocations. Not only does Best Software furnish an excellent in-product help system with Act Premium for Workgroups 2005, it also includes four animated "feature tours," named Customization, Groups and Companies, Handheld Link Installation, and Opportunity Tracking, to ease users into some of its operations.
Act's online knowledge base gives detailed answers to many questions about Act.
Act's free, online tech support includes peer-to-peer discussion forums with some very well-versed users, with an extensive FAQ and knowledge base that you can search by keyword. Unfortunately, there's no e-mail support (surprising in this day and age).
Free live phone support is available from Best Software, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. ET, but for only the first 30 days. After that, you'll have to pay $50 for the first 10 minutes, followed by $5 per minute. Alternatively, there are several yearly pay plans, such as Act Advantage ($299), which offers database repair discounts and unlimited phone support with priority queuing. The costs are typical for software packages of this caliber.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3
User Rating: 
8/10
Great functionality and easy to use
Pros: Smooth integration with outlook. Customizable layout, easy to use grouping functions
Cons: A little slow doing searches and populating emails with Outlook
Review:
Like previous versions of ACT! This is an application that is very easy to use. I looked at other applications that seemed like it would take months to become proficient. I will likely upgrade to the "Premier" version to take advantage of the opportunity reporting. It was a little dissapointing they couldn't have included that into the standard addition but, I guess they are trying to keep the price down for people who don't need this functionality.
User Rating: 
4/10
Too slow, system resources hog
Pros: Improved interface, calendars, and sales opportunities tracking
Cons: Too slow and cumbersome to be useful
Review:
I've been using ACT for 10 years and never missed an updated version. I recommend that anyone looking at this new version avoid it. In short, ACT2005 was so slow and cumbersome that I went through the pain of uninstalling it and going back to using ACT6. The new version places a heavy load on system resources. I have 768MB RAM and one of the faster notebook systems on the market today. Once ACT2005 was installed, it was painfully slow. There are some nice features to the new version, but they don't justify the pain of working with this version. Its also worth mentioning that today I received an email inviting me to "pre-order ACT!2006." Needless to say I will not be rushing to place my order.
User Rating: 
2/10
Act needs to get it together
Pros: Faster than Act 6
Cons: It is nothing like ACT 6.
Review:
I have been an Act user since it was a DOS program. Over the years it has had it?s problems, but this one is the worst.
Fist they separated the history and the notes. For those of you that used both of these, this is a problem.
Second, you can no longer create reports based on the person that entered the data. You can only do it by record manager. Also, when you print reports you cannot print just the ones with activities. It prints all contacts regardless if there is anything going on or not. For large databases this is insane. When asked why they did this the customer support personnel said, ?It is by design?. They said this for most of the issues we had with the software.
We bought a 7-user Premium addition. There were so many problems that we were told would not be fixed that we rolled back and are now using ACT 6 again.
I do not recommend this version unless you are starting from scratch.
Fist they separated the history and the notes. For those of you that used both of these, this is a problem.
Second, you can no longer create reports based on the person that entered the data. You can only do it by record manager. Also, when you print reports you cannot print just the ones with activities. It prints all contacts regardless if there is anything going on or not. For large databases this is insane. When asked why they did this the customer support personnel said, ?It is by design?. They said this for most of the issues we had with the software.
We bought a 7-user Premium addition. There were so many problems that we were told would not be fixed that we rolled back and are now using ACT 6 again.
I do not recommend this version unless you are starting from scratch.
