Tag Archives: ACT! Certified Consultant

#PerfectingACT! 2013 with #Swiftpage

new act! logo

The newly revealed act! logo by Siwftpage

Well, PA 2013 is over and I’m back in the UK, comfortably sat in my “dev hole” (as wifey describes it) and though I am completely spent from 6 days of little or no sleep, I haven’t felt this energised for years! Swiftpage are the new owners of ACT! and simply saying that they are bringing in a new breath of fresh air would be a complete under-statement. To quote from one of my all-time favourite songs by AC/DC “Back in Black”:

Yes I’m let loose
From the noose
That’s kept me hanging about
I keep looking at the sky
‘Cause it’s getting me high
Forget the hearse ‘cos I’ll never die
I got nine lives, cats eyes
Using every one of them and running wild
‘cause I’m back!

..and wow is ACT! back…sorry that should be act! is back! From the very on-set of PA, both Bob and John set the scene for me with the single word “ENGAGEMENT”. When Swiftpage talk about engagement, they want to re-engage with the product, re-engage with the platform, re-engage with partners, re-engage with add-on partners, re-engage with ex-Sage employees, re-engage with end-users and re-engage with the entire product vision! For once I genuinely believe that this is not the usual vacuous marketing led  series of hollow promises. I, and many others, had the pleasure of having direct conversation time with each member of the senior executive and management team that were present at Perfecting ACT!. This level of commitment from their busy schedules would have been unparalleled during Sage’s tenure. Every member of Swiftpage I spoke with had the same level of energy and enthusiasm that we partners have had for the product and they genuinely wanted to hear from us. We are all Swifities now, part of the team and in from the cold!

So that’s the euphoria part done with, what can we expect for the immediate and medium term future?

  1. We ACT! 2014 has been renamed and re-branded to act! v16, what this means is that this will not only be the final version of ACT! that Sage was involved in, but also the last 12 month product cycle release. Yes you understood that correctly, act! will no longer be released every 12 months but will settle down to longer version releases with smaller more frequent Service Pack/ update releases. This one thing alone will remove much of the pain that has been associated with the act! product for many years now, and will allow the product to adapt to a constantly changing landscape.
  2. A SaaS version of act! is due imminently based on the Swiftpage Engage Engine. The little that I saw of this edition still in it’s early stages of development, was a much simpler and cleaner version of act! Professional with just the core Contact Management functionality.
  3. Consolidation of all regional sectors outside of North America into a single office based in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in the UK, and a thorough commitment that regional issues and impacts of version and update roll-outs will be given equal weighting within product design, vision and support.

For us ACCs in the UK, the request for an increased level of communication and involvement with the senior management headed by Dan Ogden and Guy Clack is such refreshing news that the voices of all the clients we represent will now not go unnoticed or unheard. An early indication of this was the dramatically increased level of activity and meetings Dan and Guy had with French partners prior to PA to ensure that a French version of ACT! 2013 was made available after a failure by Sage to ensure that ACT! 2013 was released in French.

So here’s to a bright new orange future with Swiftpage and a return of Perfecting ACT! as a central opportunity for all act! business partners globally to meet, learn and above all ENGAGE!

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