Sage Software has announced the availability of the new ACT! by Sage 2009 (11.0) contact and customer management product family consisting of ACT! by Sage 2009 (11.0), ACT! by Sage Premium 2009 (11.0), and ACT! by Sage Premium for Web 2009 (11.0). Inspired by customer feedback, ACT! 2009 products focus on enhancing user productivity with improved Microsoft Outlook integration, calendar and activity visibility, and database search capabilities. ACT! 2009 is available in India beginning today.

“ACT! has been the best selling CRM software for Lead and Customer management addressing the small business segment in India for some years now across several verticals like IT services, Industrial goods, Financial services and variety of other services. We also have a mature Partner community capable of developing relevant add-ons for the Indian market. We believe that with ACT! 11 which is focused on improving the end user experience, we have a clear winner and a great product for companies seeking to embark on their CRM journey”, said Thomas Abraham, Managing Director, Sage Software India (P) Ltd. 

He also added, “ACT! has over 500 customers in India . We estimate that the market opportunity for ACT! would be in excess of 20,000 companies that could translate into a market size of Rs 30 crores”.

ACT! by Sage is the #1 selling contact and customer management solution used effectively by more than 2.8 million users and over 43,000 additional corporate customers, including individual professionals, small business owners, corporate teams, and anyone who regularly works with contacts. ACT! by Sage Premium Solutions are specifically designed to benefit larger teams of users with increased data sharing capabilities, group scheduling functionality, advanced opportunity tracking and customization capabilities, robust dashboards and reports, and multiple security levels. New ACT! 2009 productivity features include:

• En masse e-mail attaching – select multiple Microsoft Outlook e-mails from different senders and attach them quickly to ACT! contacts
• Activity scheduling from e-mails – create ACT! activities within Outlook e-mails and the contact and regarding/subject line is pre-populated
• One-click calendar copy – copy an ACT! calendar to an Outlook calendar quickly from the main ACT! toolbar

Improved ACT! 2009 productivity features include:

• Simplified lookups – search by only part of a name or title; switch between contact, group or company to modify a search without starting over; advanced queries from main lookup(1) toolbar carry previous searches over for refining
• Fast access to previous contact lookups – view the last several contact lookups by type, date, timestamp, and number of contacts in a query
• Calendar filters applied on printouts – print an ACT! calendar with selected users, type, priority, and date range applied

New and improved ACT! 2009 database and automation options include:

• Automated tasks – automate calendar(1) copying, database backups(2) and maintenance from ACT! Scheduler (previously only available in ACT! Premium)
• Streamlined sync progress bar – see progress of database synchronization by steps and time remaining

A complete list of new and improved ACT! 2009 features is available at www.act.com.

The ACT! Online Community ( http://community.act.com ), introduced earlier this year, has recorded over five million page views and more than 75,000 forum logins in its first six months of operation.

This feature is not available in ACT! Premium for Web.
(2) In ACT! Premium for Web, administrative functions must be performed on the Web server.