Does your database work for your small to medium business? For years users have struggled with the limitations of ACT! It is a very robust solution and a great value for the price.  Like so many other users, I want a more robust software solution without an enterprise business application price.  What I’ve always wanted is a relational database with drip campaign capability, on a MAC; I used to have ACT for mac before they discontinued it.

Is it time to upgrade or move to Filemaker Pro? Here’s my take out of box improvements:

ACT! 2011 pros:

• integrated email drip campaign
• emarketing – duplicate your prospects in a local area
• sync between outlook and act for contacts

ACT! 2011 cons:

• Still no drip campaign management for snail mail
• new services require a monthly fee
• no iphone apps- emarketing solutions are for droid and blackberry only

Kudo’s for the latest version of ACT! including integrated social media. You enter contact info and it automatically pulls social media information. But it’s the end of the line.

My Filemaker objectives:

• full blown CRM. Pick up 70-80% of ACT! features including
• basic contact layout with drop down menu’s and editable fields
• dynamic groups
• search by many different fields
• integrated send a letter or memo; choose from template
• see all history at a glance
• integrated send an email
• Does not allow duplicate company or contact entries without a warning

NEW FEATURES DESIRED

• Automated drip mail campaign- assign contacts to campaigns based on variables such as sic or industry type
• integrated invoice creation and attach to history
• Business organization tool for marketing materials, forms. Search by keyword to find.
• Email solution with sync to iphone (never used ACT email integration due to limitations)
• Forms creation- for web (future)
• Products-  ecommerce database integration (30+ data fields) via API (future)
• Mailchimp integration (unless inline solution includes equally useful)

This article is NOT to look at solutions outside of Filemaker. I’ve only listed a few needs here. There is NOTHING that will meet my requirements with a comparable budget. There are NO cloud solutions of interest. Power ACT! users will understand.

So in my quest to convert to Filemaker, here’s a quick look at ‘starter’ solutions so I don’t have to create ACT relational programming from scratch.

THE SOLUTIONS: The reviews below highlight shortcomings as compared to ACT!, and personal needs within ACT!, since this article is about ACT! users converting to Filemaker. Rather than identify all the differences, once I found a key shortcoming that I felt was insurmountable i.e. not worth investing in the solution and then modifying, I moved on in my search. Allowing duplicate contacts is a dealbreaker- a fix for this is essential.

Power Mate Contact Management Software www.powermatecorp.com $199 incredibly ugly, but very functional crm with integrated mail and email. Write a single letter or group. Closer to ACT than businessman. It would be nice to strip out the scripting and apply a new layout, however, since it was obviously started years ago, this might contain a lot of legacy code making it a cumbersome to modify, or operate efficiently.

Powermate contact manager mass mailer screen- actual quality

Vedatrak CRM 2.1
 

Vedatrak contact dashboard crm

Nice layout and has expanded fields and script above what’s in Filemaker starter kit. What you see is what you get. I didn’t find much beef behind this.  $299 for full pack, $99 for contacts only. Nice looking, may be promising-
- Can you mail merge easily and create drip campaigns?
- Does not recognize if company is already in system while typing and will create duplicate contacts. ACT offers a little image that you can click and pull the company from after you start typing. This eliminates duplicate company entries with similar spelling such as co and company.  How easy will this be to modify?
- Allows duplicate contacts within a company. How easy will this be to modify?

Core2crm $499 the contacts tab out of box looks a lot like ACT! . BEST OUT OF BOX CRM DEMO TESTED

• It has integrated email and letter creation per contact, group, dynamic drop down and edit industry and department.
• Add group.
• Items looks very much like adding items in Quickbooks.
• Can I dynamically add to a group  out of box or do I need a script?
• Duplicates- same issue as Vedtrak. Need dynamic recognition to avoid dupes and save time.

 

core 3 filemaker : Above the contacts tab is LAYOUT> looks like built in change will be easy. Re: drop down shown, nice but where ACT automatically makes these hyperlinks, script still needs to be written to do the same here.

More info on 2nd contact tab

BusinessMan_Enterprise
Good start, but as a CRM falls short on layout and interactivity for database groups. I think a lot of the programming dynamics are there, but additional work is needed to get it to where it needs to be for me. I wonder how easy this database framework will be to modify?
LIKES

• Beyond  CRM, this is a full business manager and has many features not found in Core3. Many features I don’t need but probably very valuable to larger businesses and manufacturing business.
• Inventory is set up for mfg so you can add parts & labor. If I were to use product manager, I need it for internet, which tends to have different needs. There is an option to add category (1 per item), but no sub-category. I’d also have a vendor product code, our product code and sometimes child product codes (sizes and colors). So this section would need a lot of work for my company use.

DISLIKES

• Left navigation panel- very distracting. I don’t like to see a bunch of contacts once I’m working on one. It’s very hard to focus.
• Scheduling something for a customer/prospect requires selecting one of the many tabs instead of “schedule”, then drop down to select what you want to schedule. Just a preference based on habit.
• Nice- click on current tab, see prior same type activity
• It does have a company branch tab- I need branch or divisions (not in a tab) which I’m not sure Core3 has.
• Troubleshooting- the drop down menu for reminder time is all AAAAAA instead of the actual time. Maybe because of demo mode.
• Company layout is default-when I click on a company, I want to see a list of contacts and a HISTORY for all contacts.
• CRUCIAL- need a contact layout. When I click on a contact, I want to see all record history below it. Here you select the contact from the company layout, then click on each tab to see the tasks, letters etc. PREFERENCE: Click on a contact and see a window with ALL activities by date.
• Cannot select a group of contacts from left nav, and create any action.
• I think most of the concerns here could be addressed by a different layout, though I think much more scripting will be needed than Core3 to get desired end result.

businessman sales dashboard- I like the at a glance by type of activity needed.

Core3 appears to have the layout elegance that may lend itself to integration with Quickbooks and others. Businessman is very powerful, but I don’t see the typical data relationships and I wonder how well it will ‘play with others’.

Excellious business tracker- extremely weak crm. Just a few basic contact fields. Free version has shipping method one of the primary . name, address, phone, email. no fax, no job title field. I couldn’t find a way to send a letter from within a contact. Just create a note, create an email, schedule activity- email or other.

Useful filemaker add-ins:

hind smith filemaker contact solution contact only- not bad though and free
Merge.It Pro- filemaker document merging. Not a  CRM solution, but offers inline create a letter etc, if you choose something that doesn’t do that aspect well
Zip Code Pro $32

Conclusion: I’ll be communicating with Core3 and Businessman to determine easy of extending.

Any others I should look at? Filemaker, mac compatible only please!