Sage Quietly Launches Social Media Integration Into ACT! 2010
It’s always exciting when a brand that’s primarily known for enterprise resource planning (ERP) software like Sage comes out with a product aimed at helping small businesses succeed on the social web.
The brand has also published a basic guide to the social web, aimed at small business. In the 10-page PDF, the bottom-half of page 8 details how Sage has added basic social-media integration into their ACT! software, but no product-level details of the integration are included. ACT also launched a YouTube channel about one month ago.
So, the good news is that small businesses (10 users or less) can obtain a CRM solution with light social integration for $189, flat. If you’re a small business that was maybe feeling that Salesforce’s Group Edition was overkill ($378/year, roughly), this could be a good fit. (Oracle’s CRMonDemand runs about double that price).
There are two big downsides, though, to migrating to ACT from a smaller, cheaper CRM (i.e. Excel, Highrise). ACT lacks a search-engine marketing component (i.e. Google AdWords integration), but does have an add-on mass email function (with a fairly good-looking lead-scoring function). The other big downside is the lack of a mobile component. At $55-65 per month, Salesforce Mobile Lite is a powerful package for any iPhone or Blackberry-driven small business.
Overall, Act 2010 should be a good choice for any small business with a small sales/marketing team (2-10 people) who don’t need mobile functionality, and who are dead-set on having a CRM budget of less than $2000.
Hat-tip to CRMHelpDeskSoftware for the tip. It looks like Duct Tape Marketing’s John Jantsch also got a good preview of the ACT! 2010 software here .
Leave a Comment
Commenting is closed for this article.