SmartThoughts - the SmartCloud Blog.

What the WannaCry Ransomeware attack means for cloud accounts

15/5/2017

Computers across the globe were targeted by the WannaCry ransomware attack that occurred late last week. The virus quickly spread to infect over 230,000 computers in more than 150 countries around the world.

It is easy for users of cloud accounts such as G Suite (previously Google Apps), Office365, Dropbox or any of the myriad of other cloud vendors to assume that, because their data is backed up in the cloud, they are safe from a ransomware attack - but that is not the case.

To find out how to protect your organisation, see below.

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What's in your email survival kit?

11/9/2015

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The volume of emails we send and receive is unsustainable for business.The average knowledge worker today gets 133 emails a day and 77 instant messages, she spends half her working day on email, constantly tethered to her smartphone, responding to short bursts of communication and creating email overload. It is estimated that managers spend between 5 and 20 hours a week just reading and writing emails. Furthermore, we are all using social media networking more and spending around 25 per cent of our time searching for information.

By the end of 2015, more than half of all new digital content will be the result of updates to, and the editing of, existing information
Online social networking is now more popular than email and search
Middle managers spend more than 25% of their time searching for information
As long ago as 2010 Corporate users received some 200 mails per day, 18% of which were spam, and the numbers have risen dramatically since then.
Initial feedback on the adoption of social collaboration platforms to share and keep track of ideas on subjects from innovation and Lean Management through to sales and support indicates that the use of these types of tools can reduce email by between 10 and 20% immediately.

In this article Principal Consultant Michael McKenna outlines strategies and tactics that can be employed at both the corporate and personal level to reduce email overload.

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Google Inbox for Work is on its way

12/3/2015

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Google launched Inbox for Work in October of last year and have been gradually rolling it out to private Gmail accounts.

However, up until now it has not been available for Google Apps for Work accounts, but that should change over the coming months.

Update 17/03/2015 - Yay! We got a St. Patrick's Day present from Google today when our invite to Inbox for Work on our Google Apps landed in our inbox. We are looking forward to using Inbox for Work on a daily basis and reporting back to you on how we find it.

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Social Media in the Irish Workplace

25/2/2015

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Interesting infographic from Anne O'Connell, Employment Law Partner at Dublin solicitors Sherwin O'Riordan.

Did you know for example that 60% of Irish companies have a formal social media policy in place? But almost 1 in 3 companies have had to take formal disciplinary action with an employee over their use of social media in the workplace. What is also interesting is that Ireland is the 3rd highest in the EU for using social media in the workplace (Malta is the highest).

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What's new - Nimble Everywhere App for Google Chrome

2/10/2014

Nimble, the Smart Social Relationship Manager, today announced the release of the latest version of the Nimble Everywhere App for Google Chrome.

Nimble combines your contacts from Google Contacts, Outlook and Apple Address Book. It then maps and discovers the most important contact information on the web (Twitter, AngelList, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, FourSquare, Instagram and more), connects your email, calendar and social interactions and then keeps it up to date and in sync on a daily basis.

Automatic Social Profile Matching: Nimble removes the detective work required to find contact details by auto-magically mapping your contacts social profiles and consolidating the key background information you need into a digital dossier, giving you all the relevant information you’ll need before reaching out.

Nimble is a pioneer in Social CRM and Social Selling for individuals and teams. Building upon its innovative ability to create and update social profiles dynamically, it now puts social overlay information into your inbox, mobile device, web browser, and line of business applications as a true enterprise customer enablement application.

Watch the overview video below and see a demo of the new Nimble Everywhere App for Google Chrome in action.

To install a copy of the new Nimble Everywhere App for Google Chrome, click here.

What's New in Google Apps - September 2014 Releases

2/10/2014

September 2014 was a busy month for Google Apps for Business, not least because it was rebranded as Google Apps for Work signifying Google's commitment to providing a complete personal productivity suite for the workplace.

To get a complete overview of all the changes which were rolled out for Google Apps this month you can watch the following video or download the worksheet.

AARRR SaaS: Pirate Metrics Demistified

7/6/2014

Pirate Metrics is a simple metrics and analytics foundation for startups devised by Dave McClure in 2007. The Metrics are based on the assumption that every startup needs to get customers through 5 key stages and Pirate Metrics helps you perform quantitative and comparative analysis of your business by tracking these key metrics:, Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral & Revenue. AARRR!

Acquisition
You acquire the user. For a SaaS product, this usually means a sign up.

Activation
The user uses your product, indicating a good first visit.

Retention
The user continues to use your product, indicating they like your product.

Referral
The user likes your product so much that he refers it to other new users.

Revenue
The user pays you. Yay!

The infographic below is a great breakdown of these metrics using the example of a project management SaaS app.

The Entire Internet - Live and in real time!

28/5/2014

Click the image to open the interactive version (via Penny Stocks Lab).

It's a big, big place......click on the image to be taken to the original infographic and see the (huge) numbers change as you watch.

CRM Watchlist 2013 winners: Social is as social does the mainstream - Nimble review from ZDNet

19/3/2013

The following is part of a review of 3 CRM applications - Get Satisfaction, Lithium and Nimble - written by Paul Greenberg as part of a series of articles critiquing the winners of CRM Watchlist 2013 which was published in ZDnet recently.

I think the review would have to be catagorised as 'tough, but fair'. It emphasises the immense potential that Nimble has, in the SME market in particular, and identifies the key challenges facing the company in the year ahead.

Unbelievably Comprehensive List of Start Up Resources

12/3/2013

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The guys at VCcafe.com have put together an unbelievably comprehensive list of Business Tools for start ups, many of which are featured in our App Directory, but they have just updated this with a great list of Start Up Intelligence Tools.

So not only can you find out about everything from hosting your code in hackathons to open source legal docs, now you can discover everything you needed to know about the startups themselves. From premium paid subscription databases to free tools showcasing new startups and startup maps, The Ultimate Startup Intelligence Tools List is guaranteed to help you get your research done.

It is a great resource, but if you need help making sense of it, click here to schedule a call with one of our team.

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Nimble & HootSuite Close the Loop on Social Selling

12/3/2013

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Nimble, the pioneer of social relationship management now integrates with HootSuite, makers of the market-leading social media management system. Now users can connect social media best practices to Social CRM capabilities, such as identifying, connecting and nurturing prospects to really engage with their customers.

Nimble is the first CRM in the HootSuite App Directory and the integration is available free to all Nimble and HootSuite users.

This is a significant step by Nimble towards their goal of becoming the primary source of consolidated contact insights and the most effective tool to engage and nurture business relationships. The Nimble app for HootSuite makes it easier for you to grow your business network, track social conversations, realize measurable value from your social media investments and finally "close the loop" on social selling.

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One Year Status Update on Nimble

7/3/2013

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Great review of Nimble's first year at the DEMO Conference from CEO Jon Ferrara.

To find out more about Nimble CRM and how you can make it work in your organisation - click here

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Prezi - No More Death by PowerPoint

4/2/2013

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Death By Powerpoint? Traditional slide presentations can be utterly boring and encourage linear thinking. To liberate your ideas, try Prezi and see how it facilitates new ways of considering things.

Prezi is a web based tool that lets you map out a presentation, including text, graphics and embedded PDF files and videos in one large layout. Instead of clicking through one slide after another during a presentation in a linear format, you zoom in on relevant information and then zoom out for a big picture view.

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Is Social Media a Fad?

4/2/2013

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Erik Qualman is the author of Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business. These videos form the world's most watched Social Media video series; "Social Media Revolution".

What is interesting to see is the change and growth in the social media statistics from year to year. Is it a fad? Watch the videos and judge for yourself...

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The Social Helpdesk Revolution

31/1/2013

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Social networks continue to grow at an alarming rate. While Twitter is averaging 250 million tweets per day, Facebook has grown to over 900 million active users. This means that now for every five minutes spent online, one of those minutes is spent solely on social media sites.

Every week over one million people view customer service related tweets, with 80 percent of them being negative. Understanding and responding to the needs of your customers is crucial, because 59 percent of consumers will switch brands for better service.

The social help desk may turn out to be a game-changer in the ongoing relationship between businesses and their customers. As customers increasingly turn to social media sites for customer service, the social help desk lets you respond in real-time to meet the evolving customer definition of "now."

See below for a great infographic from Desk.com showing how the Social Helpdesk is changing the game.

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How to be a CRM Power User

16/1/2013

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How can I be a CRM Power User? This is a common question that I am regularly asked, the short answer is there is no "magic button" - but there are a lot of habits and activities that you can employ with your CRM that will dramatically improve your productivity.

The first thing you need to do is to establish exactly what it is you want to achieve and then devise a plan to that will enable you to reach that goal. Without a plan you are wandering in the dark. When you are working on the plan you need to think strategically about your business and your role in it and decide on the elements that will bring YOU more success. Then use your CRM as your vehicle to achieve those objectives.

Having established your strategic goal, there are a number of ways that you can use your CRM tactically to achieve it;

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Advanced Search in Gmail

13/12/2012

One of the main reason why most of us love Gmail is because of its generous offering in terms of storage space. With more than 7Gb (and counting) free mail storage space, there’s really no need to delete your old emails.

However, not deleting email leads to the next potential problem – a messy and unsorted inbox. The good news is that by using Labels and Filters you can organize, sort and retrieve your emails easily.

In addition to this Gmail offers suprisingly powerful methods for searching and retrieving mail. The simple "Search Mail" function right beside Gmail logo actually does more than we imagined. In this post, we'll introduce you the useful Gmail search operators as well as examples on how you can search for almost any type of mail easily via the search text field.

See below for a range of Gmail Operators which you can use to improve your search...

The Most Popular Small Business Apps

15/8/2012

The use of cloud based applications by small businesses has mushroomed over the past couple of years. This Infographic from Mavenlink gives a very good overview of the current state of play in the market.

If you are wondering how you can implement Cloud computing in your own business but are a bit bewildered by the options out there, give SmartCloud a call. We can steer you through the clouds to the bright blue sky!

There are some great small business apps that were voted most popular:

How to get more Likes, Comments and Shares on Facebook

27/6/2012

In preparation for his attempt to break last year’s Guinness World record for largest webinar ever– SCIENCE OF INBOUND MARKETING –Dan Zarella of HubSpot been collecting piles and piles of new marketing data.

One area he focused on recently was Facebook. He collected data on more than 1.3 million posts published on the top 10,000 pages to put together this infographic to help you get more likes, comments and shares on your Facebook posts.

Click on the Infographic below to see the full size version

The State of the GoogleApps Ecosystem

26/6/2012

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Special report by the Cloud Alliance for Google Apps on how enterprises large and small are embracing Google Apps. You can download the full 17 page report here.

Click on the Infographic image below to see a full size version.

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Press Release: SmartCloud Announces Solution Partnership with Nimble CRM

1/12/2011

NEW SOCIAL BUSINESS PLATFORMS, NIMBLE, TRANSFORMS THE WAY PEOPLE MANAGE RELATIONSHIPS
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: PRLOG (PRESS RELEASE) - Dec 01, 2011

Dublin, Ireland – SmartCloud has announced their solution partnership with Nimble. Nimble is a Social Business Platform that combines customer relationship management and social engagement into an affordable web-based solution.

Nimble integrates LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google, email contacts and conversations into one seamless, intuitive environment, empowering small businesses in today’s socially connected world to attract and retain the right customers.

Created by Jon Ferrara, the founder of GoldMine, a pioneering SFA/CRM product, Nimble is the only solution on the market that integrates the "4 Cs" -- contacts, calendar, communications and collaboration -- to enable professionals to effectively manage the way they see, hear and connect with their company's most important asset: their business contacts.

"The problem today is our contacts and our communications are in too many places," said Jon Ferrara, CEO of Nimble. "Between IM, text messaging, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Skype and email, we can't keep track of it all. Trying to manage all of this in eight different tabs on your browser isn't the solution. We created Nimble to solve our own needs and we’re bringing it to the world to help small businesses solve theirs."

Michael McKenna, Principle Consultant of SmartCloud states, "We are excited to announce this new solution partnership with Nimble. We are pleased to offer our customers Nimble which unifies email, calendar and social channels in one application. This will allow our customers to easily see all of the communications made with their contacts no matter where the conversations took place."

Nimble is the next evolution in relationship management – a social relationship manager that makes it fun and easy to nurture personal and business relationships.

About SmartCloud: At SmartCloud, our goal is to build systems for your organization that will analyze your customers and opportunities, and help your company be more efficient by examining your current business, sales, marketing, and customer service processes. For more information, please visit our website at http://www.smartcloud.ie or call us at +353 1 506 0760. You can also join us socially on Twitter @mckennamike.

About Nimble: Nimble was founded in 2009 to help small businesses transform their communities into business opportunities. Nimble opens a whole new channel for businesses to engage customers in two-way dialogue, leveraging the power of traditional CRM and social media with its web-based social business platform. Located in Santa Monica, Nimble is in the heart of the Southern California tech community. Please join the conversation on Nimble’s Facebook page, LinkedIn and on Twitter @Nimble.

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Press Release - Award-Winning Social Business Platform Nimble Launches in Europe

8/11/2011

NIMBLE RESPONDS TO OVERWHELMING MARKET DEMAND FOR SOCIAL CRM SOLUTION WORLDWIDE.

Santa Monica, CA - Nov. 8, 2011 - Nimble announced today that its award-winning Social Business platform for small businesses has now officially launched into the European market with the partnering of key channel organizations to meet overwhelming demand. Nimble is the first SaaS platform designed to help small companies turn business connections and social communities into customers for life.

"More than half of our customers are overseas, and European partners have recognized the power of applying social to their business processes and are looking for a solution today," said Jon Ferrara, CEO, Nimble.

"Companies are trying to fix their social business dilemma with legacy CRM systems. That’s because most business people live in Outlook, Address Book or Google and they only go into the CRM systems to manage leads to update lead status and forecasts. Having to copy emails and activities into your CRM system does not work. An effective relationship platform needs to capture your social contacts and communications and activities for you and your team."

With its unique combination of relationship management, social networking, and sales and marketing tools, Nimble helps businesses capture leads with its website lead capture forms, organize them with its advanced contact manager, and engage them with automated drip marketing campaigns. To further help build relationships with those leads, Nimble enables businesses to run marketing campaigns and engage in social conversations via LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. As conversations and campaigns turn to business opportunities, Nimble manages the sales pipeline by tracking the deal amounts, probabilities, and conversations that translate to business success.

Said Michael McKenna, Principal Consultant, SmartCloud: "We became a Nimble Partner because we could see there is a fundamental shift in the way that companies and customers interact. Companies are looking at other ways to engage with the users of their products and services via the medium of 'social media' and the power of this media is plain to see to anyone witnessing global events this year. Nimble has looked at traditional business and at social media and created a tool that allows 'social business' for the next generation of business owners and employees. Nimble has changed the game. This is going to be the natural way to do business and we are really excited to be part of the change."

A recent report from comScore measured social networking visitation and engagement around the world, by region. Europe saw the highest engagement of worldwide visitors to social networking sites.

Nimble’s groundbreaking standalone and team solutions have driven unprecedented early success: since its launch earlier this year, the company gained over 20,000 registered users and is one of the fastest growing CRM platforms today. Nimble has signed up over 300 partners worldwide with our European market as our fastest growing market who see the vast potential in the social business marketplace.

According to Gartner, the global social CRM market is forecast to achieve USD $1 billion in revenues by the end of 2012, up from approximately USD $625 million in 2010. The same report shows that spending by buyers on social software for marketing, customer service and sales increased by 40% in 2010, but that social CRM received less than 5% of revenues from the total CRM app market. This indicates that there is now a clear path for a market leader to emerge in this billion-dollar market.

About Nimble: Since its initial launch, Nimble has quickly established itself among publications and customers alike as a leading Social Business platform. The platform was awarded PC Magazine "Editors Choice" as well as the coveted "DEMO God" award from a field of hundreds of start-up contenders. It has also been recognized by leading analyst firm, Gartner, as a “Cool Vendor” for Social Software and Collaboration and placed on "The CRM Watchlist 2011” by Social CRM expert and best-selling author, Paul Greenberg.

Founded in 2009, Nimble leverages the power of traditional CRM, Sales Automation and social media to create a complete, web-based Social Business platform capable of helping small businesses transform their social communities into business opportunities. Located in Santa Monica, Nimble is in the heart of the Southern California tech community. Please join the conversation on Nimble’s Facebook page, LinkedIn and on Twitter @NIMBLE.

February 04th, 2013

14/3/2011

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The following is a research note written by Jim Davies, Research Director with Gartner. In it Davies draws an analogy between the behaviour and attitudes of organisations today towards Social Media and similar attitudes a decade ago towards CRM.

At that time Gartner developed its eight building blocks of CRM which consisted of steps such as vision from the board, implementation of strategy and changes to organisational structures, processes and culture. In this article Davies subscribes to the same approach to ensure that investment in social CRM isn’t wasteful.

"I really got the sense that a lot of companies that are doing social CRM have actually forgotten about the building blocks. They may have had a CRM strategy and metrics and done all that in the past, but now with social they have forgotten about it and instead it’s all about playing with social monitoring platforms."

"There was a real sense that there wasn’t a social strategy in place that could then help steer them in terms of what technologies they need, what metrics they should be tracking, what data they need to collect, and what analytical tools they need to buy. All of that hadn’t been thought through. It was more of a 'kids in a sweet shop’ approach. On the back of that I published a research note which was basically eight building blocks again, but applying it to social media, because I think it is such an important finding that people have forgotten about it and they are not approaching this the way that they would approach CRM – but they absolutely should be."

Applying the Eight Building Blocks of CRM to Social Media

Jim Davies, GARTNER

The increase in adoption of social media across media, high-tech, consumer goods and retail sectors has been prolific during the past few years, and is set to expand into other industries during the next three years. Organisations need to embrace this phenomenon as an integral part of their customer relationship management (CRM) strategy.

Our research points to improvements in customer and market responsiveness, product development, sales effectiveness and operational efficiency as key drivers. Success, however, requires the same due diligence in traditional CRM that Gartner has reinforced for the past decade.

CRM is difficult to get right and Gartner estimates that fewer than 10 per cent of organisations have optimised the management of their customer relationships. A decade ago, Gartner created a framework called "The Eight Building Blocks of CRM" to help organisations be more successful. This framework has stood the test of time and is still highly regarded worldwide. Updated versions of the original research have been released over the years to reflect market shifts, but no fundamental changes have been made to the core framework.

The Eight Building Blocks of CRM

Our very latest research emphasizes the additional considerations that organisations now need to factor in across each building block from a social CRM perspective. Many of the social CRM projects Gartner has studied over the past three years have been in the "pioneer" phase, where individuals experiment and break new ground, but don't measure benefits. We are now seeing a desire to move to the "settler" phase, where a more structured approach is needed to get business results. Of course, to achieve this settler status, commitment to all eight of the building blocks will be required.

Gartner defines social CRM as a business strategy that mutually benefits cloud-based communities and the business by fostering engagement while generating opportunities for sales, marketing and customer service. The key considerations within this definition that organisations need to take heed of are:
Social CRM is a sustainable strategy, not a single project, such as setting up a Facebook page or mining social media.

Social CRM requires an increased level of openness and a willingness to engage more with customers.
Social CRM relationships need to be mutually beneficial for them to work.
Social CRM has to have a positive financial impact on the organisation through the associated impact on sales, marketing and service.

Given these considerations, each of the eight building blocks needs to be refined accordingly.

1. Social CRM Vision

A CRM vision encapsulates the very essence of a company's reason for existence, highlighting the differentiated attraction for its customers. A social CRM vision should take this customer value proposition further by embracing the shift of power associated with social CRM to one that is much more balanced.

2. Social CRM Strategy

The CRM strategy is a blueprint for how to create and maintain a customer base that is an asset to the company. It needs to integrate with the overarching corporate strategy, and requires the segmentation of customers by attributes such as value, loyalty and satisfaction. Adding a social dimension to a CRM strategy does not technically change anything, it just expands the options available for each segment and each phase of the customer life cycle.

3. Social Valued Customer Experience

A successful customer experience management initiative ensures that feedback is continually used to help design and refine the customer experience. When adding a social dimension, organisations need to consider how social media can be used to better set/reset expectations with customers, to positively influence the customer experience directly and to collect feedback on the customer experience and then act on it in an appropriate and timely manner.

4. Social Organisational Collaboration

Once an organisation begins to embrace external social media, new guidelines and policies for employee participation need to be created, and associated aspects (such as its governance and enforcement) embraced. With social CRM and the emphasis on having a true relationship with customers, in which they contribute through activities such as co-creation, support, lead generation and campaign feedback, these "customers" have a far more influential role to play within each department.

5. Social CRM Processes

Customer process re-engineering to ensure each process flows down a logical path from the customer's perspective is a common investment area and a key influencer of the customer experience. When executing against a social CRM strategy, specific processes spanning sales, marketing and customer service will potentially be impacted. The key is to determine what processes are most appropriate to be driven socially, and where mass collaboration adds value, ensuring that there is an upside to the customer, as well as the business.

6. Social CRM Information

In addition to the sheer volume of social data that can be collected from customers and prospects from social environments, the subsequent challenges associated with determining its meaning and importance are the major hurdle to tying that data to individual customers within the existing customer database. The ability to capture the comments made by an anonymous customer called "Jimbo" and then to retrospectively assign them to "Mr Jim Davies" once a linkage can be determined is a key development area. However, there are lighter-weight approaches that can provide some degree of value and should be explored; for example, looking at participants' follower numbers on Twitter to determine the importance/impact of their comments.

7. Social CRM Technology

Most, but not all, CRM initiatives require some form of technology to enable the CRM strategy. Within the social CRM area, the marketplace is extremely fragmented, with over 100 vendors, each providing a specific functional capability. Most have annual revenue of less than $1 million and are not profitable. No one vendor can yet provide a holistic social CRM suite that can facilitate execution of socially driven sales, marketing and customer service processes. However, over the next two years we expect significant market consolidation and much tighter integration between social processes and traditional processes across sales, marketing and customer service.

8. Social CRM Metrics

The health of any CRM strategy can only be assessed through the provision of appropriate metrics. Once social CRM is embraced, new metrics need to be applied, which are often much harder to measure. Very few organisations have measured the return on investment of their social CRM activities, but this will begin to change in 2011 in line with growing maturity.

In another article Davies identifies the fact that the social media technology landscape is very fragmented, "populated by the likes of community builders and social media monitoring firms", with no one vendor having a full suite of tools. He states that "next year the true social CRM suites will start to emerge as acquisitions happen [and the market consolidates] and as R&D happens then [vendors] will start to get broader in their capabilities." He finishes this article by saying;

"In the meantime, [companies] absolutely should not wait. Because there is going to be value to be had by buying SaaS-based, pay-as-you-go service for a tool that may be acquired in a year’s time or they may not want to use in year or two’s time. So they need to think about it strategically and long-term, but don’t delay investment in the software because they are incumbent and can’t do it yet.

"It is a learning curve. If they are running vendor X for their core CRM platform and are going to wait until 2015 for that vendor to come to market with that offering then there are three years of learning that they are not going to have benefitted from. They are going to start to lose out from a competitive point of view because if all their competitors are having social activity, talking to customers socially, using it as a lead generation or marketing tool, then they are going to start slipping behind. So there is a risk of choosing a vendor now that isn’t going to be around in two years time but I think the benefits outweigh those risks."

So the message is, define clear Social Media strategies and goals and get moving quickly. Experiment and learn because, if you don't, your competitors will.

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What's New With ACT! 2011

26/11/2010

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ACT! 2011 has been on sale in the USA since mid-summer and was recently released here in Ireland. Sage have listened to the requests that users have been making and have implemented a number of significant improvements in the product, particularly around the area of Sales and Marketing and system administration.

Sales and Marketing professionals are able to get up to speed faster with helpful information about a prospect and their industry with the Hoover's data integration. The ability to import lists of target market companies and contacts will kick start lead generation. Smart tasks allow you to automatically stay connected to your contacts and be 'top of mind'.

Administrators will appreciate a streamline startup process, additional data security, improved screen layouts and ability to quickly create new fields in the database. Depending on your organization's level of integration with Outlook, the enhanced configuration options may also be useful.

Sage have also improved the general usability of ACT! with improved default layouts and navigation, further refining the improvements that were introduced with ACT! 2010.

New Sales & Marketing Features

1. Smart Tasks - Automated Workflow:
This is one of the compelling reasons to upgrade to Sage ACT! 2011 and has the most options for enhancing productivity. Once you have your business processes defined, which in itself is a big competitive advantage, you can take it to the next level by automating the process with Smart Tasks - useful actions for your Keep in Touch strategy. It is like having a virtual assistant helping you schedule activities and staying at the top of the mind of prospects and customers.

What are Smart Tasks?
Smart Tasks are a series of common and connected steps, performed inside of Sage ACT!. Smart Tasks will set in motion the most basic or advanced processes to take care of things like reaching out to customer that you haven't heard from in a while or notifying you of stalled sales opportunities.

By putting together small steps, Sage ACT! can automatically perform many of your routine sales, marketing, and customer service tasks. This helps everyone in your organization to work more productively so you can contact more prospective customers, sell more products or services and support more existing customers - all without needing to hire new employees or acquire resources!

Here is an overview:
Smart Task Templates:

Useful out-of-the-box or edit to personalize
Suitable for general productivity or sales
10 Pre-configured templates for common tasks, such as:
Contacts with no recent activity
New Contact Welcome
High value opportunity alert
Close opportunity follow up
Birthday reminder
Contacts with incomplete information
Easy Customization:
Easiest visual designer for creating and modifying Smart Tasks
Drag/drop capabilities for Smart Task steps

Smart Task Operation Visibility:

Pause or Activate Smart Tasks
View pending Smart Tasks
Fully Extensible Engine:
Windows Workflow Foundation
Out-of-the-Box integration with ACT! E-marketing

2. Sage Business Information Services:
Sage has partnered with Hoover's to provide access to Hoover's data within Sage ACT! 2011. Hoovers provides lead lists and business insights about companies around the world. This information saves a lot of research time for any business or sales organization. Extend your depth of knowledge into an industry using First Research's trends, major players, and key challenges. Here is the business information the ACT customer gets with the subscription service:

Contact and company profile.
Company Financials, Contacts (org chart information) and Notes
Industry Information - useful for gaining an quick understanding of the prospect's industry and getting that conservation started. Quickly know the key trending that is occurring.
Search for new companies and Import New Leads (which is a big time saver) Its like finding more companies similar to your existing customers
Email alerts of changes in the account

3. Import directly from Excel
This will especially help when working with commercially supplied lists of prospects as these are usually provided in Excel or CSV format and this new functionality should just make the process of working with them a little easier.

New Administration Features

4. Improved Outlook Integration and Synchronization
In businesses with heavy use of Outlook the sync functionality may be the most important part. With several configuration options it will be much easier for users to move data from Outlook to ACT!

Create new Outlook contacts from Sage ACT! and new Sage ACT! contacts from Outlook. Everything will be kept updated in both places. Don't worry about duplicates.

Keep your busy schedule updated in both Outlook and Sage ACT! no matter where you add or modify activities and meetings.
Choose which contacts and activity types in Sage ACT! synch back to Outlook

5. There is support for Office 2010
For those early Microsoft Office 2010 adopters, you can now use this productivity tool set with Sage ACT! 2011.

6. New Database Security Preferences
Security is a particular concern for many businesses, particularly those in the professional and financial services area, and in larger corporate environments that deploy Sage ACT!. One aspect of that concern has to do with file attachments in the database. The following capabilities are now new database preferences:

Restrict emails from being attached to user records - addresses issue of one ACT! user reading another ACT! users (the boss, or colleague) correspondences via their user record.
Restrict email attachements in the database
Restrict file attachment in the database such as IE, Word, Notes, Histories, Activities, Mail Merge, ACT! Email.

7. Improved Startup Wizard
Some of these features long time customers have been asking for and Sage has delivered:

Express Importing - which allows users to get contacts into their ACT! database faster with a redesigned import functionality.
Import directly from Excel - this will especially help when many lists are used as when a commerical supplier of lead lists provides them in Excel or CSV format. Often we have clients that want ability to get a new lead list imported- this should help the process.
Improved Default Layouts for improved navigation - ACT! 2010 had user interface enhancements, and Sage has continued to improve navigation.
Redesigned Welcome Page- somewhat easier and more intutitive navigation. There seems to be less clutter and somewhat more useful getting started topics

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ACT! Social Networking & LinkedIn

24/11/2010

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If you have ACT! 2010 or Sage ACT! 2011 and you’re not using the Web Info tab you are missing the boat. And, if you haven’t figured out how to use the Web Info tab in conjunction with your favorite social networking sites, then you’re in for a treat.

You’ll find the Web Info tab in both the Contact and Company Detail views. The Web Info tab is actually a browser that displays information based on data in various fields on a contact or company record. Sage ACT! comes with a number of links to sites including Google Search, Google Maps and Weather.com so you can instantly scour the Net for more information or just see what the weather is like in your contact’s location. You can also easily add new sites; for example, many of my clients like to create a link between their contacts and Twitter.

By far my favorite web link is the one to LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site mainly used for professional networking; as of the latest count LinkedIn had more than 80 million registered users. The beauty of sites like LinkedIn is that they offer you another way to stay in front of your contacts; any posts you make on your LinkedIn site are visible to all of your LinkedIn contacts. And, in the event that a contact leaves his place of employment and changes his e-mail address, you’ll still be able to connect with him.

Here’s how you can start building your own LinkedIn network in 5 easy steps:

Start by logging in to your LinkedIn account.

Create a Lookup of the Sage ACT! Contacts that you’d like to add to LinkedIn.
Click the Web Info tab on the Contacts Detail View and select the LinkedIn link that runs along the left-hand side of the Web Info tab.
LinkedIn will search its database for matches to the current contact record. Click the Add to Network hyperlink on the Web Info tab to send a LinkedIn invitation to the current contact.
Advance to the next Contact record and repeat the process.
Many Sage ACT! users start out by creating a Lookup of all their customers and connecting to them. If you’ve recently joined a networking group or attended a trade show you might want to “link up” with those contacts. Eventually you might get into the habit of checking the status of any contact you’re currently working with.

Social networking is becoming an essential method of communication. If you’re a Sage ACT! user you can stay in touch with your important contacts at the touch of a button.

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Author - Michael McKenna

Mike has been working in the CRM arena since 2001. With a BA in Economics and a BSc. in Financial Information Systems from Trinity College Dublin, plus a background in project management and sales, Mike is a recognised CRM expert with over a decade of experience in delivering cost-effective solutions that work.

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