Long-time ACT! users all over the planet will be delighted therefore, to learn that “ACT! for Dummies” author Karen Fredricks has co-written two brilliant new ACT! books (hurrah!):

Sage ACT! 2012 Cookbook” and “Sage ACT! Dashboard and Report Cookbook” are now on sale.

The “Sage ACT! 2012 Cook Book” serves up 90 ACT! tips as ‘recipes’ to guide the user through the process of setting up and using the system to maximum advantage.

All CRM practitioners know that the greatest challenge to successful implementation is user adoption. As a leading ACT! Certified Consultant in the UK, we carried out some research during 2011 into the way users work with ACT! We discovered that most people typically use only 28% of its features!

For this reason, the availability of an easy-to-get-on-with manual that is user oriented, devoid of techno-babble and written in simple, refreshing and coherent text has huge potential to aid small and medium enterprises in getting a real return on their investment in ACT!

These books are just that; well organised, authoritative but personable and friendly. It isn’t necessary to read through the Cook Books from cover to cover; the recipe style invites you to reference the index and then flick open the guide at the appropriate recipe.

The simple wording and clear illustrative graphics leave no doubt about the operation of the functions of the software, but also reveal the logic that sits behind them. This enables the reader to develop an appreciation of the structure of the system, empowering them as users almost by stealth!

The “Sage ACT! Dashboard and Report Cookbook” is the first release of a detailed ACT! reporting guide that we have seen in print. This is one area of the software that has been shrouded in mystery for some time. There is a distinct lack of online support for the ACT! report editor and it is usually excluded from Sage ACT! training courses (or glossed over briefly).

Reporting outputs remain of significant interest to most organisations but the ACT! report editor can be frustrating and illogical, often delivering unexpected results. The “Dashboard and Report Cookbook” therefore stands alone in leading users towards the creation of reporting views that they desire.

Reporting can be deep and complex, but the book is organised in ‘levels’, making it accessible to all calibre of users; from those who seek to create a basic report but with an understanding of filtering, to those who are ready to begin to work with Visual Basic scripting. Brilliant!

An important caveat here however: The Cookbooks are not a substitute for ACT! training. This software is hugely flexible and powerful, but a manual of any kind can only be ‘reactive’ to the enquiring mind of the reader. ACT! Certified Consultants (ACCs), on the other hand, take the lead by using their experience and knowledge to articulate the business processes within the user organisation and work with the client to configure the system to support those process to maximum effect. Further to this, ACCs are usually able to spot opportunities to improve process, performance, productivity and profit through the adoption and adaptation of ACT! software in an organisation.

If an ACC assisted implementation is the most effective way to begin with ACT! then, Karen’s and Roy’s Cookbooks might be the key tools that help to maintain its relevance and usefulness over the longer term.

Read more and buy:

Sage ACT! 2012 Cookbook: http://www.packtpub.com/sage-act-2012-cookbook/book
Sage ACT! 2011 Dashboard and Report Cookbook: http://www.packtpub.com/sage-act-2011-dashboard-and-report-cookbook/book

Not all that it seems...!

Imagine my excitement upon receiving an email from Amazon last week to notify me that the ‘ACT! for Dummies’ book (@actguru ) which I ordered 11 months ago in Feb 2011 had finally been shipped!

Karen Fredricks had (presumably) returned from her sabbatical or whatever had delayed the long-awaited release of the next iteration of her popular Dummies guides… We would finally be in a position to offer a tome-like publication to our clients with a penchant for paper, engineered around the latest ACT! version. Celebration!

Imagine my disappointment therefore, upon removing from the cardboard not ACT! for Dummies (as in ‘Advanced Contact Tracking’) but ACT for Dummies (as in ‘American College Test’).

There is some good news here however; the book we received is considerably larger than a typical Karen Fredricks guide – both dimensionally and in the number of pages (498 excluding the index). Further to this, in the back of the book is a list of other useful titles that may find their way into my shopping cart such as ‘Anger Management for Dummies’ and ‘Overcoming Anxiety for Dummies’.

Best of all though – and having had to wait 11 months for the wrong book to arrive, this did go some way to assuage my displeasure – shipping was free!

Anybody with enough spare time on their hands to have read this far will be pleased to note that there is a solution to the problem on the horizon; Karen Fredricks is alive and well and working in a Fish & Chip Shop with Elvis…. Well, that’s not quite true – but she is alive and well and has just co-authored (with Roy Laudenslager) two new ACT! books (hurrah!):

Sage ACT! 2012 Cookbook and Sage ACT! Dashboard and Report Cookbook

Pre-releases have been sent to BluebirdCRM where they are currently being read on evenings when there isn’t too much on the telly (we’ve been asked to write some reviews). Early indications are positive; we particularly like the reporting and dashboard content earning a tome of its own, and the easy-to-read Fredricks style is still pervasive throughout both manuals.

Not part of the ‘Dummies’ range any more – which will hopefully avoid further confusion with Lisa Zimmer Hatch’s American College Test masterpiece – but well designed, presented and illustrated and promising to be the new standard in user-oriented supportive literature for Sage ACT!

Expect to see further BluebirdCRM blog postings/Tweets on this subject as we form our more insightful opinions over the next week or two.

In the meantime…. For Sale: 1 x ACT for Dummies Guide (for anybody in the US with offspring headed for College but needing further encouragement, you’ll find nothing better to beat yourself over the head with than this!)

Further information:

Sage ACT! 2012 Cookbook: http://www.packtpub.com/sage-act-2012-cookbook/book
Sage ACT! 2011 Dashboard and Report Cookbook: http://www.packtpub.com/sage-act-2011-dashboard-and-report-cookbook/book

We’re hoping that the new site creates greater transparency of our business to clients and provides further supporting information to those interested in learning more about BluebirdCRM.

Sage’s Circle of Excellence recognises and rewards its leading Business Partners who provide outstanding customer service and whose customers are the most likely to recommend them to friends and colleagues.

Will Ingleby, Managing Director at Bluebird Sales and Marketing Ltd commented on how much this award means to the company: “Being invited into the ‘Circle of Excellence’ this year is a fantastic achievement for all our staff who pride themselves on delivering a very high standard of service to our customer base. As a business we are hugely passionate about providing expert consultancy, implementation and support and winning this award is recognition that we are succeeding in this endeavour.”

BluebirdCRM Circle of Excellence Winners 2011

Bluebird’s Will Ingleby and Nicola Gibson receive the Circle of Excellence ’2011 Winners’ award from Sage UK plc Managing Director Brendan Flattery and Jayne Archbold, Managing Director of Sage’s Mid Market Division.

On presenting the award, Brendan Flattery, CEO, Sage UK & Ireland commented: “It’s a real privilege to present these awards and my congratulations go to all involved. At Sage, our vision is to be the business software company that everyone recommends and our Business Partners are central to helping us achieve this. The Circle of Excellence rewards the Business Partners who support this vision by providing our customers with a fantastic customer experience.”

The Circle of Excellence Awards are judged using independent research conducted with a representative sample of the Business Partner’s customers. This year the award winners were also independently verified by Newcastle University Business School.

About Sage UK

Sage (UK) Limited is a subsidiary of The Sage Group plc, a leading international supplier of business software. The Sage range of business software and services ranges from accounts, payroll, forecasting and business intelligence to customer relationship management, e-business and help for start-ups. Services include Excel Support, HR Advice, Health and Safety Advice and training courses.

About Bluebird Sales and Marketing Ltd

Bluebird Sales and Marketing began trading in Burton Upon Trent in November 2005. The company’s mission is to be the first choice partner for small to medium organisations who target organic growth through the enhancement of their sales and marketing capability.

Bluebird works with clients to implement CRM or Contact Management software to support sales and marketing best practices. The systems and processes that they deliver assist clients in increasing revenues by operating more efficiently and competing more effectively.

Swiftpage won’t give up this fight too easily though; they’ve recently introduced social media integration, eroding a significant competitive advantage that the other main players have offered for some time. The integration between Swiftpage and ACT! remains superior to that of Mailchimp in our view, populating the marketing service tab with more detailed information regarding individual Contacts’ responses, and also supporting integration of Drip Marketing Campaigns with ACT! Smart Tasks to enable automated workflows.

The choice of Email Services Provider extends beyond Swiftpage and Mailchimp for the ACT! user; there is also a Constant Contact plugin which – although rudimentary when compared with the two alternative offerings – is able to effectively manage uploading ACT! Contact data to a Constant Contact account. This option may not have the bi-directional features of the other two, but could be enough to maintain customer loyalty from existing Constant Contact users migrating to the ACT! platform for CRM.

Ultimately, the winner in this battle is the ACT! user organisation; for some time now the ‘ESP’s have sought to differentiate themselves by adding more value to the free or ‘low cost’ editions of their software; ACT! users have not always enjoyed the benefits of this competitive positioning, limited only to the Swiftpage solution. The Exponenciel addon suggests that perhaps the market is more open now though… interesting times ahead then!

However, if the Data Protection Act requires that “Personal data shall not be transferred to a country or territory outside the EEA (European Economic Area) unless that country or territory ensures an adequate level of protection for the rights and freedoms of data subjects in relation to the processing of personal data”, are we breaking the law when adopting these systems?

Initially (and for good reason), we are duty bound to consider whether the ESP is maintaining the data in a secure environment on our behalf (especially where Contact data is maintained within a server environment outside the EEA). Users might consider the levels of encryption provided by the leading ESPs to be meet the requirements of the Data Protection Act*. Together with their track record of diligence and data protection, driven partly by legislation but largely by market forces, the ESPs present themselves as a very ‘safe haven’ for sensitive Contact data. Even though many ESPs are US based, a number of them claim to “retain a law firm in the UK to consult on EU privacy issues”

The 8th Principle of the Data Protection Act however, refers not to the standards maintained by the ESP, but to the level of protection (of the rights and freedoms of data subjects) provided by the Country/Territory to which the data is transferred.

Problem: The United States of America has no comprehensive data protection legislation.

Workaround: The US Department of Commerce developed a “safe harbour” system in consultation with the European Commission. This offers a method by which US organisations can meet the requirements of EU directives on Data Protection (including the UK Data Protection Act). Organisations who sign up to the scheme are certified as offering ‘adequate’ protection (and this has been approved by the EU Commission), thus enabling transactions between those organisations and European organisations to proceed smoothly and within the law. It’s probably worth checking therefore, whether your US based ESP has subscribed to “safe harbor”.

In the case of many ESPs, this is most certainly the case. Swiftpage (for example) states that “In accordance with our commitment to protect personal privacy, we adhere to the principles of the Safe Harbor Framework as developed by the U.S. Department of Commerce in consultation with the European Commission”.

Notwithstanding the above, also important to consider is whether the use of a US based ESP actually constitutes a ‘transfer of data outside the EEA’.

What is a transfer?

According to the Information Commissioner, a transfer involves sending personal data to someone in another country.  A transfer is not the same as the transit of information though a country. This principle of the Data Protection Act (regarding data transfer outside the EEA) will only apply if the information moves to a country, rather than simply passing through it on route to its destination.

Example:

Personal data is transferred from country “A” to country “B” via a server in country “C”, which does not access or manipulate the information while it is in country “C”. In these circumstances the transfer is only to country “B”.

In conclusion therefore, I’d suggest that – although it appears to be debatable whether a transfer of data has actually occurred – when using the services of a US based ESP, one should establish that the ESP has subscribed fully to the ‘safe harbor’ scheme. I’d want to feel comfortable that my chosen ESP is switched-on to the European and UK legal position, and able to clearly demonstrate a commitment to subscriber protection and the provision of a total quality service. In these circumstances, not only is legal exposure minimised but equitable levels of corporate social responsibility may be maintained.

* An example of ESP security: MailChimp delivers about 1.75 billion emails per month for more than 890,000 users. Data Centres manage physical security 24/7 with biometric scanners. User account passwords are encrypted. Mailchimp’s own staff can’t even view them. If you lose your password, it can’t be retrieved – it must be reset. All login pages (from the website and mobile website) pass data via SSL and have ‘Brute Force protection’. The company perfoms regular security penetration tests, using different vendors (for a “2nd opinion”).The tests involve high level server penetration tests, in-depth testing for vulnerabilities inside the application, and social engineering drills. All new employees on teams that have access to customer data (such as tech support and engineers) undergo criminal history and credit background checks prior to employment.

New features also include the ability to import data directly from an Excel spreasdheet into ACT! (without having to convert to CSV) and even creating new ACT! fields on the fly as the data is imported!