Sage Refurbishes Real Estate CRM Apps

Sage Software has upgraded ACT by Sage for Real Estate 2008 (10.0) and ACT by Sage Premium for Real Estate 2008 (10.0) contact and customer management applications. These were introduced last year as ACT's first vertical offerings.

The company rolled out the two new versions during its Sage Summit customer conference this week in Chicago.

Thus far, Sage has introduced two industry-specific verticals; besides real estate it is also targeting the financial services industry.

The Real Estate Vertical

Real estate, though, has been a chief focus for the vendor, as workers in this space make up about 6 percent of the overall ACT user base. That percentage increases when related fields are taken into account.

The strong concentration of real estate workers in the user base is one reason why it is essential for this microvertical to offer relevant content and context for its users, Sheryl Kingstone, a Yankee Group analyst told CRM Buyer.

"ACT users are die-hard: they either love it or hate it." Those who love it, she said, tend to be individual agents who care about ease of use, and low total cost of ownership and can be ruthless in discarding an application when it doesn't come through. "For Sage, it will be critical to make continued innovations in the product for it to remain sticky with this user base."

Upgrades and Enhancements

Both of ACT's vertical applications focus on providing agents and brokers -- the backbone channels in these industries --- with the means of organizing buyer, seller and property or product information in one place, as well as tools such as custom fliers and letter templates to communicate with clients and related parties. They also integrate with Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Office applications.

New functions in this real estate upgrade include:

Ability to schedule calls, meetings and to-dos using one of more than 20 activities, including prospecting and marketing , showing properties, listing properties, closing tasks and more, for better tracking and analysis of time spent.

Three new real estate-specific sales processes to better understand progress toward property closings, property purchases and property sales.

Expanded real estate-specific data fields. Users can track details including MLS numbers, closing information, property specs buyers are interested in, and complete specs on properties listed.

Thirty letter templates customized for real estate, such as letters to buyers, for-sale-by-owner, lead follow-up, open house follow-up, referral letters, letters to sellers, and public relations campaigns for the holidays.

Forty standard reports, 20 focused on sales opportunities, or one of six custom real estate reports including Buyer Completed Activities (summary and detailed), Seller Completed Activities (summary and detailed), Activities by Type and Activities by Contact, to make educated business decisions.