ACT Releases Financial Vertical

ACT by Sage has introduced its second industry-specific vertical -- this one in the financial industries sector -- following its ACT for Real Estate release. Like the first vertical, this release is built on ACT's core base with the industry-specific features incorporated into the core product line.

The new release, ACT by Sage for Financial Professionals 9.0, is aimed primarily at organizations or offices that are based on a one-to-one client relationship, such as that of an agent, broker or mortgage lender.

The company's future verticals will be similar to this model, Larry Ritter, vice president of ACT and SalesLogix product management, told CRM Buyer, noting "industries that have a high number of these types of relationships seem to be a prime opportunity for us with vertical products."

Familiar Feature Set

Like the flagship product, ACT for Financial Professionals centralizes prospect and client data in a single database, giving users the ability to sort through it via a number of prisms -- including by contact, account, investment and financial planning information. It also assists with regulatory compliance tracking.

Users can capture and organize financial data for prospects and clients -- data that can be as detailed as noting that a certain customer likes her summer home to be referred to as a "cottage" -- using custom information tabs. Subjects can include accounts, households, family members and retirement and estate planning, among others. Users can also customize tabs, fields, templates and reports to meet their own requirements.

Users can synchronize contact, calendar and to-do information with their Palm (Nasdaq: PALM) OS or or Pocket PC devices.

Additional Application Features

• Dynamic Labels, which track information that is most important to a user and/or clients, and label it accordingly.
• Missing Info Notification, which tracks and updates missing information for each contact. Completed fields are automatically updated on the contact record upon exiting the missing info screen.
• Important Notes Field, which saves critical client information on the main contact detail view.
• Primary Address, a feature that can easily shift a certain address to primary status on the main contact detail view, so all communications can be directed to the correct address.
• Age Calculation, a feature that automatically calculates a contact's age any time the contact record is accessed.
• Category and Tier Fields, which segment clients and prospects to understand the level of attention they are used to receiving and the type financial advice advisors offer.
• Audit (Compliance) System, which tracks field changes, by user, to each contact record. The audit system monitors field changes that occur in the database and records them in a separate database file.

Two versions of ACT for Financial Professionals are available: ACT for Financial Professionals, which is ideal for individuals or up to 10 networked users, and ACT Premium for Financial Professionals 9.0, which is designed for larger workgroups and includes advanced security features at the user and contact levels, automatic database synchronization and backup, and centralized administration.