ACT Adds Partners for New Collaboration Functionality

ACT is offering users new collaboration and productivity functionality with the addition of five companies to its Add On partner network. Launched in August 2004, the program grew to include 25 featured products in the first year. It currently includes 61 add ons.

The new partners announced Monday, Alexander Vikhorev, Exponenciel, Equisys, Infinite Conferencing and RemoteTechGuy, have collectively released eight new products for ACT users.

The partner network is building out complementary functionality in areas that ACT’s original application lacked, Yankee Group analyst Sheryl Kingstone told CRM Buyer. “These include connectivity, such as wireless applications, collaboration and content,” she noted.

The 3 C’s

The new application add ons include the following:

• Exponenciel’s Automatic Field Calculations provide ACT contact, group or company layouts with more than 50 mathematical, date/time, string and financial functions.
• Conference Scheduler for ACT from Infinite Conferencing schedules Web and phone meetings and automatically generates e-mail invitations using ACT contacts.
• Excel Templates for ACT from Exponenciel merges contact information into Excel spreadsheets and automatically attaches it to an ACT record.
• Exponenciel’s ExcelTemplates with Quote/Invoice Maker for ACT creates quotes and invoices in Excel from ACT opportunity fields.
• PicturePlus for ACT from Alexander Vikhorev drags and drops pictures into ACT and minimizes database size by linking picture fields to all file types. Users can insert images directly to ACT using a scanner or digital camera.
• Presentation for ACT from Alexander Vikhorev uses the ACT custom report engine and templates to generate on-the-fly Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.
• RemoteTechGuy’s RDBWiz automates the simultaneous creation of remote databases. Users can copy and edit synch sets and automatically upload databases to an FTP site for easy distribution.

Category by Category

There are many categories in which partners have developed related tools for the ACT marketplace, which now includes 2.5 million registered users and more than 32,000 corporate customer accounts, notes Lisa Keller, director of partner programs and business development.

“It is quite a diverse collection of products. Each partner brings its own specific functionality to ACT, thus increasing our overall depth and reach of product,” she told CRM Buyer.

“They are helping us fill niche functionality complementing ACT,” Keller added.

The categories in which ACT is recruiting partners include shipping; data management; mass e-mailing; marketing; faxing, graphics and mapping; helpdesk support; importing and exporting data; Web conferencing; project management; queries, quotes and reports; sales management tools; and utilities and accessories.