We've heard some pretty dire warnings about problems readers have experienced with Act! contact management software since Sage took it over (see "Sage Has a Tough ACT to Follow"). Unfortunately, one reader's recent comments indicate that the current release is no better than Sage's prior bad Acts.
The reader wrote:
"Let's start with the present. I have a twelve-user environment. Financial planning. Maybe $400 million in client's money under management. Act Premium for Workgroups 2007 -- less than 1,000 contacts. Pretty basic. Got the picture? Well, for this company dates are important. Very important. Other than your social security number, name combined with birthdate is important in confirming identity for all sorts of things, like life insurance. Now remember, it is 2007, not 1987. We should be pretty good about writing static data to a database and recalling it. You'd think."
"Enter Sage Software. On eight of our twelve user's machines the same client record will have the birthdate of the client one day later than the correct date that was originally entered and which appears on the other four machines. Correct it on one of the incorrect machines and it sticks for a day, maybe even four or five, but then suddenly the client becomes a day younger."
"A call to Sage Software brings the usual denials of having heard of any such problem. So what do we do? Reindex the database for starters. Doesn't work. So let's export all of the records and re-import into a new database. Certainly that will solve it. Nope, the problem remains. My last contact was a couple of weeks ago, but problems like this, seemingly random, hard to reproduce, are simply a pain for Sage to address. Meanwhile, our firm, which otherwise operates a paperless, scan everything operation, has resorted to printing a list of names and correct birthdates of all clients so that any financial documents will be correct. Do you really think Sage is sweating this one out? I may have the answer ... read on MacDuff."
"Rewind two years. We are using a previous version of Act and an odd problem arises. Some users couldn't attach documents and other items to their client's history. This was a crucial need for the operation of the company. Records of phone conversations and email correspondence had to be organized so that any team member could work on a client account in an up-to-date manner. We go through every combination of safe mode, other running programs, and countless, I mean countless calls to Sage tech support. Sage uses different words each time but blames our network. We tune and tweek, buy network tools, but no luck. And, to be honest, I am never convinced that they (Sage) believe we have a problem."
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