Building the Perfect ACT! Database

It's all about relevance.

When we step back and look at our Sage ACT! database objectively, we want to feel as though it invites us back in to continue working.  Can our database do this?

In a word, yes.  It can.

The path your organization may take to get to this state may seem like an arduous one after reading the rest of this post, but the benefits are tremendous.  Imagine a database that reflects our mission, our processes, and the unique relationship we have with our customers and prospects, and know that hyper-relevance is possible in the ACT! database we use every day.  We can wake up to it, and much later we can put it away only because we have other things to go and do.

Because ACT! enjoys a uniquely powerful design engine we will look at implementing ways to make your database so compelling a tool you will keep it in front of you everywhere you can.

Relevance.  When we look at our ACT! screen and see a couple fields we rarely use, we tend to ignore the fields around them.  Good design principles would have us rearranging the fields in such a way that the fields mimic our actual use habits, allowing us to pay attention to information grouped in more useful sections.

The ACT! layout designer is a very powerful tool, flexible enough to allow us to place objects anywhere, resize them as we need, and even put boxes around related information for clarity.  We can keep it clean and line everything up.

From your Tools menu, select Design Layouts, and choose the entity where you would like to start.  Contacts and Opportunities tend to be the most popular areas to customize first.  Make sure to save your layout with a different name.

Define Fields. Analyze your business and analyze the processes you use to close business.  Does your existing database include all the ways you would categorize your contacts?  ID/Status and Referred By may not be enough. 

Consider adding a field like Role to describe whether a contact is a "Decision Maker", an "Advocate", a "Gatekeeper", or a "Speedbump", something we would not find on their business card, but should be right next to their Title field on your ACT! layout.

Opportunities.  No one ACT! feature offers us more than this entity offers. No other feature is so universally underutilized.  Now is a great time of the year to think deeply about how you segment your revenue and the processes you use to address each area of segmentation. 

How transactional is your business segment?  I use a sliding scale for my clients that range from 1 (the equivalent of buying a cup of coffee = highly transactional) to 10 (brokering a bank sale = highly relational).  Where does your business sit?

Write down your processes (or flow chart them).  When you think about how you work, think of the gates you pass through rather than the tasks you must complete.  These gates will become the stages in your process.

If you have a varied catalog, like:

• Sales and Service
• Free Samples
• Buy, Lease, Charter
• Business Development and Renewal
• Clients and Candidates
• Grants, Donors, and Membership

...then each of these requires a separate process with its own stages.  Make sure to keep it simple. Four or five stages is the most you will want to track.

Spreadsheet Rut.  Who doesn't love MS Excel?  But, really? 

If you are tracking data against your accounts in Excel, Access, Filemaker, or some other application, then you should take comfort that ever since ACT! 10.03 custom tables work inside of ACT!, eliminating the need to keep a separate set of analytics running independently of your real data in ACT!

Custom tables can roll up the math and track independent data points against all related entities in ACT!  I have written custom tables for Event Management, Software Support (of course), Insurance, Commissions, Project Tracking, Automobile, Order Entry, and more.

The data output can be routed to reports, Word, Email, and yes, Excel.

Custom tables deserve an post all its own, so look for more later.  If, in the meantime, you have questions about building your own perfect database, then please feel free to contact me.

Good design is good business.

Bevan Wistar
ACT! Certified Consultant
www.zip-city.com
bwistar at zip-city dot com
503-381-5654