Denise Pale has been your neighbor for just about a year. While you would not really consider her very computer savvy you know that she seems to have a solid head on her shoulders. You've had her and her kids over for dinner many times. You mentioned that you are on a fact finding mission and she said that she might have something of interest that might help. So, you went over to her place with your tape recorder in hand to find out what she had to say...
You:So, what's on your mind?
Denise: Well, you were talking about wanting to track information on your customers. Can you tell me a little more about what you are looking for and why you want to track this?
You and she really haven't gone into details as to what each of you do. You know that she works in an office for some type of company but that's about as far as your "what do you do" conversations have gone. You explain to her a little about your company and the task the Molly assigned you.
I had a feeling it was something like that. Right now I'm working at the headquarters for a video rental distribution system. But from time to time I take side jobs helping people out with basic office administration issues. Most of my work has come in as word-of-mouth and some of them have been starting out lawyers. A couple of lawyers get together and start their own business but they really don't know what it takes to run the front of the house. Sometimes I've recommended to them that they look at a software called "Act!".
You: What is Act!?
Denise: Act! is a program that runs on your computer that is helps you to manage your customers and contacts. It allows you to track not only the information about your customers and contacts but it also can track the calls you've made to or received from them. You will have the ability of having a tracking of the e-mails with each of your customers or contacts. You can keep notes about the customers or contacts, etc.
You: WOW!!! How does it work?
Denise: Well, I'm not a techie so I can't tell you how it does what it does. I can tell you what I've read about how it works behind the scenes. I can tell you what you can do with it and how you run it and put stuff in and get stuff out. But I can't tell you about how it does what it does. Act! is a contact and customer relationship management (CRM) software.
From what I understand it has a client piece that gets installed and runs on each of the people who you want to access the information PC's. And it talks to a database on a database server.
The basic client software is built for sales people so most of the interfaces are really for their type of usage. I haven't found too many problems getting the people that I've worked with up and running with it. It has all types of reports and functionality built-in, but again since its main market is sales people or help-desk people then I'm not sure how much of that you'll need or want.
You: Ok. Tell me more.
Denise: Well, there are some add-on options that you can purchase that can give you some other configurations. For example I know that they have one if you want your Act! to be customized for help-desk staff. I'm not sure about what other options they have, but I know they have quite a few.
And that's another thing. Not only will you have to make sure that your company IT group will let you use the client software but they will also have to setup a full database server to hold the data. You don't keep the software with the client PCs. It's all stored on the database server. That does give you some added security and recoverability if they backup the database server. Since all of the information is there you could have your PC crash and all of the information would still be on the server. I don't know how much the hardware and software will cost your company to run this. When I go into one of the offices that is willing to use the Act! software I tell them to get their IT support (or get some IT support if they don't have one already) to buy it, set it all up on the server and on the PC's then to call me when everything is installed and ready. Then I come back in and show them how to use the software.
You: Ok. Let me see if I've got this. It seems that this is a good option to recommend but we might have problems getting the software purchased, installed, and getting a database server setup and configured.
Denise: Right.
You: And once we get that done then we still might have problems using the software?
Denise: Well, it might take you a little time to get used to it, but I'm sure you can figure it out. Heck, you came over and fixed my printer before. I'm sure you could figure out how to use the software. It comes with a manual and a tutorial DVD.
You: Do you know how much the software costs?
Denise: I haven't looked in months, but I remember that you had to buy a copy for each person using it (either entering data or just doing reports, so don't forget any managers). I think some of the off-the-shelf prices were about $500.00 per person. If you want to look at some of the add-ons then you'll need to up that even more. I don't know what the cost of the add-ons would be.
You: Ok, where do I find out more about this software?
Denise tells you the web site address and with thoughts of budgets and getting approval for database servers setup you end up wondering back to your place…
Now you can go ahead and look at a summary of lessons learned from your Denise interview.
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