Best Software Empowers Front-Line Salespeople With New ACT!® 2005 Contact And Customer Management Product Family  (email this article)

New York, NY August 24, 2004 – Best Software (Company Profile, Past Stories, Case Studies) today announced its ACT! 2005 contact and customer management product family, launching the most expansive architecture and features introduction in the product’s seventeen-year history. Against the backdrop of New York City’s Times Square, the company unveiled two new versions of its market-leading ACT! sales effectiveness tool: ACT! 2005 for individuals and small teams of up to ten users, and ACT! 2005 Premium for Workgroups supporting powerful database collaboration for workgroups of up to 50 users.1 Both products deliver the same ACT! user experience with a fast return on investment and up to 50% lower cost of ownership than hosted alternatives.

“Sales professionals, small businesses and corporate workgroups increasingly require tools that provide the powerful opportunity management attributes of leading CRM systems with the ease-of-use and low cost associated with personal information managers,” explained Ron Verni, Best Software CEO. “ACT! 2005 revolutionizes this formula to provide the entire spectrum of individuals, small teams and larger workgroups with the best degree of connection to their customers, delivering easy and affordable tools that increase their productivity and elevate sales.”

The new ACT! 2005 product family further builds out a portfolio of easy to implement, flexible and affordable Best Software business management solutions for small and medium-sized businesses – also including the ACCPAC and SalesLogix CRM Suites.

ACT! created the contact and customer management software category in 1987, becoming the defacto standard for helping people organize, access and manage their comprehensive customer details in a single, integrated solution. Today, ACT! holds the leading U.S. retail market share for contact management software (12/03 – 05/04 NPD).

“ACT! 2005 empowers front-line sales professionals to effectively manage their opportunity pipeline, while providing the reporting capabilities that management requires,” explains Joe Bergera, general manager for ACT! at Best Software. “For example, many sales teams and workgroups need more advanced sales opportunity management than simple information managers allow, but do not require a complex enterprise CRM solution. ACT! 2005 Premium for Workgroups fulfills the needs of this underserved workgroup segment and delivers significant cost advantage in year one over hosted solutions, like Salesforce.com.”

Key benefits of ACT! 2005 and ACT! 2005 Premium for Workgroups include:

· Low cost and ease-of-use combined with the advanced selling tools typically found in expensive CRM systems
· Little to no need for expensive IT resources
· Scalable relational data architecture to empower front-line sales professionals and workgroups of up to 50 users
· Robust .NET platform and SQL database for long-term investment protection
· Up to 50% lower total cost of ownership and faster return on investment than expensive, hosted alternatives

“As a $1.7 billion unit of Fortune 500 company Textron Inc., our internal and external sales teams work with an extensive list of customers in every major market sector including automotive, aerospace, construction and consumer markets, all of which have hundreds of divisions with specific business requirements," explained Greig DeSautel, Director of Strategic Operations, Textron Fastening Systems. "The value of collaborating through ACT! increases daily by providing our salespeople with a customized approach that gives them the ability to meet and, more importantly, exceed customer expectations for our manufacturing systems. ACT! 2005 Premium for Workgroups propels us even further with the ability to link divisions and contacts with the new company record features. Our IT people are extremely excited too, considering the relational database and levels of security Best Software has built into the product.”

The ACT! 2005 product family represents version 7.0 of the global, award-winning software, re-architected with Microsoft® SQL Server 2000 to allow powerful database collaboration and network security that scales for larger workgroups. ACT! 2005 is one of the first major productivity applications engineered with Microsoft .NET, initiating a design blueprint that Best Software will use to further evolve next-generation ACT! productivity features.

Many of the over 50 new features and hundreds of usability enhancements in ACT! 2005 were implemented from user requests generated from the base of over 2 million registered ACT! users.

“ACT! has the unique ability to manage all the details that make or break a business,” noted Jim Jobin, President of TheWritersEdge.com. “We have used ACT! to manage relationships, close sales and track nearly every stage of opportunity development for over a decade. ACT! helps our people access precise details about each customer, the instant they are needed, to close important deals. I cannot imagine our achieving this level of success without it.”

ACT! 2005 Key Feature Enhancements
ACT! 2005 strengthens the workflow and effectiveness of salespeople by integrating opportunity forecasting tools around enhanced contact management features to help individuals and teams:

Track relationships with company records for effective account management Manage their opportunity pipeline for an improved bottom line Apply advanced group management for better customer segmentation Customize their database with advanced field types and activity types Directly integrate with office applications such as Microsoft Excel, Word and Outlook Manage relationships with an updated and more intuitive interface

ACT! 2005 Sales Forecasting Tools
ACT! 2005 forecasting tools empower front-line salespeople to:
Manage all their opportunities in one place using a more powerful and customizable list view Export opportunity and contact lists to Microsoft Excel in one click for instant data analysis and reporting Generate instant sales quotes without re-entering data for improved efficiency Create or import product lists with item numbers, cost and price to automate quote generation Forecast sales using built-in reports, or create their own using the improved report designer for accurate opportunity views Track opportunities through their chosen sales cycle with graphical pipeline analysis for real-world sales management

ACT! 2005 Premium for Workgroups
New ACT! 2005 Premium for Workgroups includes all ACT! 2005 features and, additionally, is optimized to help larger workgroups:
Share data easily and securely with up to 50 users for improved workgroup collaboration and sales effectiveness Synchronize data from multiple users into a central database from inside or outside the company firewall to ensure data consistency Assign access rights to specific contacts by users or teams of users to secure data and manage permissions Check team member availability for meetings, calls and tasks to organize and maintain efficient scheduling Send meeting invitations and schedule resources, such as conference rooms and equipment

The Times Square Studios launch of ACT! 2005 marked the first in a series of Best Software events that will introduce the product family to regional U.S. and international audiences. Following product demonstrations and customer presentations, guests were treated to a free concert featuring The Bacon Brothers Band.

ACT! 2005 Product Family From Best Software
ACT! has over 700 Certified Consultants worldwide to assist small and medium-sized businesses with implementation, customization, training and support. In addition, dozens of ACT! Add-on partners create applications to help users further extend the functionality of ACT! (see today’s “Best Software Introduces Powerful Add-on Products” press release for further details). Best Software also offers its own software links including ACT! Link for Peachtree® that is included with all copies of ACT! 2005 so users can seamlessly view and update key accounting data within ACT!.

ACT! 2005 retails for $229.99 (upgrade $149.95 MSRP) and ACT! 2005 Premium for Workgroups retails for $399.99 (upgrade $259.95 MSRP). The ACT! 2005 product family is available for purchase now at www.act.com/estore or by calling 877-ACT-2005.

ACT! 2005 products can be purchased at popular software retailers, e-tailers and direct resellers including Office Depot, CompUSA, Staples, Best Buy, amazon.com, OfficeMax, Fry’s, and Micro Center beginning in mid-September.

About Best Software, Inc.
Best Software offers leading business management products and services that give more than 2.3 million small and mid-sized customers in North America the insight for success throughout the lives of their businesses. Its parent company, The Sage Group plc (London: SGE.L), supports 4.3 million customers worldwide. For more than 25 years, Best Software has delivered easy-to-use, scalable and customizable applications through its portfolio of leading brands, including Abra, ACCPAC, ACT!, BusinessVision, CPASoftware, FAS, MAS 90, MAS 200, MAS 500, MIP, Peachtree, SalesLogix, Timberline, among many others. For more information, please visit the Web site at www.bestsoftware.com/moreinfo or call (866) 308-BEST.

1Actual number of users supported will vary based on the size and usage of the database.

© 2004 Best Software SB, Inc. All rights reserved. ACT! and Peachtree are registered trademarks of Best Software SB, Inc. Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. All other brands are trademarks of their respective companies.