Our resident Swiftpage guru at Winnovative Technology Consulting recently shared this little gem with me, so I thought I would pass it along. 
It’s pretty quick.
And easy!

How to do it is pretty simple.

First, open your newsletter template in the Swiftpage template editor.  
In the Template Library tab of the editor, at the bottom, you will see ‘Export’. 

Click this, choose to save the email as an HTML file and enter the email address to which the file should be mailed (typically your own, but it could be anyone who updates your website).

The file will be delivered to the specified email address.

From there, adding it to your web site is merely a matter of following the normal process your site uses to upload a new page or content.

Typically, it probably goes something like this:
1)  Log into the control panel or file manager for your site. 
2)  Use the upload tool, specifying your e-newsletter template you saved when it was emailed to you as above, and send the file to the website server.
3) Edit the desired page(s) of your site to add links to the newsletter.

Voila!  Newsletter on your website – two for the price of one!

M. Scott Schaffernoth
Senior Analyst
www.winnovative.com
blogger@winnovative.com
518.822.8860

Everybody likes free, right?  Well, we as business people and owners are no different, especially in this time of belt tightening and efforts to accomplish more with fewer resources.

While we don’t typically think of Microsoft and ‘free’ in the same sentence, due to competitive pressures from the folks at Google and the open source software movement, the Windows giant has been forced to make changes in an effort to remain relevant in the dawning cloud-computing world.

Following is an overview of two Microsoft products that on their own are rather revolutionary, but combined should result in some powerful results for those who are ready to think outside their daily box.

The first item on deck is Microsoft Mesh.  I won’t get into a lot of detail here since I have already written a post at InsideSmallBizCRM blog – check it out if you are interested – but I will say:  Mesh is a cloud service from Microsoft that allows you to share files across the web.  You simply create folders in your mesh, and specify the rules for sharing.  A copy is created on your local machine and another on your Mesh desktop in the cloud.  Depending upon your rules, new files or changes to existing files will automatically replicate through your mesh to other members.  If a machine is offline at the time you update Mesh files, when it is next connected, it will be updated.  You do nothing further.

The benefits?  1) Universal access to your critical files.  2) Version consistency since changes automatically replicate through the mesh.  3) Should you be without your personal machine or should it fail, your mesh desktop will have a copy.  4) Access via various web enabled phones is on the way.

Mesh is free and allows up to 5gb of file storage.  (To make it even more interesting, Mesh allows you to remotely access your Windows based Mesh PCs – so even if something you need isn’t in a Mesh folder, you can get to it.  Sweet!)

The next Microsoft tool that I want to talk about is not really free, but it does come bundled with several versions of Office, so there’s a good chance you own it already.  My guess is this is one of the most under-utilized components of Microsoft Office:  I am referring to OneNote.

Do you often find that you are juggling Adobe Acrobat, Word, and PowerPoint files, web pages, emails, online slide shows, even video, while researching for work?  You need all of these disparate yet important information sources in one place, but there is no simple way to do so.  Sure, your contact manager or CRM is great for people interactions, but it gets unwieldy when you start throwing browser bookmarks and various document formats into the mix.
If this sounds at all familiar, you owe it to yourself to discover OneNote.   Beyond offering a central location to store and manage your important business intelligence no matter the format, it provides flexible organization of that data along with support for tagging and full text indexing for easy recall later.  OneNote lets you share your ‘notebooks’ with other team members so they too can access and add to a project repository. 

The basics of OneNote are quick to master, yet the possibilities are limited only by your imagination.  If you already have OneNote installed on your PC, take 10 minutes to learn the fundamentals.  You’ll earn that time back within two hours of using it.

So, take ubiquitous data access, team sharing, remote control, add a universal data repository, and you have the makings of a potent collaboration solution.  All for (almost) free!  Enjoy.

In the previous article in this series, we talked about the background of the inception of Act! and Saleslogix.  In this article we’ll look at a high level  overview of the technical attributes of the two systems.

Again, as a quick recap – both Act! and Saleslogix are owned today by Sage Software.  Act! is the ‘entry level’ product of Sage’s CRM family and Saleslogix (SLX) is the ‘big boy’.

General similarities:

• Both offer Windows and web based versions and both support mixed implementations whereby you can have network connected users, remote disconnected users, and web only users co-existing.
• Both integrate with Microsoft Office for saving/sending email and creating mail merge templates.
• Both use Microsoft Windows SQL Server as their database engine.
• Both can be rolled out rapidly without requiring any customization.
• While there are opportunities to have either system set up for you in a hosted environment, the systems are generally intended to be ‘on premise’ and most companies use them this way.
• Both offer ‘drag-and-drop’ customizations for fields and screens.
• Both support data synchronization for road warriors who spend much time disconnected.
• Each system has ‘top level’ entities consisting of contacts and company records, either of which can be related to their counterpoint or not.  And now with version 2010, Act!, like SLX,  supports a top level opportunity record offering extensive customization capacity.

Now for some differences:

• Pricing. 
  The ‘base’ version of Act! has a suggested price starting at $229, topping out at $540 for Act! Corporate Premium with Microsoft SQL Server Standard. SLX uses a somewhat different model in that you first select a core ‘server’ level (a bundling of administrative functionality) and then you add client licenses for your users.  The SLX ‘Standard’ server is $2995 and the top-of-line Premier Server is $8995.  Client licenses for the standard server are $795/user while those for the Premier system start at $1095 and go to $1395 depending upon feature set desired.
• Packaging.
   Act! is pretty much all inclusive.  It includes the licenses for the version of SQL server to which it is married along with the features that are part of that version.SLX is more of an ‘a-la-carte’ situation.  Microsoft SQL must be purchased separately on your own, and all of the server levels (there are actually three) provide for various SLX feature upgrades (things like additional synchronization servers, remote office servers, Microsoft Exchange server link, etc.).
• SQL Server. 
  As mentioned, Act! comes with licenses of SQL included – current versions being either SQL Express or SQL Standard.  Keep in mind that these ‘bundled’ versions of SQL Server are Act! specific.  While they maintain the same technical specs as their ‘generic’ Microsoft cousins, they cannot be used to host other database and they do not come with the various Microsoft utilities such Reporting services, or the Microsoft Management Studio.  Another item of note:  The SA password for the server instance is locked down, encrypted at the time of install, and is not to be cracked, hacked or otherwise used to access your data directly by tools outside of Act!.  Read the Act! EULA.  (For most of us, this matters not.)  Lastly, the version of Act! that you have is tied to that one specific version of SQL, i.e. – if you are using Act! 2009 today, which runs on SQL 2005, you will never upgrade the SQL server version to SQL 2008.  Simple, then, right?Conversely SLX does not come bundled with SQL.  As such, SLX generally supports being installed on the two most recent version of SQL available at the time of an SLX update.  So, for example, the current version of SLX is 7.5x.  It can be installed on SQL server 2005 or 2008.  And since you ‘own’ the SQL instance outright, it has all of the Microsoft goodies, and you control the SA password.
• Updates/new Versions.
  Since 2004, Sage has released a new version of Act! each year.  At this time there is no indication that this will change.  All users in an Act! implementation most be on the same version.As a product aimed at larger implementations and companies, SLX has a much slower upgrade pace.  The version naming scheme is not married to a date in any way, and the primary version number typically stays in use for several years.  As an example, SLX 7.5 was released circa September of 2008.  Sage is just now about to release the second service pack to this version – SLX 7.5.2.  By way of comparison Act! 2009 was released in the same month as SLX 7.5 and Act! 2010 is already out the door today.

Well that ought to be enough to ponder upon for now.  We’ll continue our discussion in a follow up article, and while there are many other similarities and differences in these two CRM cousins, we’ll talk about some real world applications where the differing systems make a good fit for business needs.

M. Scott Schaffernoth, ACC
Senior Analyst
Winnovative Technology Consulting, LLC
InsideSmallBizCRM.Winnovative.com

No leader is an island.  And you certainly don’t want your head in the sand when it comes to making decisions about your crucial business IT processes and systems.

Following are highlights from a CIO Insights list of recent or pending publications regarding all things business and IT.

IT Savvy:  What Top Executives Must Know to Go From Pain to Gain, by Peter Weill & Jeanne Ross
How non-IT executives can harness the power of IT to propel their businesses forward.

• 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis, by Bill George
  Former Medtronic CEO discusses experiences of leading in an economic downturn.
• Clever:  Leading Your Smartest, Most Creative People, by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones
  Experts from the London Business School describe how your most ‘clever’ – and typically least easily led – can be managed to their best results.
• Winston Churchill, CEO:  25 Lessons for Bold Business Leaders, by Alan Axelrod
  What we as business leaders can learn from the legendary Englishman.
• Making Telework Work:  Leading People and Leveraging Technology for High Impact Results, by Evan Offstein and Jason M. Worwick
  How your business can make the most of a dispersed workforce.

M. Scott Schaffernoth, ACC
Senior Analyst
Winnovative Technology Consulting, LLC

Sage Software has a family of Contact Management and CRM solutions.  At either end of the spectrum in both complexity (and cost!) are Act! and Saleslogix.  Although there are many similarities between the two systems, there are significant differences.   The intent of this article series is to detail the likenesses and differences and explain why they matter as you evaluate the systems for your own solution.

First, a bit of history for context. 

Interestingly, both Act! and Saleslogix are the brain child of the same man – Pat Sullivan.  Some claim that Pat is the godfather of the contact management, sales force automation and customer relationship management software evolution.  Pat’s company created what we know today as Act! some 21 years ago.  Although the initial concept seems like a ‘no-brainer’ by current standards, remember that back in 1987-88, there was no Microsoft Windows 3.0 and the PC itself was still an emerging phenomena.  Thus, the idea of a computer software tool that was specifically designed to help sales people sell more and manage their daily activities was relatively visionary.

The product was well received, and after some years was purchased by Symantec.  Yes – as in Norton Antivirus, etc.  At that time they owned a few other business application products and were trying to make inroads into the non-utility software market.  Symantec owned Act! for a period of time – there is varied opinion whether to the benefit or the detriment  – long enough that they released a couple of updated versions.  Meanwhile Pat played golf and waited out his non-compete.

When the clock chimed off on the non-compete, Pat looked at what Symantec had (or hadn’t done) with Act!, what  the current state of the market was, and what he thought it should be.  Thus was born the idea for Saleslogix. 

We’re now talking circa 1995-1996, so almost a decade had passed since v1 of Act!.  In the interim, ‘contact management’ as a category had spun off something called ‘sales force automation’ (SFA).  The idea was to automate not just the ‘lone wolves’, but entire teams of sales professionals and their support staff so as to provide centralized data, software, administrative management, and robust data synchronization for traveling team members.  SFA was quickly ballooning out into ‘customer relationship management’ systems which added ‘after-the-sales’ features such as product defect and return merchandise authorization tracking, call center ticket logging, knowledge base management and customer self-help portals.

 Pat saw an opportunity, and quickly went to work on creating his new idea – Saleslogix.

 In the next article we’ll dig into more details about these two products.

One of the things that I see time and again in organizations that have been using Act! prior to their engaging me for best practice advisement is confusion about the difference between an Act! note and an Act! history.  Versions of Act! prior to Act! 2005 lent to this confusion since it displayed notes and histories on the same tab with minimal differentiation.

When I train on this topic the way I define these two (very) different record types is as follows:

• A note is a random, yet important, piece of information that is valuable for your relationship with the contact.  Typically it has no reference to time (it is not an event) and is something that does not occur commonly enough that it warrants being saved to a custom field.  Some examples:
  • Likes cats.
  • Rides horses.
  • Plays golf.
  • Owns a 1957 Bel-Air
• A history is a record of a specific action or event that has occured at a specific time.  Unlike notes, histories can be created directly (Create history) or are dutifully created for you by Act! when you complete an item on your task list or calendar views.  Examples:
  • A completed phone call.
  • A product demonstration.
  • An online meeting.

Now, at first glance, this may seem like splitting hairs.  After all, if you have been using notes to track meetings or phone calls, your data is still in the system.  True enough.  But you have to ask yourself: “Why am I entering this information in the system in the first place?”  Isn’t it so that it can be found and used later?  And isn’t it better when you can quickly and accurately find the data you need, without having to scroll through hundreds of non-related items to find what you need?  I think so.

And that comes to the heart of why histories, when used instead of notes, makes your use of Act! so much more powerful.  Because histories are tagged by type, result, and date, they drive your ability to create powerful lookups and reports.

The next part of this article will explain the various tools that you can use to mine all of your valuable history data now that you have been carefully creating it.