Comparison of Contact Management Software Act vs Outlook

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Please note: Although the information below is several years old ( full disclosure) the basic issues and trends still apply.

Purpose of Document

This document describes the differences between ACT! and Microsoft Outlook. These two products are different in terms of philosophy, positioning, and features.

Contents

• Summary
• Outlook Overview
• ACT! Overview
• Is ACT! Right For You?
• Outlook Limitations
• Working With Activities In Outlook
• Working With Groups of Contacts In Outlook

summary

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Outlook Overview

Outlook is positioned as a General Information Manager and is targeted for use by all computer users.

The focus of Outlook is on improving efficiency by managing people's personal information, and by helping groups to share information.

Outlook is the follow on to Schedule+ and is also a replacement for the MS Exchange Email client. As a result Outlook has special strengths in the area of group calendaring and managing electronic mail.

From the Microsoft web page:

Microsoft Outlook™ is a desktop information management application that helps a user do the following:
• Organize information on the desktop
• Work seamlessly with Microsoft Office
• Communicate and share information with others

Outlook integrates and organizes a variety of information - e-mail, calendar scheduling, contacts, tasks and to-do lists, and documents or files on the hard drive. Outlook helps users communicate with others through e-mail, phone support, and group scheduling.

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ACT! Overview

ACT! is positioned as a contact manager. The target audience for ACT! is sales professionals and others who are involved in a sales type of activity.

The focus of ACT! is to help people build better relationships with their contacts, generate sales results, and grow their business.

ACT! is the world's leading contact manager. As a result ACT! has special strengths in managing customer information and in linking calendars, history, files, and other types of information to the customer.

From the back of the ACT! box:

"They say that good salesmanship is a state of mind. That's only the half of it. The other half is building relationships by staying on top of your leads. ACT! provides complete customer and calendar management and puts key pieces of information in the hands of you and your team at all times. So you know exactly what to say and when to say it. ACT! puts information to work and helps you grow your business"

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Is ACT! Right For You?

If you think of your customers as simply the information on the front of a business card -- name, address, and phone number - then you won't get the full value out of ACT!.

ACT! is far more valuable if you think of your customer as not only the information on the front of the business card, but also the notes you wrote on the back of the card, the spouse's name in the upper left corner, the history of the last three meetings you had, and the date of the follow-up phone call you just scheduled, the text of the proposal you sent last month, and so on. The more you need to know about your customers, the more ACT! will be useful to you.

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Outlook Limitations

Outlook is aimed at organizing your personal information and sharing information and schedules with your co-workers. Outlook is not simple -- it is a sophisticated, complex program with a significant learning curve.

Outlook is was not designed for people trying to build a relationship with contacts and grow a business. As a result, many basic contact management tasks are difficult or impossible in Outlook.

Key Contact Management Features Lacking In Outlook

1. There is no "phone call" activity in Outlook. You can not schedule an upcoming phone call with a client.
2. Outlook tasks (to-dos) have a weak link to contacts. A task can be assigned to a contact, but it will not be found on the contact record, and you can not go from the task to the related contact.
3. It is cumbersome in Outlook to link meetings with contacts in your database. Linked meetings are treated as email messages to be sent to co-workers.
4. Outlook does not automatically log activities to the journal (the history log). You must turn on journaling for each contact you add to your database.
5. Activities are only logged when an email is sent to the contact. Automatic journaling of activities is mainly designed for activities and task that involve your co-workers.
6. Outlook does not support "field history" so you will never know when your "prospect" became a "customer".
7. Outlook has no quick data entry lists for fields. You must type everything in. ACT! supports drop down lists for every field and also supports "Autofill" typing for quick selection of values.
8. Outlook has a limited contact notepad. The notepad does not date- and time- stamp notes. Outlook does not log the name of the user who enters a note for a contact.
9. Outlook does not allow you to edit a group of contact records. If a company moves to a new address you will have to edit each contact individually.
10. Outlook has no built in mail merge.
• There is no word processor built in to Outlook.
• There is no mail merge command in Outlook.
• Outlook does not automatically log activities to the journal (the history log). You must turn on journaling for each contact you add to your database.
• There are no predefined letter templates. You have to build your own in MS Word and link each one back to Outlook.
• You can not select a group of contacts and then do a mail merge to them. Mail merge always goes to an entire address book or folder.
• Only a fixed set of Outlook fields is accessible from MS Word. Custom Outlook fields can not be added to mail merge letters.
• Form letters can not be accessed from Outlook. You will always have to open up MS word and run them from there.
11. Outlook does not support fax merge.
12. Outlook does not support email merge (sending a custom form letter to a set of contacts via email).
13. Outlook has no custom report generator. You can't track your business to see how you have been doing.
14. Outlook is less customizable than ACT!. You can't modify toolbars or menus. You can not modify the first screen of the contact layout (although you can add and customize additional screens).
15. Outlook ability to find and work with temporary groups of contacts is limited. You can filter, but it is difficult to search for a group of contacts (such everyone in Texas) and then another group of contacts (such as everyone in California).
16. The default ACT! contact form has 69 fields. The default Outlook contact form has 20 fields. If you want to store more information on your contacts you will have to customize Outlook.
17. Outlook does not support duplicate contact checking.
18. Outlook does not allow you to record macros.
19. Outlook does not track information on companies. Outlook has categories, but these hold no information of their own. ACT! group records can be used to hold company information.
20. Outlook contacts are limited to a single web site field. ACT! contacts have one field by default, but you can add as many new web site fields as you like.

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Working With Activities In Outlook

Outlook treats activities very differently than ACT!. Outlook activities are either linked to you or they are assumed to linked with co-workers. Actitivities are not normally linked with external contacts in your database.

ACT! assumes that many activities will take place with people who are NOT your co-workers.

Example: Scheduling a Meeting with a Contact

Let's compare ACT! and Outlook when scheduling a meeting. Assume you just met a new customer and you want to schedule a meeting with them. The steps required are:

ACT!

1. Enter the contact information.
2. Click on the "schedule a meeting" icon.
3. Set the date and time.
4. Select a "regarding" from the list (or type in your own new subject).
5. Click the "OK" button.

ACT!

1. Enter the contact information.
2. Choose "New meeting with contact" from the Contact menu.
3. Now you:
1. Fill in the contact's email address. This requires several dialog boxes. If the contact is not on your company email system you will be required to enter "Display Name", "Email Address", and "Email Type".
2. OR, you get a message that says "this contact does not have an email address". Hit "Enter" to dismiss this message and move on.
4. Type in the subject in the "subject" field (there is no fast entry list).
5. Choose "Save" from the File menu.
6. Choose "Close" from the File menu.
7. You will now get message that says, "Message has not been sent. Do you want to send it"?
8. Choose NO.

The meeting you just scheduled will show up on your calendar, but the following limitations apply:

• There is no way to go to the contact and see what meetings are coming up. You can only view them from the calendar. Note: You can overcome this limitation for selected contacts with "journaling".
• Any time you open the meeting then close it Outlook will ask "Do you want to send this meeting"?
• Choose "Close" from the File menu.

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Working With Groups of Contacts In Outlook

ACT! users often work with a temporary group of contacts (called a Lookup). The idea is to locate the needed contacts (such as all the Hot Prospects in New York and Texas) and then do something with them (faxs to them, mail letters to them, call them, report on them, and so on). Outlook is not as effective as ACT! when working with temporary groups.

• You can filter your contacts in Outlook but you can not add any more contacts to the filtered set. There is nothing in Outlook to match the ACT! "Add to Lookup" function.
• Outlook has no way to filter out an individual contact. In ACT!, you can add or remove contacts from your lookup until you get exactly the set of contacts you need.
• Outlook has no way to edit a group of contacts. So, if all your contacts at a company move to a new address, you will have to edit each contact individually.
• There is no way in Outlook to search all contact fields at once. You must limit your search to individual fields, or you can go through a process to build up a lost of selected fields.
• Outlook has no simple query by example form that you can fill in to look for multiple fields. You can achieve the same function using the Outlook Find Tool Advanced option and add the fields and criteria one field at a time.

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