On-demand customer-relationship management systems like Salesforce.com may be gaining attention and mindshare, but that doesn't mean the end of the line for traditional workgroup-oriented contact and CRM products. The latest versions of the venerable ACT! by Sage Premium for Workgroups (from Sage Software, formerly known as Best Software) and GoldMine Corporate Edition 7.0 (from FrontRange Solutions) continue to provide a versatile set of tools for tracking sales leads, contacts, calendars, campaigns, and more.

As you might expect from products in this relatively mature category, the new features added in the latest versions don't necessarily compel upgrades for existing users. If, on the other hand, you're considering this class of products for the first time, ACT! is the more approachable of the two. GoldMine's strengths include its extensibility and customizability, telephony and VoIP integration, and project-tracking tools, but we found its standard interface to be less straightforward.

Although both ACT! and GoldMine can use industrial-strength database back ends to provide scalability for larger workgroups, both also include runtime database engines that install with minimal difficulty and no ongoing administrative demands.  Review continued below....

ACT! strikes a favorable balance between capability and usability, providing a straightforward contact-management interface that also offers sales-oriented tools like opportunity tracking and mail merge. Importing existing data directly from Microsoft Outlook or from data sources like CSV (comma-separated value) files proved painless, though ACT! didn't transfer existing notes on our Outlook contact records.

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Incremental (type-ahead) search, search by example, and advanced search made it easy to find desired records. ACT! lets you organize contacts into groups or companies, which can in turn contain subgroups and departments, either by selecting individual contacts or by defining dynamic criteria. You can use these groups and companies (or ad hoc search results) to schedule tasks and to create individual e-mails or mail-merged bulk mailings.

Each contact record displays tabs that let you link to a variety of information, including notes, history, activities, documents, and opportunities. You can track opportunities as they pass through stages in ACT!'s default built-in sales pipeline, or you can easily construct your own alternate pipelines. ACT! lets you build tabular or graphical reports from the opportunity data, though we wish it offered a bit more control over the process.

ACT! includes tools to customize or add fields, pick lists, and tabs in your contacts and opportunities. It also includes WYSIWYG editors that let you easily change form and report layouts. As of ACT! 2005, though, the product no longer offers macro recording or playback capabilities, so users or administrators who want to automate the product directly should consider GoldMine.

For those users who find browser-based CRM appealing, Sage offers a Web-based interface called ACT! for Web. Although ACT! for Web worked only with ACT! 2005 databases when we undertook this review, Sage says that ACT! for Web will fully support ACT! 2006 in early 2006. Small workgroups (less than ten users sharing the same data) and individuals can also save some money with the basic ACT! by Sage 2006 product, which sells for $229.99.

Whichever ACT! edition you choose, you're likely to find its capabilities make it easy to manage your sales data and processes more efficiently.