If you’re like most organizations, you probably manage your business with a unique mix of data, processes, and systems. For many small businesses, that usually means you’re updating and tracking a lot of spreadsheets and reports from multiple applications. While spreadsheets might feel like a cost-effective option, what you save in price is usually lost in terms of efficiency, data accuracy, and the inability to gain comprehensive insights from your data.
Act! Custom Tables is a powerful add-on that allows you to manage multiple sets of data, both simple and complex, alongside your contact, company, and opportunity data, directly in Act!. Utilizing Act! Custom Tables unlocks the full potential of Act! by affording you comprehensive insights you can use to develop targeted sales and marketing strategies and provide more personalized customer experiences.
In our latest Act! Product Spotlight we are excited to share some of the most meaningful and essential benefits and features of Act! Custom Tables.
Who is Act! Custom Tables For?
To put it simply, Act! Custom Tables is for any business looking for:
- cost savings by reducing the number of systems needed to manage data
- time savings and improved efficiencies by storing and easily accessing all data in one single location, and
- superior insights that let you achieve a laser focus on your prospects and customers
As the name implies, Custom Tables is fully customizable to the unique needs of your business and empowers you to manage detailed product and service data, alongside your customer data.
Custom Tables is currently used by companies that:
- sell complex products like insurance, mortgages, and financial services
- track products with beginning and end dates, (e.g. contracts, warranties, and service plans)
- sell and track products with serial numbers
- track software keys associated with software licenses
- track service engagements (e.g. home services, HVAC, landscaping, and consulting)
- Track customer support engagements including billable hours
Manage support plans, service engagements, insurance products, mortgages, inventory, and more with Act! Custom Tables. You can find Custom Tables below the “Welcome” tab in the left-hand navigation menu.
Spreadsheet-like functionality to sort, filter, group, and summarize data in aggregate
With Act! Custom Tables you can manage detailed product and service information and associate it with contacts, companies, groups, and opportunities. Tables can be grouped, filtered, sorted, and summarized just like a spreadsheet, which you can then use to develop targeted sales and marketing campaigns. For example, you could filter support plans by type and by renewal date to create a list of customers to contact as part of a renewal campaign. Or filter mortgage information to see only second-lien mortgages with interest rates greater than 7%. Seeing detailed product information alongside customer information is invaluable.
Associate detailed product and service information, such as support plans, with companies and contacts.
Spreadsheet-like functionality allows you to filter, group, sort, and summarize Custom Tables data.
Deliver personalized customer experiences
With Act! Custom Tables you not only see detailed product and service information at the aggregate level, but at the individual level as well. This comprehensive access is a game changer when speaking with clients as you’ll have all the data you need to deliver the best customer experience at your fingertips. For example, if a customer calls in to ask about where to process a payment or to inquire about mortgage rates, you can instantly view their unique product and history details while answering their inquiry, and provide them with a more meaningful, customized answer or upsell a related but improved product or service to them.
Custom Tables data available within an individual customer contact record
Drive targeted sales and marketing campaigns
Trying to manage your business in multiple systems negatively impacts your efficiency, and the accuracy of your data, and limits your ability to see your data holistically. Without the ability to manage and analyze data holistically, the speed at which you respond to changing business conditions or react to new market opportunities is substantially impeded. With all of your data in one place, you can quickly analyze an opportunity and create targeted sales and marketing campaigns.
For example, say mortgage rates have decreased or a new product becomes available that would be of interest to your customers. You could filter mortgage information to gauge the size of the opportunity for your business and create an outbound marketing list of customers to contact. You could then create activities based on that list, create Act! Marketing Automation campaigns to support outbound call efforts, manage interactions with customers, report on outbound activity, and manage new opportunities through each sales stage, directly in Act!.
Filter Custom Tables data to identify new opportunities for outreach
Create a custom group based on filters applied to Custom Tables data
Schedule and assign activities for a Custom Tables group
Track activity progress and manage activities by Custom Tables group
Add a Custom Tables group to an Act! Marketing Automation campaign to support sales efforts
Three Custom Tables options to get you up and running fast
Whether you have an existing table or want to start fresh with a new one, Act! Custom Tables offers three options to get you up and running fast.
- Import an existing spreadsheet or .csv table – To import an existing spreadsheet or table simply select the Data Import option, follow the prompts, and then design a layout to input new data as needed.
- Create a new table – To create a new table, simply select the option to Create a New Table, pick the corresponding tables you’d like associated with the new custom table, create your fields, and then design your layout to input field data as needed. More information on importing an existing table or creating a new table can be found here.
- Use Act! Custom Tables pre-built templates – Select from 11, pre-built industry tables, which help you get up and running immediately. Table templates are organized into two categories, industry, and function, and include table templates for insurance, loans, mortgages, residential real estate, software, consulting, event planning, products, project management, services, and customer support.
Choose from 11 pre-built Custom Tables templates, including insurance, loans, mortgages, residential real estate, software, consulting, event planning, products, project management, services, and customer support.
Example of product inventory Custom Tables template
Example of residential real estate Custom Tables template
Try Custom Tables today with a 14-day free trial
Whether you’re new to Act! or an existing user, you can now evaluate the power of Custom Tables with a free 14-day trial. Existing Act! Premium Desktop or Act! Premium Cloud users simply need to choose the option to “Start trial” via the Custom Tables menu located in the top navigation bar. All new trials have Custom Tables enabled. From there, we strongly encourage you to add demo data so you can instantly review the grouping, filtering, sorting, and summarization capabilities. Any new data entered will be available when you activate Act! Custom Tables.
Add demo data to your Custom Tables trial to load a sample mortgage table
Learn more about Act! Custom Tables
Learn more about Act! Custom Tables by heading to our website or watching our recent Act! Training Webinar for a more in-depth review. For additional questions or to upgrade your Act! software, contact an Act! representative at 866-530-2718 or contact your Act! Consultant.
