Some Sage Advice

We’ve heard some pretty dire warnings about problems readers have experienced with Act! contact management software since Sage took it over (see “Sage Has a Tough ACT to Follow”). Unfortunately, one reader’s recent comments indicate that the current release is no better than Sage’s prior bad Acts.

The reader wrote:

“Let’s start with the present. I have a twelve-user environment. Financial planning. Maybe $400 million in client’s money under management. Act Premium for Workgroups 2007 — less than 1,000 contacts. Pretty basic. Got the picture? Well, for this company dates are important. Very important. Other than your social security number, name combined with birthdate is important in confirming identity for all sorts of things, like life insurance. Now remember, it is 2007, not 1987. We should be pretty good about writing static data to a database and recalling it. You’d think.”

“Enter Sage Software. On eight of our twelve user’s machines the same client record will have the birthdate of the client one day later than the correct date that was originally entered and which appears on the other four machines. Correct it on one of the incorrect machines and it sticks for a day, maybe even four or five, but then suddenly the client becomes a day younger.”

“A call to Sage Software brings the usual denials of having heard of any such problem. So what do we do? Reindex the database for starters. Doesn’t work. So let’s export all of the records and re-import into a new database. Certainly that will solve it. Nope, the problem remains. My last contact was a couple of weeks ago, but problems like this, seemingly random, hard to reproduce, are simply a pain for Sage to address. Meanwhile, our firm, which otherwise operates a paperless, scan everything operation, has resorted to printing a list of names and correct birthdates of all clients so that any financial documents will be correct. Do you really think Sage is sweating this one out? I may have the answer … read on MacDuff.”

“Rewind two years. We are using a previous version of Act and an odd problem arises. Some users couldn’t attach documents and other items to their client’s history. This was a crucial need for the operation of the company. Records of phone conversations and email correspondence had to be organized so that any team member could work on a client account in an up-to-date manner. We go through every combination of safe mode, other running programs, and countless, I mean countless calls to Sage tech support. Sage uses different words each time but blames our network. We tune and tweek, buy network tools, but no luck. And, to be honest, I am never convinced that they (Sage) believe we have a problem.”

“So, I apply old-fashioned detective thinking to the situation. Why some computers and not others? They are all Dell’s of a two-year or less vintage. The answer? Hyperthreading. The technology had just been introduced and our newest Optiplexes had it activated and old ones did not. Once hyperthreading was turned off the program worked like a charm. I had billed the company for thousands of dollars in time and network analysis and Sage, when I wrote their head of customer relations (who claimed he was very interested in our situation) with the solution, the company didn’t bother to even thank me, nor do what any good business should do — credit the client for some future license or maintenance fees to help keep us as a customer. Two weeks later a patch appeared which their technical support department that was actively on my case never informed me. I found it myself on their website.”

“Fast forward again to 2007. Act 2007 arrives. The hyperthreading issue is becoming a distant memory, but not totally forgotten, so we wait four months before installing the upgrade on our system. The system is basically an SBS 2003 network. And sure enough, right on the box, under system requirements SBS2003 is listed. No problem, right? Ahem, not so fast. Act 2007 Premium for Workgroups is reliant on SQL Server 2005 Express Edition. It turns out that the very installation of Act breaks all of our other SQL instances. That includes Sharepoint, Backup Exec and other critical apps. It’s a one-way upgrade too. So there is no ‘uninstall.’ The cure? Uninstall SBS2003 and reinstall. Oh, and yes, the files that Backup Exec has recorded — unusable.

Our ‘cure’ was to buy entirely new hardware. We purchased a new SBS 2003 server for everything except Act and then moved Act, and only Act, to its own Windows 2003 Server. Happily, without comingling its databases and anything else of value, we have been operating just fine. The cost? About $15,000. The response from Sage? We didn’t realize that installing Act on an SBS 2003 server would do that to your other apps, but, they proudly pointed out, Act did work on the SBS 2003 server. Gee thanks.”

“So, that brings us back to today. Act is quarantined on its own server and is behaving. We have mystery birthdates that are changing and denials by Sage. I’m pretty sure that I will eventually figure the issue out with some top-notch help I get from Microsoft tech support and no help at all from Sage. But revenge can be sweet. It seems that Microsoft CRM is maturing and I’m hearing that a product called SmartOffice is looking good. I can’t wait.”

Do you have any sage advice for your fellow readers on which software companies to avoid? Post your comments on my website or write me at Foster@gripe2ed.com.

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