Illustration depicting the process of migrating from ACT! to Zoho CRM

Case Study: ACT! Migration to Zoho

A metropolitan government agency with 80 CRM users plan to migrate their ACT! system, in this migration it is extremely important to reduce downtimes and move the data swiftly and consistent to the source data records. The agency was interested in a more versatile tool that is cloud based and uses a variety of suits and integrates their operations from various departments. For the first time, BoostedCRM developed the customized software for export and validation between Zoho target and ACT! source.

In recent years, there has been a steady trend in development of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software and recognition of its benefits. Statistics show that for every dollar spent on CRM software there is Return on Investment (ROI) of $8.71. The list of benefits goes on and it is beyond the scope of this article. Find here information about top 30 statistics on CRM benefits and trends. 

ACT! is one of the first set of CRM softwares released in 1987 with a single database for holding records of clients and prospect, the data is shared by multiple users and can be integrated into Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, Google Contacts, Gmail and other popular applications.

ACT! is well suited for environments with desktop computing that are trying to address a generic CRM question. It should be also noted that some training is required for ACT! to be used efficiently in departments. In comparison Zoho can be trained over the course of migration and with limited required resources on pause.

The CRMs of today, allow users to make sales on individual and company level and provides the set of tools for accounting (Zoho Books), marketing automation (Zoho Marketing Hub) and many other features which are practically impossible or very costly in desktop applications.

But why would you migrate to Zoho? A comparison study by financesonline shows that Zoho is on an uptrend, and it is compatible with mobile devices, with its lower risk pricing model and a large set of out of the box integrations. Zoho CRM is only one of the large suite of applications offered by Zoho, such as Zoho books for accounting. The integration between the applications gives a wide variety of options, another set of comparison reviews by Zoho users can be found in trustedradius.

PC Mag in a review hits the nail in the head: “If you’re familiar with older version of the service, you should know that Act! used to be owned by Sage, and that it got very good reviews from us in those days. The software is now owned by Swiftpage and is no longer as robust or as small business-friendly as it used to be.”

How to prepare for ACT! to Zoho Migration?

The basics are the same, after the first session and evaluating your data size and system requirements in terms of team size and data volume as well as system performance, we will provide you with the customized export software.

It is possible to choose the required fields to export or export all or rename fields. The users and user permissions can be reassigned to the Zoho system.

The customized BoostedCRM software exports all ACT! data from the Contact, Company, Notes, History, Group, Opportunity into the files which is then evaluated for correctness through our validation pipeline.

While data migration is in practice a simple pipeline, it can be complex and technically challenging due to unprecedented system glitches specially due to the variety of versions and setups and operating systems. The downtime as a result is costly and the migration therefore can mean lots of money and time without the required experience.

Our efforts are in direction of planning in advance, efficient and on-budget training and simplify the process so that the data is kept consistent and the data is accessed on the next working day.

After the training is carried out and the migration is fully done (with previous planning and without unnecessary downtimes) the pipeline in Zoho is setup and ready to go for your application.

BoostedCRM solution for migration

As BoostedCRM Zoho Consulting, we have worked with industry leading companies to create a robust, secure and efficient solution for migration and to facilitate no down time migration of your data and training of the team. BoostedCRM is an early adopter of customized migration and integration solutions between ACT! Sage and Zoho. Our consulting model, the training plan and security of the migration have evolved over many iterations of this process.

What is it that BoostedCRM doing different in terms of ACT! Migration?

As a part of migration, BoostedCRM works cross-department and inside the company to first understand the requirements.  The requirements facilitates creating a list of source and target fields in the CRM system. A test is created initially to get the client’s confirmation, in order to validate a first micro dataset migration. The validation is done to prove both data accuracy and type validity and to ensure there is no data loss. After this step the full migration is carried out and Zoho CRM is ready for production.

We ensure the swift and secure data import of any CRM modules.

  • Accounts
  • Opportunities
  • Notes
  • Events
  • Contacts
  • Emails
  • Tasks
  • Meetings
  • Calls
  • Products
  • Leads

We use our custom migration service to simplify the migration process and verify data consistency. Our technical team performs data migration so that to fulfil your specific business needs and deliver you with the desired result.

In addition, a personal account manager keeps you informed throughout the CRM migration process and answers your questions.

What are the common process steps?

The stages are done swiftly to minimize downtime, and as the following:

  1. Request by client
  2. Export of required fields
  3. Migration of test set
  4. Testing and validation
  5. Full migration
  6. Final test and delivery

The client often starts by providing the credentials and timelines required for finishing the task, there is no downtime in the migration and the migration is carried out behind the scenes. Zoho training is planned initially to get the client’s team ready for production use.

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