What CRM Do You Use? Anyone Try ACT 4 Advisors?

[iiinycboi]

I use SugarCRM. I transitioned from excel and folders. I just started using it so its working pretty well for me. I had to customize it to fit my needs though. (I think i went a little overboard though. I didnt listen to Al and did the customizing first before workflow. Now i had to customize it 4 times before i have it right)

You should give sugarCRM a try. It's pretty powerful and highly customizable. I've customized it to be somewhat of an agency management crm. I have the invoice printing, quotation printing with my letter head, expense tracking, commission tracking, renewal date reminders, log call functions, document uploading (Al, there is a code that cross checks deleted files from tables and deletes it off your server), web form to lead, fax module, gmail in frame, gmail & calender sync with android phones. Multiple users and its all remotely accessible. (also working on the auto fill acord forms from inputted fields)

I am a single man start up p&c agency so this works well for me. A lot faster than excel sheets. The main thing i wanted a crm was the logging calls. i was sick of typing into ZA cell to log notes, made it look really messy.

Dont know how i would use it if i grew into maybe the 1000 clients, but by that time i should have money to use qq solutions.

 

[Guest]

Now that you have SugarCRM configured, you should sell it to other agents who would want your solution off-the-shelf and not want to do it for themselves.

Or maybe you would be a "good guy" and write up a document that tells others what you did and HOW to do it for themselves and post it on the web?

People here are always looking for an inexpensive "insurance based" CRM and maybe you have what they will like... and pay for.

Maybe one of the two life insurance organizations that we see mentioned on this board from time to time would happily license the system from you to give to their members as a benefit, or perhaps contract with you to provide it for a fee?

It's been years and years since I did any customization to Sugar so I'd really be interested in finding what add-ons you are using or what code you changed.

Where is "the code" that will wipe deleted documents off the server. Have you actually verified that they are truly "gone?"

Al

 

[iiinycboi]

Hey Al,

I'm actually working on the how to guide (maybe ill copy and paste my email to you instead lol) I'll like to offer it here as a way to give back to the community, since i ask a lot of simple questions in the p&c forum and i've received a lot of help from seasoned agents.

I did the opensales addon for quote & invoice mysites add on for adding gmail and internet fax links to open inside the frame under the navi. Also my internet fax allows me to send email to metrofax to fax, so i use the sugarcrm module to send it.

sugar to PDF form does the input to pdf form automatically (same principle as invoice/quoting). I'm using/testing this to auto input into my acord forms.

I am currently using file:///webfolder/client for link to my documents for now until i confirm the deletion. Although, sugar community say it works. I havent finalized testing yet.

So yeah, i'll be happy to make a video demo or something for people to see as soon as i finish it. It didn't cost me anything extra, so this should help a lot of people who are trying to keep overhead small.

I've done some reviews and apparently sugarcrm can handle at least 10 users and over 3000 client databases, so maybe this could be your only crm you'll be using.

Just figuring out a backup option right now to make sure all my data can be revived if anything goes wrong.

p.s. this wasnt very technical either. Only part that was technical was hosting it at my office server. Credit goes to Al though, i was going nuts trying to figure it out and he said something that got me going. Thanks!


Also working on digital signing on my ipad that sends to those application / acord forms. Truly paperless!

 

[Newby]

Takes too long to load and costs too much money to buy the addons I need to get it to do what I want it to do. It works OK, but the YIO demo makes it seem so much simpler than dealing with all the customization and addons.

How do you have yours set up? Any tips?

ACT is incredibly easy to create any field you want to track and make drop downs with any info you want. You can make your layout include any fields you use and eliminate the rest.

You don't HAVE to add anything.

 

[Guest]

Hey Al,

I'm actually working on the how to guide (maybe ill copy and paste my email to you instead lol) I'll like to offer it here as a way to give back to the community, since i ask a lot of simple questions in the p&c forum and i've received a lot of help from seasoned agents.

I did the opensales addon for quote & invoice mysites add on for adding gmail and internet fax links to open inside the frame under the navi. Also my internet fax allows me to send email to metrofax to fax, so i use the sugarcrm module to send it.

sugar to PDF form does the input to pdf form automatically (same principle as invoice/quoting). I'm using/testing this to auto input into my acord forms.

I am currently using file:///webfolder/client for link to my documents for now until i confirm the deletion. Although, sugar community say it works. I havent finalized testing yet.

So yeah, i'll be happy to make a video demo or something for people to see as soon as i finish it. It didn't cost me anything extra, so this should help a lot of people who are trying to keep overhead small.

I've done some reviews and apparently sugarcrm can handle at least 10 users and over 3000 client databases, so maybe this could be your only crm you'll be using.

Just figuring out a backup option right now to make sure all my data can be revived if anything goes wrong.

p.s. this wasnt very technical either. Only part that was technical was hosting it at my office server. Credit goes to Al though, i was going nuts trying to figure it out and he said something that got me going. Thanks!


Also working on digital signing on my ipad that sends to those application / acord forms. Truly paperless!

I'd love to see a step by step plan to make SugarCRM "insurance oriented." I'll be happy to post a copy on my web server. Send me the notes, I'll even write it with the HTML for you!

As for backup, there are scripts on the net that you can run... in bash, cshel, korn, and php... that will do mySQL dumps and FTP them to another site for safe keeping. (FTP is good, but RSYNC is a better protocol.) I have a couple of bash scripts I'll be happy to give to anyone who wants them. They are pretty simple... I wrote them myself. I'm sure there are better ones on the net.

As for scale, Sugar can handle way, way, WAY more than 3,000 accounts (and leads, AND contacts.) There is no reason you can't have over a million of each... and then some. The MySQL database is industrial strength. It can do all that Oracle does. Why do you think they bought it? Maybe to kill it? I don't know, but I do know that while Oracle is an excellent product with many more capabilities than built-in to mySQL, there is nothing you can do with Oracle that you can't do with MySQL... but it might take a bit more work and more time. Remember, this board runs on MySQL and there are almost half a million postings to it with some 35,000 users. It does not run on SugarCRM, but at the end of the day it is usually not the front-end software that determines the scale... but the internal database... and MySQL can handle millions of records and thousands of queries per second. It's that good... and free!

As for what I might have said to put you on the right track... well, I don't remember.

Not to take away from the vendors who have an insurance-specific solution because I'm sure those are all excellent... and not to take away from ZOHO or FreeCRM (both no-cost options) I've been "preaching" the virtues of SugarCRM CE (community edition... which is the free on!) for about five years here and while I've been beaten up over the years by those who say it is too hard to install and to learn, it has worked well for me... and bottom line it is not too hard to install or learn if you will give it a weekend to read the install docs, get it going, and play with it.

But if it is not for you... then you should try some of the off-the-shelf products and services like YIO, Radius, and others that have been mentioned here over the years.

 

[Air Jer]

Everyone has their favorite. Like Newby, I am a satisfied ACT! user.

 

[Prouddad]

I used ACT4Advisors for a little over a year. It has a lot of useful data fields that ACT! doesn't have. I dropped it because I think it's better for life and DI that it is for my specialty, group benefits.

I wanted to add so many custom fields that it costs me less to simply customize ACT! than to add the ACT4Advisors overlay. Keep in mind that eventually, ACT! will update to a version that may not work with your version of ACT4Advisors. Then, you'll have to buy an ACT4Advisors update to be compatible to your new version of ACT!

 

[Stevekare]

another reason not to use salesforce is that the CEO is on Obama's reelection committee, No doubt he will get some nice government contracts out of the deal, and won't need any small time insurance agents.

 

[hassy99]

ACT is incredibly easy to create any field you want to track and make drop downs with any info you want. You can make your layout include any fields you use and eliminate the rest.

You don't HAVE to add anything.

I realize your post is dated but I am leaving Goldmine 6.5 and am considering Sage Act 2013 Pro with perhaps an addon of Act 4 advisors
I sell some life but mostly medicare type health sales some annuities and various life/health products.

Have you continued to use ACT did you try 4 advisors?
Appreciate any feedback on these programs if possible

 

[Newby]

I realize your post is dated but I am leaving Goldmine 6.5 and am considering Sage Act 2013 Pro with perhaps an addon of Act 4 advisors
I sell some life but mostly medicare type health sales some annuities and various life/health products.

Have you continued to use ACT did you try 4 advisors?
Appreciate any feedback on these programs if possible

I still use and like ACT. Never tried Act for Advisors.