Recently it was announced that SwiftPage, the company we have worked with for years on email marketing entered into an agreement to purchase Sage ACT! and Sage SalesLogix. The deal just closed last week and the teams are now in transition. All of the Scottsdale Operations from Sage will transition to working with Swiftpage. We will continue, along with the rest of the ACT Community to work with ACT, Host ACT! and support ACT!.
For those who would like a little bit of history, this is the fourth sale of the ACT! product since it was created in the mid-80s.
- In 1993: Contact Software International (ex Conductor Software) purchased by Symantec
- In 1999: Sold by Symantec to SalesLogix (owned by Pat Sullivan, one of the co-founders of ACT!) – later renamed as Interact Commerce Corporation
- In 2001: Interact Commerce Corporation purchased by Sage Group Plc (Best Software in the US at that time)
- And now sold to Swiftpage
For many of us supporting the ACT! product, the relationship with Sage was a love-hate relationship. While we appreciated the benefits of having a large company and the resources and name recognition that Sage brought to the table, many times it seems like we got lost amidst the nearly 200 other products that Sage offered. It also at times felt that the focus of Sage was primarily accounting.
Here are some of the things we are excited about as ACT! becomes a part of the Swiftpage family.
1) Smaller company, better focus. I believe that the ACT! product will have the undivided attention of the leadership at Swiftpage. They understand the value of ACT! and like us have built their business around supporting and making the most out of the ACT! CRM system.
2) Swift page is in entrepreneurial enterprise. Many times when working with Sage, it seemed to the accountants were making all of the decisions. Swiftpage made a name for itself in thinking creatively and entrepreneurially.
3) Swiftpage has necessary financial blocking through the venture capital company Accel-KKR. Accel-KKR has a reputation for creating high-growth software companies. We agree that there is a lot of potential and room for growth within the ACT! product line.
So, we begin a new chapter. As part of the Swift page family, we at Tandem are excited for the new direction and anxious to see what new things we were able to do with the ACT! product. We really excited to work with many of our customers in taking their use of ACT! to the next level. Stay tuned. Because the deal just closed last week, we don’t know all of the details about the new direction. We will let you know more next month.
Jon Klubnik
