Act! Blog

Act! Channel Partner Spotlight – AspenTech CRM

AspenTech CRM, founded by Greg Knapp in 1994 and now led by his son, Marshall Knapp, has been an Act! Certified Partner since 1994 and was recently awarded the Act! Diamond Tier – Highest Revenue Retention Award. Since its founding, AspenTech has become a premier and trusted organisation in the CRM and marketing automation industries by providing a wide range of business-process consulting and CRM implementation services that provide its customers with highly-effective and reliable sales and marketing systems that drive growth. Some of AspenTech CRM’s services include:

  • Business strategy & site analysis
  • Discovery & needs assessment
  • System design & review
  • CRM conversion & migration
  • End-user, manager & administrator training
  • Ongoing support 
  • Periodic assessments

In addition, AspenTech CRM is continually expanding its portfolio to include essential add-ons that meet its customers’ varying professional needs. We recently met with Marshall to learn more about how his experience with Act! and how he has seen it grow over the years.

Q: How did AspenTech CRM discover Act!?

A: Act! has been a primary focus of AspenTech CRM since our beginning. Greg Knapp, my father, discovered the solution while working for a university that needed a database to manage its prospects. After using the software and learning that he could leverage his expertise and become an Act Certified Consultant (ACC), he launched AspenTech CRM and became the first ACC in Michigan. I joined AspenTech CRM in 1999 and became an ACC in 2003.

Q: What has made AspenTech CRM so successful over the years?

A: AspenTech CRM is focused on customer satisfaction and uses a team approach to ensure our customers’ needs are met. This approach helps us to better serve our clients by ensuring they receive rapid responses and problem resolution without having to wait for one employee to get back to them. We value our customers and prioritise their time and needs to ensure they are satisfied with our service.

Q: What types of businesses does AspenTech CRM work with?

A: AspenTech CRM  generally works with small and medium-sized businesses, including B2C clients like lawyers and wealth managers, though we also have larger clients in manufacturing, commercial real estate, insurance and construction. Regardless of their type of business, customers come to AspenTech CRM because they want help optimising their use of Act!. We often find they can be at any stage of their Act! journey, from long-time customers who are expanding their use and perhaps customization of Act!, to first-time users who have no experience with the product at all.

Of course, we’re happy to work with customers however familiar they are with the product, but we most enjoy working with businesses that are new to Act! because this enables us to take a holistic approach to their business needs and implement and customise the software to meet those specific needs. We see that too many people who install the product themselves underutilise it as they are not fully aware of its many capabilities. 

Q: How have you seen customers’ business needs evolve in the past few years?

A: There’s a greater emphasis on hybrid work today. It’s not only important that organisations can support it, but that they can do so at a moment’s notice. Having flexible software deployment options that users can adjust on the fly is critical for business owners to seamlessly transition their teams to a hybrid model. Act! is unique in its space in that it offers multiple deployment options including on-premises, cloud, and a hybrid approach called Desktop Sync. Act! also continues to add more features and mobile capabilities to meet today’s user needs.

To learn more about how AspenTech CRM can help you find the right CRM solution for meeting today’s business demands, visit its website.