Here is a link to the case study

The situation

As Billy prepared to retire, he no longer wanted to pay ACT!'s $500-plus annual subscription. 

He still needed a straightforward way to find contacts, review company details, get phone numbers and email addresses, and preserve the “ACT Notes” associated with them. The goal was to keep the information useful without maintaining a full CRM subscription for the work he planned to do.

What we did

Active Sales Technology created a familiar view he’d used for over 20+ years in Microsoft Access.

Now, with a cost-free interface, he works directly with related Contacts and ACT Notes, avoiding raw Excel Files with no ACT Notes.

• Made search results easy to use. A scrollable contact list shows the current lookup, supports sorting by column, and opens a selected contact on double-click.
• Connected record views. Contacts, companies, groups, notes, history, activities, and memberships link to the related records; technical GUIDs stay hidden from the interface. 
• Protected the working data. Existing records remain editable, while add and delete actions are disabled. The original database was left unchanged. 
• Prepared a complete handoff. The delivery package includes the working Access database, the VBA source code, instructions, and a backup of the form design.

The result

Billy has a simple yet not-so-pretty Access front end for finding and reviewing the records he needs to keep. It offers a path away from the recurring ACT! charge for this focused use case. Billy avoided the $500-plus yearly ACT subscription cost!