Streamline Your Document Workflow with CRM Opportunity Management for Engineering

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Let's go ahead now and take a look at an  opportunity that's associated with this   particular customer. So I'm going to go down  to the sales opportunities and click on the   thermal project that we're currently working on.  And first thing you're going to notice is this,   the fact that the layout of this screen is really  similar to what we looked at with an account   record and with a contact record, where I've got  summary level information on the left-hand side,   details about the opportunity that we're pursuing.  I've got now a laser-focus timeline that just   doesn't show me everything, but now just shows  me the activity that's associated with this   particular interaction being an opportunity.  I've got my meeting that I've got coming up   and who I'm meeting with. I've got some of the  stakeholders involved, the sales team, and even   some competitors that we're currently tracking. Now, the other big advantage here is the fact that   you can take your sales organizations, sales  methodology, how you rate in way opportunities   and put them into your sales funnel, and make  that a living breathing part of the application.   So for example, you can see there's a sales  process up above, where we've got a qualify   stage, we got a stage if there's an RFP that we  respond to. Now, we're developing the lead, we're   proposing an opportunity and we're getting ready  to close it. These five stages really represent   what becomes our sales pipeline and where  things, ultimately, end up in the sales funnel.   Now, as a manager, I can set and require  certain things to happen. So if I go ahead   and click on the check box for the stage that  was already completed, which was qualified,   and just fly that open to the right-hand side,  now I can see these are the necessary records   that we're looking to capture, find out who the  contact is. What are they looking to purchase?   What's their estimated budget? What's the  process in order to get this thing closed?   And then you can see the amount of time  it's taken to get through these stages.   So this opportunity has been working for about  51 days, and we're in this developed stage now   for about 10 minutes. Now, as a sales rep, I  just need to deal with what's in this particular   swim lane, if you will. I don't have to worry  about spending time updating records down below   and filling out information on the screen. So for  example, if you see the customer needs section,   and if I just wanted to quickly change that,  or change the content that we're seeing there,   it's automatically going to update the section  down below. So it's not like I'm typing in two   different areas. I can certainly type in one area  and have all that information present for me.   Now, what this does from a sales leadership  perspective is it gives management the ability to,   from a dashboard view that we saw earlier, drill  into a subset of the pipeline. So the example we   did was we looked at the things that are in that  purple proposed stage. And then once I select an   opportunity, I can actually drill in to see really  where we are in the process. So in this example,   my sales rep is in the process of identifying  all the stakeholders and identifying who the   competition is that we're competing with on this  particular deal. So there's a little bit more   work that they're trying to do develop this lead.  Now, this is 100% configurable, and it's designed   to really help fit the needs of your business. So  your sales methodology, I'm assuming, is going to   be quite different, but this just helps put some  structure around the pursuit that you're chasing.   A couple of other quick things I just wanted  to notice here is that we can also start to   track competitors, and this becomes important.  So if I clicked on this particular competitor,   I've got some basic information about them,  some of the deals that we're currently working.   And then if I clicked on opportunities, I can  see, have we won deals against this competitor?   Are we starting to see them more? So here's a  great example. We actually happened to win a deal,   but now we're starting to see this particular  competitor pop up more and more and more as we're   working against them. So this becomes valuable  information. Do we lose a lot of deals? Is this   customer interested in competing on price? And  this is the low-cost provider. So that information   really helps sales determine if it's a pursuit  that they should continue with, or is it a pursuit   they should potentially abandon? So being able to  track the competition is certainly something that,   I think, is critical to really understanding  how you're pursuing your opportunities.   Now, another couple of quick things is that  there's the ability to attach product line items.   So you can actually attach products and cost of  those products, as it relates to the opportunity.   Now you can see here it's user provided, but I've  got a dollar amounts that are here. If I just   flip this over to system provided, it changes the  actual estimate for the opportunity here. I can,   also, if I needed to provide a 10% discount,  if that's something that I need to do on this   opportunity, and then in a few moments,  it's actually going to go ahead and update   the opportunity and update the value of that  reflecting the discount that was just calculated   in here. Now, a couple of things. Obviously,  discounts are something that you probably want   to have management have control over, something  you can absolutely certainly do. Just wanted to   show the ability that it can update real quickly  and change the estimated in plan revenue.   Customers can also have their own price lists. So  you can have price lists and price books that they   can choose from. And then once we get to this  point, we want to be able to generate a quote,   we can do that. And you can see I've got  a quote generated for me already based off   of the opportunity that we created, and I can  actually open up this particular quote to see   the details that reside inside of this quote. And  this is just the information that we're capturing,   the details here in a few minutes, the discount  will come over as well. And then I have the   ability to do a couple of different things. I can  create a quick report, just a real basic static   report view of, "Hey, here's what we're  quoting. Here's what it's going to cost you."   And then I can certainly PDF this or screen  print this and send it out to the customer.   Now, another thing that we can do, this being a  Microsoft product, is you've got this ability to   create Word templates. So you can build and create  your own proposals using Word. You don't have to   be a report writer. If you understand mail merging  and understand how to create and pull information   from inside the account or opportunity or the  products, you can create a really high looking,   very valuable proposal, or even a cleaner quote  that would pull all different types of information   together and make it really easy to do. Again,  just another way where you're not relying on   a report writer, or relying on a consultant  to provide you with a proposal template.   Something you as an end user  will be able to do using Word.   So this, at a high level, gives you a great  understanding of the ability to capture a sales   process around an opportunity to understand that  pursuit, be able to pull products in from various   systems, whether it's ERP, or products that are  inside the system and add them to the opportunity,   and then to ultimately quote that opportunity. And  all that information is extremely powerful when it   comes time to reporting, because you'll be able to  report on the product items that you're quoting,   you'll be able to report on the quotes and then  certainly on the opportunities and where you are   in the sales process. Meaning, "We've been working  on this deal for 51 days, but we're now in this   particular sales stage, and we've been working  it for 15 minutes." So again, just the ability   to laser focus into an opportunity to understand  where things sit, it's extremely powerful.