4 Ways of Seeing Around the Corner
29 Sep 2014![](https://opencrm.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/7ba5e11106dd7feb7611e06f19eb9d6d.jpg)
I cycle into work every now and again so I need to be pretty alert on the roads. Not just regarding the car in front of me, but what’s happening on the pavement, roads and junctions a hundred metres ahead. Similarly, when working on my CRM implementation, I need to look at the bigger picture, and not just the current task or what has happened in the past. In short, I need to be aware of what’s going on and not just right ahead of me, whether on the road on or on my pc.
Performance reports tend to focus on past activities. Events that have taken place, opportunities closed and won, campaign results and invoices raised are all great stats to gather. Tracking those results let you know if your marketing has paid off, if your product development team is on the right track, and if the sales team is doing the job.
As well as being able to view past actions, it is great to see what you have got coming up. Here are 4 OpenCRM tools which allow you to see into the future to plan your days and weeks ahead:
Next Action – a simple but effective field which shows the next activity you have got planned against a person, company, project or whatever.
Opportunity Pipeline Graph – a quick visual guide to how your projected sales are panning out.
Conditional Action Plans – give you a way of scheduling future activities that are set up when specific conditions are fulfilled.
Calendar – a shared calendar used by your CRM team shows you who will be busy and when.
For organisations that use CRM as a shared source of information, these tools become very powerful, as they offer you and your team shared visibility of what is going on in your world. Planning internal meetings becomes nice and easy – a glance at the Calendar should tell you when everyone’s free – no need to send out a dozen emails!
Is your cloud CRM solution helping you plot a safe route for you and your team to plan and schedule your business?
My role is to build our Customer Success team and I work with our clients and prospects helping them get the most from their subscription – it is a fun challenging role as no two days are the same. When not in the office I’ll be either making a noise on my guitar or getting my trainers on for a run out in the Yorkshire Dales, North York Moors or the Lake District.