Target Tracking

18 Sep 2008

OK, here’s a personal gripe and a new feature that solves this for me and I am hoping, will help our user base as well.

We use a number of Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) here, to see if we are ‘on track’.

This includes;

• Counting New Leads and Enquiries
• Activity monitoring – are we making the right number of calls
• New Opportunities
• Quotations in the market
• Sales Orders – that’s the signed business
• Invoices raised – that’s the money due
• Cash received – that my cash flow analysis
• Who’s not paying – outstanding balances

All of the above are great and we get the vast majority of this information, very easily, from within OpenCRM.

However, I am an ‘old dog’ (perhaps with some new tricks!), but I cant get away from the Sales Whiteboard that I have lived with for 20 years, where I can see, at a glance, without any effort on my part, how the company sales are doing against target, in a specific period. For me, the period is ‘Current Month’, but I meet people all of the time that like to see YTD or Current Quarter.

I guess I like to see if we are roughly where we should be at any given time. If its half way through the month and we are less than 50%, then that visual indicator helps focus my attention and the efforts of the sale team.

So, the new feature!!

Within OpenCRM you can now set targets for the business. This can be set in a number of ways, either, Company Wide, in other words a global figure that is divided equally by 12 to give a monthly target, Monthly targets that can be set to fluctuate depending on any seasonal changes OR user specific, where you can set a target, for each month of the year, for each user, giving you an overall company target, but one balanced across all of your fee earners.

On the left hand column, within OpenCRM, you now get a Target Panel – this shows the Current Target for the default period (as I say this for me is Current Month), just like I would get on a Whiteboard, but now it’s ‘in my face’ whenever I go into the system.

There is already a phase two development project looking at how this can be displayed Target -v- Forecast, so much more to come as well as individual target settings to help personalise how your target is displayed.

Sales Pitch : If you want to see how this works and discuss how OpenCRM can help your sales team manage their targets and pipeline forecasting, just give us a call or email me on grahama at add-ons dot co dot uk