Company pipeline module

Structure

The company pipeline functions by, first and foremost, creating a board. A board can be something you do collaboratively or keep to yourself. On a board, you can have different lists, and these lists contain customers you possess in your CRM. To illustrate this, we can go through an example.

Me and my co-worker have a board named New sale. In this board, we have 4 lists called new possibility, contacted, offer sent, and landed. When you get a new customer, it will be put into new possibilities. Depending on what happens with the customers, moving them to other lists may be relevant to retain an easy overview of which customers you have in your pipeline. A card can contain many customers, and the company pipeline gives you an excellent overview. More examples and illustrations will follow.

The company pipeline is found in your CRM.

Creating

As we learned above, the first thing we need to do is create a board. We give the Board a name.

What name you give your pipeline is up to your judgment, but it can be wise to give it a recognizable name.

When you press Save, you will be redirected to your board, and we can create a list. This is done by pressing + Create a list.

Click this to be given the option of naming your list. When you press Save, your new list will be visible on your board.

Immediately we can see that we have a few alternatives. You can press the + sign to add a company from the CRM to your list, or you can press the pen to change the name of your list, archive the list or move the list (change where the list is positioned in relation to the others).

Settings for board

Now we will go through the different settings you have on a board. To get back to the company pipeline main window, you can press Esc on your keyboard or the Boards button in the top right corner.

In the Company pipeline window, we will now see the board we created earlier displayed. We will now explore the different settings you can adjust on your board, and to get there, you press the three dots visible next to the name of your board.

When you press it, you will be redirected to the following screen:

1. Here, you can change the name of your board.
2. Here, the lists on your board are displayed. You can drag and change their order.
3. Here, you can add and remove co-workers.

   Note

   All co-workers will be able to see your board, but if you add them, they will also have access to the settings of your board.

4. Here, we have the option of adding tags. These tags are always available on your board, but here you have the option of adding a small text. These can be used to mark different customers to illustrate different important notes simply.

5. Here, you can delete your board or go back to the company pipeline window.

Use

Now that we have set up a board, changed the settings, and created some lists, we will go deeper into how to use them. The first thing we do is go into our board again and add a company to our company pipeline. This is done by pressing the + symbol on one of your lists.

As apparent, when you press the +, a box will appear where you can search between your companies. As soon as you start writing, the system will start searching in your CRM and find companies. Press the company you wish to add. When you have chosen the company, a card will be created on the list that you chose.

The card explained

When the customer has been added, you can press the card on your list to be redirected to the following window:

1. At the top, we have the option to take some quick actions. Directly from here, you can:
   • Book a meeting – Press this to have your calendar appear, where you are able to create a meeting with the company easily. The company will be linked to the meeting, and it’s possible to choose from a list which contact persons are involved.
   • Send email – Here, you can send an email to the other participants linked to the card or contact persons linked to the company. More information about participants will be detailed in point 5, and contact persons in point 6.
   • Upload a logo for the company, and it will be visible on your board to make it extra clear and neat.
   • Create offer/agreement – If you press this, you will need to choose a project associated with the company. If one of these is selected, you will be able to write an offer to the customer and send it.
   • Archive this card with the red button on the right side.
2. On this line, you can do several things. You can click the company name to be redirected to the customer card, press one of the grey streaks to move the company further in your pipeline or press the pen to the right to change the working relationship with the company.
3. Here you have the option to write a description of the company. This can be very useful for adding good and useful information, which will be visible all the way at the top when you are looking at the company on the list. Note that this description field will not show up on the customer card.
4. As you may remember from the settings for the board, we appointed some tag names. These will reappear here so that we can mark our company card with one or several of these. These will be visible on the board.
5. In Participants, we can add different participants to the card. You will automatically be appointed as a participant on your own card, but you can also add or remove other co-workers. This is typically used when you need to be several collaborators on the same company.
6. Here, you can add contact persons to the company. You can choose both from a list of already existing contact persons, or you can create new ones.
7. Projects let you link projects associated with the company to the card. The projects you add here will be suggested when you create an offer etc. (see point 1).
8. Here, you can add candidates who will be linked to the company. The idea here is that, for example, in a recruitment process, you can link one or several candidates who will then be placed on the card.
9. From this part of the card, we can easily do several things. All the functions can be linked to contact persons in the company. These functions work in collaboration with the activity log (point 10) to give an exact timeline on the card. We will shortly go through them here:
   • Comment– Lets you easily add a comment to the card associated with the customer.

     Tip

     You can also add co-workers, so they will get a notification if you have commented, e.g., Glenn Lindmark can be added by writing @glennlindmark. You can write @ and then start typing a name, and the system will suggest co-workers.

   • New Activity – Lets you add an activity to the card. The different activities are Phone, meeting, follow-up and email. Typically used when you actually complete an activity, e.g., call the company.
   • New Task – Allows you to add a new task to the company quickly. This works like any other task in the system, and they will be visible on the Home screen when they are close to expiring etc.
   • Upload files – Allows you to upload files to the card.
10. Finally, we have the activity log. Here, you can follow all sorts of activities that have been done on the card, anything from adding tags and removing contact persons and candidates to comments and tasks. You can also filter through comments, files, activities and changelog to see the log for these categories individually.

Moving cards

In the blue menu, you have the option of moving your card. This means that you can take a card that you have worked a lot on and then move it to an entirely different board. Note that you can only move the card to a board where you are a participant.

Overview

After some usage, we get an excellent overview of the different customers in our pipeline. You can, with a glance, get information about each company, and you can click on each card to view the latest activities and happenings to figure out the next step. Do note that the cards themselves can be dragged and dropped to move them to different lists quickly.

Setting the value

You are also able to set a value for each card in the pipeline. Just click the dollar icon and enter the value. What the value means is something we recommend you and your co-workers agree on internally.

Note that the collected value from all the cards will be shown at the top of each list.

Good to know

You are able to add a Customer directly to a pipeline from the Customer card. Look at the picture below to see which button to click to start the process.

Upon entering the CRM, you are now able to see that a customer is in a company pipeline process. Simply click on the process tag to enter the card in the customer pipeline.

As long as you have added one or more contact persons on the customer card, you are able to add the right contact person on the card in the Company Pipeline. You can create a new contact person and remove the existing one. Look at the picture below to see how this is done.

By doing so, you will also see a tag on the Contact person view. This makes it easy to see if a contact person is connected to a certain Company Pipeline.