In Acumatica 2020 R1, the CRM workflow engine and functionality has been redesigned to match common lead qualification procedures. However, these procedures can be modified to suit your business workflow. Here’s a look at the newly-improved lead qualification workflow in Acumatica Customer Management (CRM).
Qualifying a Lead in Acumatica
In the Acumatica CRM module, a lead can be created with only a few pieces of information based on the business, contact, or product. From the Leads screen shown below, an inside sales or marketing representative can access the new or open leads in order to “qualify” them. Once qualified, the sales team can be notified via their personal dashboard, an email, push notification, or text message. These multiple alert options ensure no leads will fall through the cracks, or get lost in the hand-off between the sales and marketing teams.
After the lead has been qualified, it passes to the sales team that can choose to ‘accept’ the lead. Using ‘Activities’, the salesperson can track and log interactions with the prospect including emails, phone calls, appointments, follow-up tasks, and add relevant notes or files to the lead record. A lead can also become ‘disqualified’ if there is a failure to move it forward in the process … at which point, it may be sent back to the marketing team for lead nurturing.
Converting a Lead to an Opportunity
When a lead has reached the proper stage in the sales funnel, the salesperson can convert it to a formal ‘opportunity.’ Converting the lead will trigger the popup shown in the screenshot below. Here you can define the new opportunity ‘subject’, link it to a new business account if one has not yet been established, and also link a contact to the opportunity.
Starting with the Acumatica 2020 R1 release, multiple leads can be associated with one contact.
Once the lead is converted into an opportunity, the sales team takes over. There is added functionality in the Opportunities screen such as creating/sending quotes, designating shipping info, and applying discount details. The sales team can close the opportunity as “won” after receiving a signed quote, which can then seamlessly be turned into a Sales Order in Acumatica ERP.
In prior Acumatica releases, once the lead had been converted, the sales team was unable to send the lead back to marketing for further nurturing if needed. With the new workflow engine, the marketing team can reopen the opportunity from the converted Leads screen if deemed necessary. This feature-add helps keep the prospects engaged that are not sales ready but are likely to buy in the future.
Customizing the Lead Management Workflow
If your organization’s lead management workflow differs from the standard approach that has been described thus far, Acumatica provides functionality to modify the workflow to suit your unique internal processes. For instance, on the workflow editor shown below, you can use the checkboxes to determine which fields to disable, hide, or make required. You can also set which ‘actions’ should appear on the dropdown menu found on the Leads screen.
The “states” and “transitions” found in the left sidebar enable further customization of the CRM workflow in order to make it unique to your organization. By selecting those states, you can pick which action and transition should come next to match your workflow process.
Close More Sales in Acumatica CRM
The new workflow engine in Acumatica 2020 R1 will improve how sales and marketing work together and collaborate to drive new business. And with the added ability to modify the CRM workflow to meet unique processes, visibility into the active pipeline is cleaner, easier to navigate, and will ideally result in more closed sales!!
