Configuring Sales Funnel. Linking Business Processes to the Funnel.

Sales Funnel is a customer management tool that allows assessing how effective was a sales rep or the entire sales department at any stage of the sale. The idea is that at each stage a sales rep work with a certain number of clients; once the stage is complete, some of the clients "drop out" and some move to the next stage; it continues until a sale is made.

ELMA allows configuring a sales funnel from any perspective: by deal statuses or region, by department or individual reps, i.e. by any parameters you specify in the Advanced Search.

Fig. 1. Advanced search for generating a sales funnel

You can create several sales funnels. To do so, you need to create instances of the Sales Funnel object.

Creating and configuring a sales funnel

To create a sales funnel, go to Objects – CRM – Sales Funnel and click Create. To learn more, see ELMA Help. At this step, you need to define the deal stages that will be included in the sales funnel.

The created sales funnel must be specified in an instance of the Deal Type object. Go to Objects – CRM – Deal Type and click Create. Enter a name and select the created sales funnel.

Fig. 2. Creating a deal type

Once you've configured the sales funnel, users will be able to change stages according to the specified Deal type. To learn more, see this Help page.

When changing deal stages, data will be added to the sales funnel. To learn more about deal stages see this Help page.

To view a sales funnel, open the Sales Funnel page and select the required funnel in the filter tree (CRM – Sales Funnel).

Fig. 3. Sales Funnel report

The report shows the information about deal stages and the number of deals that have gone through particular stages. You can also use the advanced search and select, for example, a contractor. The report will display the information related to this contractor.

Fig. 4. Sales funnel for the Centiro contractor

You can get more information on deals from the Deal Dynamics report (see this Help page).

Active Sales Funnel

Along with the regular sales funnel, ELMA offers the active sales funnel. The active sales funnel is different from the regular in that stages are changed by using business processes. Thus, it is impossible to change stage without logging the required information to the system. For example, at the 03. Selling Solution stage not all the data necessary for further work towards a contract are specified, and the manager already wants to change the deal stage. In this case, the system will show a notification:

Fig. 5. Warning when changing stage

To continue, select:

Interrupt – interrupt the process and set the required stage (if permissions to interrupt the process are granted in the process settings);

Continue – change the deal stage, while the process remains active;

Cancel – close the dialog box.

Creating and configuring the active sales funnel

To create an active sales funnel, go to Objects – CRM – Sales Funnel and click Create). To learn more, see the Help page.

At this stage you need to identify deal stages that will participate in the funnel. Also you need to add business processes to transitions between stages.

Example of creating a stage:

Fig. 6. Adding a deal stage

After configuring the sales funnel, users will be able to change stages according to the selected Deal Type. To learn more, see this Help page. When changing a deal stage, the sales funnel will be filled in. If a process is specified in the transition between stages, it will be started automatically.

For example, when changing to the 03. Selling Solution stage, a business process is started.

Once the process is completed, the deal stage will change to 03. Selling Solution:

Fig. 7. Deal page

To view a sales funnel, open the Sales Funnel page and select the required funnel in the filter tree (CRM – Sales Funnel).

To create an active sales funnel you must be able to select a process for a transition between stages. For this, you need to configure some settings in ELMA Designer:

create processes for transitions between deal stages;
create a Deal type variable for these processes and mark it as Input.

Fig. 8. Deal type variable in the process context

To change a deal stage in the process, you can use the custom activity Change deal properties or a script. To learn more about custom activities, see this Help page.

Fig. 9. Settings of the Custom Activity

Thus, using the active sales funnel ensures adherence to the sales process procedures.