Opportunity Management 2.0

[john]

Looking for ideas on how to improve/extend/evolve the Sugar Opportunity Management module.
John

[sweettooth]

The Opportunity module in Sugar currently encapsulates a End Customer and 1 or more products..all of which identify the Opportunity..

In some verticals, there is a need to also identify Contract Manufacturers/Manufacturing location and their capacity to manufacture over a period of time..So if Cisco were to be an end customer in an opportunity, it might want to capture the fact that it outsources manufacturing to mexico and taiwan and who those manufacturers are..This kind of support is important in almost all manufacturing environments.

Architecturally, I would like to see this developed as an extension to the base Opportunity module..so the overhead is minimal in environments where this fucntionality is not required..

Once these extensions are supported in the Opportunity, Forecasts will also have to support the notion of End Customer Forecast and Con. Mfr Forecasts..

-st

[ruchida]

I agree to that idea.
I think Sugar needs to adopt a concept of "partnership" in the opportunity module. The "partner" may include a reseller partner, technology partner, manufacturing partner, and so on.

All the reporting results should be able to display figures according to these partners.

[eburneo]

Yes! the concept of partnership would be great! But please thik at it either from a B2B point of view and in a B2C: i.e. the partner should be a contact or an account...

[malcolmh]

Hi,

there a few ways that I would like to improve Opportunity Management.

I would like an additional contract module The contracts module should automatically notify the assigned user several months before the contract expires, so that the salespeople can address a new contract with he customer. The contracts sold by us directly to our customers would then be used when customers support requests are initiated as well.

I would also like a module that lists products a partuclar customer may have either from us or from competitors. This can be used in marketing campaigns to identify customers for new or enhanced products/solutions.

Cheers Malcolm

[Jumlong]

Our extended requirement ia a basic one, and we've done our own customization. You might want to implement it as standard.

We added three fields.
1. Lost to with Select button to popup "Competitor" type of Accounts
2. Reason#1 with dropdown to specify primary reason why you lost
3. Reason#2 with dropdown to specify another reason why you lost

[Jumlong]

Our other customized feature.

Feature#1: When a Quote is edited and changes in value, and when Save is pressed, a popup shows up asking "Quote value has changed, do want to update Opportunity value with Quote value ? Yes and No buttons.

Feature#2: Quick Close: closing an Opportunity and related Quotes together.
Add a button called "Quick Close" ? which brings up an edit page that shows closing fields from the current Opportunity and all related Quotes.


Opp Name:[ ] Stage:[ ] Lost to:[ ] Reason#1:[ ] Reason#2:[ ]
.....Quote Name:[ ] Stage:[ ]
.....Quote Name:[ ] Stage:[ ]
.....Quote Name:[ ] Stage:[ ]

[Save] [Cancel]

[albatroz]

I would like a way to track the quotes and quotes numbers.

BTW nowadays we use to send quotes by email, so a way to send those emails to an address like
sugar@mydomain.com and then have they parsed and saved into the Sugar Database repository
would be really cool.

For blocking spam only registered emails coming from will be parsed.

This helpdesk application have something like that in open source

http://forum.cerberusweb.com/showthr...&threadid=4382

[mrmilk]

In my opinion, most of the well-known sales techniques are covered by the opportunities module. Except for the missing "reason" field, for which there should have a pie chart on dashboard. Of course, there might be more needs, but I'd consider them "specific". For a generic solution with long-term-sales-cycle, it is great.

However, there is one thing, a little more complex and conceptual about pipeline (or funnil) management that I pointed out on this thread. Basically, the issue is the following:

In traditional sales cycles, we see sales stages as Prospecting, Qualification, Needs Analysis, and so on. The opportunities chart shows the TOTAL AMOUNT by sales stage. But, at most of sales stages we do not even have an opportunity yet. We only know the amount when we make a proposal, which is one of the last stages.

So, first thing is, the pipeline should be shown not with TOTAL AMOUNT but with NUMBER of records.

Second thing is, before making a proposal, the guy we have been talking to is not even a contact yet. He/she is a Lead, with possibly no account. So, the pipeline above would be with NUMBER OF LEADS that we have worked on. Maybe we should call it "Prospecting Cycle", a typical telemarketing activity. That means the so-called prospecting stages would have to be on Leads, not on opportunities.

The account would only go from telemkt to a sales rep during the proposal stage. That is, the sales stages would be just negotiation and closed/lost. At this point I think the chance would be the key data. Reports and charts would then be with TOTAL AMOUNT and probability.

[fdeis]

I would add some new fields to the opportunity module

A "Priority" field indicating 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... against other opportunities

If working in a currency other than US Dollars, I would add a field showing the current amount in US Dollars and the current amount in the local currency besides.

I would change the name "Amount" to "Forecast' as in several stages of an opportunity, we are forecasting the business income

I would add an "Opportunity ID" field, with an incremental number (not modifiable) as in the "Case ID"

Also a "Confidence %" field indicating the confidence in the deal, that would be independent from the "Probability %" field

Field indicating the partners invilved in the opportunity.

Those things I think would be useful in a Sales Force Automation (Opportunity) module

Best,

Federico Deis
Consulting Engineer
Server & Storage Solutions
MacOne