Wednesdays With Will: Do You Have A Business Process?

By William Marchesano, Technology Advisor & Evangelist

I recently met up with a friend of mine who owns a small but growing business.  He was telling how when the business had less than 10 employees things seemed so much simpler.  Everyone wore multiple hats and they just figured it out as they went along.  They must have been doing something right because before he knew it they had doubled in staff.  As they approached 15-20 employees, he realized they couldn’t do things as they had in the past.  Roles became more defined and the need to put processes in place became essential.  Like most entrepreneurs, he was more of a visionary than a process implementer.  For that reason, he hired a management consultant firm to help him develop processes for his expanding business.

Though the management consulting firm helped him in multiple areas of his business, my friend was most proud of his newly developed sales process.  They hadn’t had a formalized process in the past and pretty much left it up to each salesperson to figure it out on their own.  Once again this was fine when they only had 2 or 3 sales people but as the business continued to grow and their sales team approached 8-10 people there were need for some standardization.  His goal was to help his sales team open more opportunities and achieve a higher success rate from those opportunities.  He was also thinking about how he could simplify the onboarding process for a new hire and reduce the amount of time it would take to get them up to speed.  Having a sales process in place would allow him to accomplish both outcomes.

My friend is aware of my passion for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms.  The management consultant recommended they start using one to reinforce the processes that had been developed for them.  I couldn’t agree more.   What is the value of developing a process if you have no way to ensure it stays in place?  I told him how Microsoft Dynamics CRM has had an “out-of-the-box” business process built into it since the 2013 version.  Every business has its own unique sales process and Microsoft has accounted for this.  You have the ability to customize the business process to match your business’s need.  Analytics provided by Dynamics CRM would allow you to adjust your business process if need be as well.

Here’s a short video showing you what the business process looks like in Microsoft Dynamics CRM:

As always, I encourage you to reach out to me to discuss these topics in deeper detail. I hope you enjoyed and found this week’s article informative. If you’re interested in some how-to related CRM material, check out blogs by my colleague Ben Ward here. Till next time…

About the author:
Will has over 16 years of experience in business development, team management, and project management. Will has worked at Managed Solution for over four years and is currently advising businesses on best CRM practices and implementations. Will’s focus is on process improvement and analytics specializing in Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Will is a Microsoft Certified Professional, with certifications in Presales Technical Specialist – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Sales Specialist- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 Application, Sales Specialist- Office 365, Sales Specialist- SMB Infrastructure and Sales Specialist- Datacenter.

For information on deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM in your organization, please call us at 800-257-0691.

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Other articles by Will Marchesano:

• Wednesdays With Will: Do You Have A Business Process?

• Wednesdays With Will: Self-Serve Customer Service

• Wednesdays With Will: Customer Engagement

• Wednesdays With Will: Knowledge Is Power

• Wednesdays With Will: Sales Pipeline Management Is Essential

• Wednesdays With Will: Your Mobile Workforce

• Wednesdays With Will: Voice Of The Customer

• Wednesdays With Will: Visualize Your Business

• Wednesdays With Will: Business Resolutions

• Wednesdays With Will: Analyzing Business Analytics

• Wednesdays With Will: The Importance Of Social Engagements

• Wednesdays With Will: Improving The Service In Customer Service

• Wednesdays With Will: Empowering Your Sales Team With Microsoft Dynamics CRM

• Wednesdays With Will: From Marketing to Smarketing Leveraging Microsoft Dynamics CRM

• Technology Making Dreams A Virtual Reality

• Wednesdays With Will: Microsoft Dynamics CRM & Office 365 – Working In Perfect Harmony

• Wednesdays With Will: Making Your Business Intelligent