CRM 4.0 - Implementing sales process as an opportunity workflow

Hi,

My customer has very complex sales processes that must be implemented in crm.
I've created a workflow on the opportunity but run into several problems.

1) My customer must be able to skip stages (or better, jump to or start the
process in a particular stage). I it was possible to skip in the old crm 3
sales process and I've read its possible in CRM 4 but I can't find a way to
do this. How do I skip a stage?

2) Is it possible to show what stage they are in without viewing the whole
(complex ) workflow under "workflows"? Of course, I can add a field and
update it whenever you enter a stage but are there better ways to solve this?

3) The CRM 3 sales process waited until all tasks in a stage was completed
before proceeding to the next stage. It also updated the probability of a
sale. I can't find this option in CRM 4. Do I really have to create a "(wait
for activity to complete OR wait for activity to be cancelled)" for every
activity and add a "sett field 'probability' to n%'" in every stage? What
happends if the user deletes the activity? Will the whole workflow become
corrupted/defunc?

4) Is there a way to skip a step in the workflow?



It seems to me the old sales process was far better than the new
workflow-approach to sales processes. Am I missing something?

stevek
Wed Mar 12 13:33:01 CDT 2008

Hi Christian,

I ditto your problem and have posted the same exact issue but no one is
responding to our issue. Further, i have logged a support incident on this
and the reply I got is that there is no way for CRM 4.0 to skip stages. The
functionality of Sales Process was far superior in CRM 3.0 as it displayed
for users all sales process steps and its status in "Sales Process"
navigation pane menu and allowed user to skip steps and had much more
functionality. CRM 4.0 is a huge step backward and can be a deal breaker in
CRM 4.0 upgrades where customers are relying heavily on Sales Process
functionality.

"Christian" wrote:

> Hi,
>
> My customer has very complex sales processes that must be implemented in crm.
> I've created a workflow on the opportunity but run into several problems.
>
> 1) My customer must be able to skip stages (or better, jump to or start the
> process in a particular stage). I it was possible to skip in the old crm 3
> sales process and I've read its possible in CRM 4 but I can't find a way to
> do this. How do I skip a stage?
>
> 2) Is it possible to show what stage they are in without viewing the whole
> (complex ) workflow under "workflows"? Of course, I can add a field and
> update it whenever you enter a stage but are there better ways to solve this?
>
> 3) The CRM 3 sales process waited until all tasks in a stage was completed
> before proceeding to the next stage. It also updated the probability of a
> sale. I can't find this option in CRM 4. Do I really have to create a "(wait
> for activity to complete OR wait for activity to be cancelled)" for every
> activity and add a "sett field 'probability' to n%'" in every stage? What
> happends if the user deletes the activity? Will the whole workflow become
> corrupted/defunc?
>
> 4) Is there a way to skip a step in the workflow?
>
>
>
> It seems to me the old sales process was far better than the new
> workflow-approach to sales processes. Am I missing something?
>
>

stevek
Wed Mar 12 13:40:00 CDT 2008

Oh another thing. You could redo sales stages in CRM 3.0 and there si no way
to do this is CRM 4.0. It would take far too much custom programming to
restore the fucntionality that was available in CRM 3.0 and I wish Microsoft
would do something about this. I can unerstand the impetus for moving to
unified windows workflow foundation but don't take away functionalities that
users are relying on in CRM 3.0.

"stevek" wrote:

> Hi Christian,
>
> I ditto your problem and have posted the same exact issue but no one is
> responding to our issue. Further, i have logged a support incident on this
> and the reply I got is that there is no way for CRM 4.0 to skip stages. The
> functionality of Sales Process was far superior in CRM 3.0 as it displayed
> for users all sales process steps and its status in "Sales Process"
> navigation pane menu and allowed user to skip steps and had much more
> functionality. CRM 4.0 is a huge step backward and can be a deal breaker in
> CRM 4.0 upgrades where customers are relying heavily on Sales Process
> functionality.
>
> "Christian" wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > My customer has very complex sales processes that must be implemented in crm.
> > I've created a workflow on the opportunity but run into several problems.
> >
> > 1) My customer must be able to skip stages (or better, jump to or start the
> > process in a particular stage). I it was possible to skip in the old crm 3
> > sales process and I've read its possible in CRM 4 but I can't find a way to
> > do this. How do I skip a stage?
> >
> > 2) Is it possible to show what stage they are in without viewing the whole
> > (complex ) workflow under "workflows"? Of course, I can add a field and
> > update it whenever you enter a stage but are there better ways to solve this?
> >
> > 3) The CRM 3 sales process waited until all tasks in a stage was completed
> > before proceeding to the next stage. It also updated the probability of a
> > sale. I can't find this option in CRM 4. Do I really have to create a "(wait
> > for activity to complete OR wait for activity to be cancelled)" for every
> > activity and add a "sett field 'probability' to n%'" in every stage? What
> > happends if the user deletes the activity? Will the whole workflow become
> > corrupted/defunc?
> >
> > 4) Is there a way to skip a step in the workflow?
> >
> >
> >
> > It seems to me the old sales process was far better than the new
> > workflow-approach to sales processes. Am I missing something?
> >
> >