We’re proud to announce today the launch of Sales Cycle Manager On Demand 2.0. Version 2.0 is an exciting milestone for us here at SalesWays! We’ve been working hard building many new features in response to your feedback.
Sales Cycle Manager On Demand is now faster and more user-friendly than ever.
In version 2.0, you can configure the Products setup in a number of ways depending on your needs. There are several options that allow you to make entering product information for sales opportunities as simple or as detailed as needed.
There’s also a new custom IBO field that can be used to add any kind of information to each sales opportunity, for example an internal reference number or commission-tracking code.
New data export formats give you greater flexibility in how you pull and use data, and a new analytics section for administrators adds a new dimension of reporting for your organization.
Below is a list of all major feature updates in Sales Cycle Manager version 2.0.
New features and enhancements
User Features
- Improved speed and performance
- Improved flow – column sorting and page settings are preserved as you navigate through the application. When you come back to the planner view from another screen it remembers which priority tab you were looking at previously.
- Search by country is now available in the IBO list in version 2.0.
Administrator Features
Export Options
- New Export Formats – You can now export to CSV, XLS or HTML formats. These options are helpful to accommodate a wider range of spreadsheet programs.
Users
- Ignore IP Whitelist – Enable a user to have access to Sales Cycle Manager from anywhere, regardless of your IP Whitelist settings.
- Export User List – This is handy is you want to export your list of users for use in an external emailing tool, for example.
Roles
- Assign Roles – If a user is removed from an assigned role where they own any open IBOs, a toolbox will open that prompts you to re-assign the open IBOs to another user and role. This ensures that all open IBOs are being looked after even when there changes in your organization.
IBO Form
- Default Expert Mode – Enable this option to automatically open the Expert Mode in the Sales Cycle Dashboard for new IBOs.
- Advanced IBO Role Filter – If enabled, a user who has multiple roles can choose which role(s) an IBO should belong under. This can be set to ‘required’ to force each IBO to belong under at least one of the user’s roles.
- Attachments – Option to disable attachments for IBOs and Interactions
- Custom Field - Add an extra field to the opportunity form. This is a text field and can be used to store information about an IBO such as a reference number.
Product Setup
- Hide Product Groups, Hide Product Number, Hide Qty & Unit Price – Options to simplify adding products to IBOs if desired.
- Custom Product Information Fields – Administrators can add custom fields for Products. The custom fields can be text input fields or selection boxes. Administrators can define the name of the custom field and its options that are available to users in the IBO form Product Information section.
Analytics
- Login Activity – Administrators can view a log of users and their login activity. Can be exported.
- IBO Activity – Administrators can view a log of IBO activity including user, IBO number, time-stamp and actions (save or delete). Can be exported.
I received a comment to a previous post that got me thinking. It seems that there needs to be parallel efforts in maintaining both Acquisition and Retention, with equal focus, and not one at the expense of the other. In my post I said I thought that Acquisition was the mandate of Sales Force Automation (SFA), whereas Retention was in the realm of CRM. I did that, because I am fixated with trying to disentangle these two terms.
If we drive down to the departmental level, it seems that Marketing and Sales should drive Acquisition, and after sales service should drive Retention. In my book I discuss the “long winded title of Acquisition and Retention loop” (page 27) – long winded, because I could not find any other description that was suitable.
So after I write this, I realize that I was wrong—sales is not the only group responsible for acquisition, marketing is in there too.
Definitely everything falls under the umbrella of CRM, but that term has become so all encompassing that it is tough to look below and see what it all means.
Perhaps, if companies are focusing too much on Retention at the expense of Acquisition, or vice versa, one department may be more powerful than the other, in other words they don’t have a unified CRM program that’s working well. If they did the normal departmental interplay would help them achieve the right balance.
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