Recommended CRM Order of Events

We recommend that you use CRM in a test environment first so that you become familiar with how it works before using it in your live environment.

Order of events:

  1. Identify the base values for the various fields on the CRM forms. Several of the CRM forms each have dropdown fields for which values need to be defined. Some are required, and some are optional. If possible, the dropdown values should be set up before importing CRM data or entering any data into these forms (with exception to the Customers form/table which most likely already has data). Those forms that have these dropdown values include: Leads, Opportunities, Opportunity Tasks, Prospects, and Customers.

    When defining the values, it is important to think about how you will use CRM and how you want to track progress on leads and opportunities, as well as tracking other information such as where the lead or opportunity came from, what was the reason for the win or loss, and what types of tasks might there be when working with an opportunity. You also need to decide if you want to track your data by territory. Your Infor Business Partner or the Infor ICS team can assist with defining these values based on the needs of your organization.

    Note:  Although the system won't prevent you from changing the values later, it may be undesirable as it would invalidate any existing records with those values. Scripts could be written though to update any existing records prior to changing the values.

    The values that need to be defined include:

    • Lead Statuses (required, Leads form)
    • Opportunity Statuses (required, Opportunities form)
    • Opportunity Sources (optional, Leads and Opportunities forms)
    • Opportunity Stages (optional, Opportunities form)
    • Opportunity Won Reasons (optional, Opportunities form)
    • Opportunity Lost Reasons (optional, Opportunities form)
    • Opportunity Task Types (optional, Opportunity Tasks form)
    • Territories (optional, Customers and Prospects forms)
  2. Enter/import your sales contacts. You can import contacts from Outlook or set them up manually. If you have the data defined in another database, you may want to create import scripts to import the data. We recommend you contact your Infor Business Partner or Infor ICS to assist with this process.
  3. Set up any existing prospects and then cross reference them to your sales contacts, using the Prospect Sales Contact Cross References form.
  4. Cross reference any of your existing customers to the contacts you imported or manually set up. Use the Customer Sales Contact References form to complete this.
  5. Enter any existing leads, opportunities, opportunity tasks, and quotes that you already have and want to begin tracking. If you need to import these, we recommend you contact your Infor Business Partner or Infor ICS to assist with this process.
  6. Begin using CRM.
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