Changes to Opportunities in ACT!

[#1]

An ACT! Certified Consultant made the following observations related to opportunities in ACT!: 

I spend a lot of time in Opportunities in ACT! and I  need a way to track history and activities linked to an opportunity. 

I’d like to see Opportunities looking like Contacts, and Companies, so I can still link one Opportunity to multiple contacts or companies, and be able to track history for that Opportunity.

Do you use opportunities and have a suggestion for improvement?

Message Edited by alduet on 06-01-2009 10:08 AM

Message Edited by kjosephs on 06-09-2009 09:40 PM

[#2]

Certainly, it would be a benefit if we could automatically trigger an activity or activity series when moving from one sales stage to the next.

Jeff

[#3]

All Contact details (Company, Contact, phone, etc) available to the Sales Opportunity List and Tab

Ability to put custom ops fields in Quotes

Auto-number quotes and ops

Alarms when an opportunity is due

Activities (even for multiple users) connected to an opportunity - so you can project manage a sale even when different part need to be done by different users or with different contacts

[#4]

you can link an opportunity to multiple contacts in Act2009 but other than that i agree with all of teh above

[#5]

I agree and like to add in Opportunity List window (Table) under Process/Stage and in Dash Board Filter you be able to specify by an Opportunity field.

Example field called reference that has a code "Mailer01" This way you can in Dash board Filter by field to see how much was sold or forecasted by mailer campaign. Also have the same added selection under Stage so you can list what you want to export / view not having to go through report or selecting those records and omit them in the view.

Thanks,

JM

[#6]

I agree with most of the suggestions on this post.  Act2010 added many more options and functionality to Opportunities, but I still don't see a way to track the history of one.

What good does it do a Sales Manager to have his\her sales people enter 100's of opportunities if there is no way to track how long each one has been "stalled" in a particular stage of the sales funnel?  I can see what opportunities have been in the system for 30, 60 or 90 days, but there is no easy way that I have found for pulling up which ones have been in a particular stage for a specified amount of time, or more.  This is critical to tracking the sales person's progress (or lack thereof).

Alarms or reminders would be a great idea too.  For example, if an opportunity stays in a stage for longer than 60 days, a reminder should be sent to the sales person and\or manager.  I also like the idea of using triggers when certain changes are made to an opportunity.  I have added many new fields to our opportunity tabs (the main reason I upgraded to 2010) of which many could make use of automatic triggers when their status is changed.

I use an add-on called TopLine Dash that adds additional capabilities for dashboards & Excel based reports.  But, like all other add-ons, it is still hampered by many of Act's field limitations.