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Recording and reporting on pipeline velocity RRS feed

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    Hi all,

    We're trying to report on changes to our sales pipeline over time. We've implemented a custom business flows against Leads and Opportunity but would now like to illustrate how the pipeline changes over time.

    In our process it's possible for opportunities to move forward through the business flow, but also move to previous stages. When an opportunities moves to a previous stage in the flow, we'd like to automatically display a dialog to allow the user to specify a reason for the backward movement.

    Ideally we'd like to report on:

    • Aggregate pipeline changes over time (e.g. Q1 2014 pipeline vs Q2 2014 pipeline)
    • Pipeline velocity (e.g. how quickly an opportunity moves through the stages of the pipeline)
    • Reasons for pipeline regression (i.e. why do opportunities regress to earlier stages of the pipeline)

    We're using CRM Online so I'm mindful there may be some constraints of the report customisations we can make.

    Does anyone have any thoughts on how to approach capturing pipeline movement information, and our reporting needs?

    Many thanks.

    Saturday, July 19, 2014 11:53 PM

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    Hi Nksoz, we're dealing with something very similar with one of our customers now.

    The ultimate answer is that CRM, and CRM's default reporting services, are not meant to enable time-based reporting. As a result, the path we're going down is that of a data warehouse; tools that were meant to do exactly what you're talking about.

    If that is not an option, however,  I would suggest creating some hidden fields that populate the date/time whenever sales stage is changed on a particular record. With a few of these fields, you should be able to capture the duration between sales stages and then report on them later. Some of the logic may get tricky with users having the ability to move backwards through the sales stage, but this could likely be mitigated through the use of logic and business rules. 

    Hopefully this is helpful.

    • Proposed as answer by Ryan Telesca Thursday, July 24, 2014 3:22 PM
    • Marked as answer by Nksoz Sunday, July 27, 2014 11:09 PM
    Thursday, July 24, 2014 3:22 PM

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    Hi Nksoz, we're dealing with something very similar with one of our customers now.

    The ultimate answer is that CRM, and CRM's default reporting services, are not meant to enable time-based reporting. As a result, the path we're going down is that of a data warehouse; tools that were meant to do exactly what you're talking about.

    If that is not an option, however,  I would suggest creating some hidden fields that populate the date/time whenever sales stage is changed on a particular record. With a few of these fields, you should be able to capture the duration between sales stages and then report on them later. Some of the logic may get tricky with users having the ability to move backwards through the sales stage, but this could likely be mitigated through the use of logic and business rules. 

    Hopefully this is helpful.

    • Proposed as answer by Ryan Telesca Thursday, July 24, 2014 3:22 PM
    • Marked as answer by Nksoz Sunday, July 27, 2014 11:09 PM
    Thursday, July 24, 2014 3:22 PM
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    Thanks Ryan, appreciate your input.

    It's easy to get wrapped up in trying to use Dynamics for everything. It's good to be reminded that often a different approach is the way to go. I'm going to look into capturing business flow changes in a way that allows  a reason for the change to be captured, however will also suggest the use of our data warehouse to assist with reporting.

    Sunday, July 27, 2014 11:09 PM