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Corteza CRM

Corteza CRM is a highly flexible, scalable and open source Customer Relationship Management solution.

Since the Corteza CRM is highly customizable it is possible that this guide differs from your CRM.

In such cases, please contact your system administrator.

Home

The home page is accessible by clicking on the "Home" in the main navigation bar on the top of the screen.

The homepage is the main dashboard for your business — it gives you a quick overview of the most important information in the CRM.

By default, it shows you essential statistics regarding your leads, a calendar with events, as well as lists of your new leads, key opportunities and tasks.

Leads

The Leads page is accessible by clicking on the "Leads" in the main navigation bar on the top of the screen.

There are three pages dedicated to leads — one main page and two subpages. They all show leads but with different filtering.

  • Leads shows all of the leads in the system,

  • All New Leads shows only the leads that have the New status,

  • My Leads shows only the leads that are assigned to you.

A lead or a prospect is an individual who might become your customer, but currently is not. They are usually converted into accounts, contacts and opportunities.

Add a new lead

A new lead can be added from either one of the subpages.

  1. Click on the "+ Add" button to open up the form,

  2. populate the data and press the "Save" button on the bottom right corner.

The rating field is incredibly helpful as it allows you to see which leads are qualified as good leads.

The typical process of handling a lead after it is inserted in the system is for the assigned salesperson to follow up on the lead. This salesperson can contact, and further qualify the lead.

Try to retrieve as much relevant lead data as possible. It will help you create interesting charts, such as leads per country or leads per industry.

Fill in the lead’s personal or company twitter profile. This allows you to see, directly in the lead record, a list of latest tweets from that profile.

You can create notes, events and tasks for a lead.

Converting the lead

A lead should be converted when there is a sales opportunity.

You have two options:

Convert this lead into an Account

This creates an account and a contact for the lead. Use it when a lead shows some interest but its not exactly clear what the sales opportunity will look like.

Convert this lead into an Account and Opportunity

This creates an account, contact and an opportunity for the lead. Use it when a lead shows interest, and we already have enough info about the sales opportunity.

When a lead is converted, the generated Contact is set as the primary contact for the account.

Tips for determining a lead rating

If a lead shows commercial interest, such as a request for pricing and the lead’s location matches the region your business targets, this lead could be considered a 5 star lead.

If a lead performed some additional interactions, such as going through a demo, they could be considered a 3 star lead.

If a lead contacted you regarding, but it’s clear that there is no explicit business intention, it can be considered a 0 star or a 1 star lead.

Accounts

The Accounts page is accessible by clicking on the "Accounts" in the main navigation bar on the top of the screen.

Accounts are entities (companies or other) that you are doing business with. Here you can store information such as company size, opportunities and business contact information.

You can create a new account in two ways:

  1. By clicking on the "Add" button, or

  2. by converting a lead. In this case, the account and primary contact inherit the lead data.

An account has, just as a lead, an owner. The "account owner" is the person responsible for the account.

The most important block in accounts is "Opportunities" (potential sales). To generate a new "Opportunity" for the account, press the "Create new Opportunity from this account".

Other related blocks are:

  1. Contacts: all the contacts related to the account.

  2. Contracts: all contracts, active or inactive related to the account.

  3. Cases: All cases that are related to the account.

  4. Notes, Events and Tasks.

The primary contact provides contact information when generating documents such as quotes.

You can create new contracts for the account by pressing the "Create new Contract from this account" button.

You can create new cases for the account by pressing the "Create new Case from this account" button.

Opportunities

The Opportunities page is accessible by clicking on the "Opportunities" in the main navigation bar on the top of the screen.

When you generate an opportunity for a given account, you indicate that you have uncovered a potential future sale and thus potential revenue.

An opportunity name should be short and descriptive to identify what the opportunity is about quickly. For example, "300 licenses" is a good example, as it is short and straight to the point.

The close date is set to one month after the opportunity is created.

The close date determination is configurable via the settings.

The "stage" field allows you to identify what stage a given opportunity is in. When you create an opportunity, it is set to "Qualification". Once correctly qualified, you can move it to "Proposal" (or to "Need Analysis", if more analysis is needed). The last few steps are "Negotiation", followed by "Closed Won" or "Closed Lost".

You can generate Quotes for an opportunity, and add notes, events and tasks.

Use the "Contact Roles" block to create a clear overview of the people related to the opportunity, including their contact data and role.

How to add products to an opportunity and automaticaly update the total amount

The typical process is:

  1. Select a price book. You can have multiple price books in your organisation, offering different prices for the same product, depending on region and client organization type.

  2. Add a products. Note that you will only have to insert the quantity, and optionally "Discount". Other fields will be filled in automatically

  3. Click on the button "Update prices of Products by applying the selected Price Book and inserted discounts"

You can overwrite the list price of the product by inserting a different sales price manually.

You can edit the list of products directly when you are in the editing mode of the opportunity record. This is faster then adding products one by one.

Tips for qualifying leads

It is useful to figure out the following data:

  • Budget: Check if there is actually a budget,

  • Authority: Check if you are talking to or being able to get through to the decision-makers,

  • Need: Check if there is an actual need for the product/service,

  • Timeline: Check by when the product/service needs to be delivered or implemented, and if this timeline makes sense,

  • Competition: Check whom you are competing with.

Tasks

The Tasks page is accessible by clicking on the "Tasks" in the main navigation bar on the top of the screen.

Tasks allow you to keep track of actions that need to be completed by someone; either yourself or someone else.

Make sure to set the task as "Closed" once you complete it.

You can access tasks either from the list on the current page or on the calendar on the homepage.

You can relate tasks to leads, accounts, contacts, opportunities, quotes or contacts.

Campaigns

The Campaigns page is accessible by clicking on the "Campaigns" in the main navigation bar on the top of the screen.

A campaign is a planned marketing project that you want to manage and keep track of from within the CRM. This allows you to analyze different business strategies and analyze which one is most effective.

A campaign can be anything from a simple newsletter, seminar, conference, or any other type of marketing initiative.

Leads, contacts, accounts and opportunities are related to campaigns, as campaign members. The campaign - opportunity relationship allows you to calculate values such as the ROI (Return Of Investment) based on the campaign cost and expected revenue.

To calculate the ROI, you need to insert the cost of the campaign. The CRM creates the numbers that compare the costs to the value of the won opportunities.

Campaign results are automatically updated.

Try to add campaigns to all your leads. Upon lead conversion, the campaigns are mapped to the account and opportunity, allowing you to define the ROI of your lead generation activities.

Quotes

The Quotes page is accessible by clicking on the "Quotes" in the main navigation bar on the top of the screen.

You generate a quote from an opportunity. An opportunity can have multiple quotes. A quote allows you to complete the payment and thus charge the customer.

Products in an opportunity are inserted as quote line items.

Quote "Bill to", "Quote to" and "Ship to" information are retrieved from the account related.

You can overwrite automatically mapped information in a quote without problems.

You can send a quote via email to the primary contact or a custom email.

Products

The Products page is accessible by clicking on the "Products" in the main navigation bar on the top of the screen.

Here you can manage all of your companies products and services.

Each product has a description and related files. The cost of the product is determined by the price book. The product can be linked to cases.

Price book

Your company may have different price books depending on the region and client organization type.

The price book determines how much the product costs. When creating an opportunity, product prices and the totals are calculated based on the selected price book.

Add products rapidly to a price book by opening the price book in editing mode and adding the products there.

Dashboards

The Dashboards page is accessible by clicking on the "Dashboards" in the main navigation bar on the top of the screen.

Dashboards help you to visually understand changing business conditions so you can make decisions based on the real-time data of your CRM.

Corteza CRM comes built-in with a handful of predefined dashboards that should give you enough understanding about the business.

Your dashboards can also include social media feeds.

Cases

The Cases page is accessible by clicking on the "Cases" under the "More" dropdown in the main navigation bar on the top of the screen.

Cases is a simplified case management tool built right into your CRM. It allows you to keep track of various customer complaints, disputes or similar.

They can be linked to accounts, contacts products or even to other cases.

You can define who is part of the case, what role they have, keep track of the progress and assign notes and tasks.

You can store a resolved case as a "Solution". Solutions help you to solve (future) similar cases with ease.

Events

The Events page is accessible by clicking on the "Events" under the "More" dropdown in the main navigation bar on the top of the screen.

Events help you stay organized by keeping track of the things you should do.

You can access your events either from the Events page or from the homepage. They are also accessible from any other page that allows events; such as leads and opportunities.