Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Module

This module provides the necessary tools to manage customer information and interactions.

Nowadays, customers are faced with a wide spectrum of choices when it comes to products and

services. Customers will build great loyalty towards brands which with they have a positive

customer experience. A smart account manager will utilize a CRM system to personalize the

customer experience.

A good CRM system will build around the core goals and mission of the company. A good

CRM system will not just manage the sales process, but the entire customer experience and

interactions before and after the sale.

The typical CRM system contains Leads and Opportunities.

You can think of Leads as potential customers, while Opportunities are something that is

likely to turn into a real sale.

An example of a Lead could be business cards from people you have met at a business fair. An

example of an Opportunity would be if you were to talk more thoroughly about the products or

services you provide to one of the people you met at the fair.

Case Study – Silkworm

The Silkworm company slogan is: “We make great first impressions last.”

Here we have a slogan that gives value to customer experience. Below are a few critical service

expectations for good customer experience:

- Orders must be accurate and easy for customers to place

- Orders must be delivered on time

- Quality must be excellent

The following are the kinds of scenarios that you may want to consider when building a CRM

system:

- How are problem orders handled?

- How is the customer contacted if there is a product back order?

- If the customer calls, can the service representative easily provide delivery tracking

information?

Installing the CRM application

Assuming you have already installed Odoo, created a database and installed the Sales

Management module, you can install the CRM module the same way. Click on Apps on the top

menu, then find the CRM module and click “install”.

After installation of the CRM module is complete, you will be able to see the CRM module at

the top menu. Clicking on the CRM module you will be presented with the following screen:

This is your pipeline view. We will be going into more detail regarding the pipeline in the

following steps.

Turning on Leads

In order to be able to follow Leads within Odoo, you need to enable this setting. You can enable

Leads by choosing Settings under the Configuration section in the CRM menu like below.

Assigning the sales representative

We will begin by creating a salesperson that will handle customer accounts. A sales

representative is also a user in the Odoo system.

Create a new salesperson (user) by going to the Settings menu, selecting Users, then clicking the

Create button. The following new user form will appear. The form has been filled in for a

fictional salesperson (in this case I have put my own name). The e-mail address will be used by

the salesperson (user) you have created to access the database.

Access Rights

The Access Rights tab lets you control which applications the user will be able to access.

By default, Odoo will specify the user as an employee so we can leave that as is. It will also

specify the user as “Billing Manager” for Accounting&Finance, we can change that and leave

it blank meaning that the specific user has no access right for this module.

For the sales module, Odoo provides 3 options for users:

User: Own Documents Only

This is the most restrictive access. A user with this access level can only see the documents that

they have entered to the system themselves or that have been assigned to them.

User: All Documents

This setting allows the user to access all documents within the sales module.

Manager

The manager setting is the highest access level for the Sales module. This access level allows the

user to see all Leads as well as access the configuration options for the sales module. This setting

also allows the user to access statistical reports.

We will change the access right for sales to User: All documents. You can also add other

salespersons with User access rights as well as a Manager and create a sales team.

Do not forget to save!

Setting the user password

In the user screen, click on Action then Change Password. Click on the area under New

Password in the form that appears. Write the new password and click on Change Password.

This will be the password that this user enters to access this database.

Assigning a salesperson to a customer

Now that we have created a salesperson, we can assign them to their first customer. In our

previous module, we created a customer Mike Smith, but we did not assign a salesperson.

So let’s go to the Sales menu and click on Mike Smith to pull his customer record and assign our

new salesperson to him.

By assigning your customers a salesperson, you can better organize your customer and employee

reports.

Understanding the Pipeline

The pipeline helps organize your opportunities by what stage they are within your sales process.

You can see that at the top right corner there is a default filter in place. This filter allows you to

see only your own opportunities, if you clear this filter you will be able to see other opportunities

as well.

You can also customize your pipeline according to your sales process. You can see that there are

default columns such as New, Qualified, Proposition and Won. You can delete and add

columns as you wish. These will be the processes that you go through before the actual sale.

Creating Leads

Let’s say you met a potential customer (Lead) at an event. We will create a Lead for this person.

Click Leads and then Create under the CRM menu. The following form will appear.

This form is very similar to the customer creation form. You can fill out the basic information for

this lead. The lead does not need to be a customer name; it could also be an event for example.

As Leads are not customers yet, you will not be able to see them under the customer menu!

Converting a Lead into an Opportunity

Let’s say you contacted your Lead and they were interested in your product/service, you may

want to turn this into an Opportunity. You can do so by clicking on the lead from the Leads

menu under CRM. You will see a “Convert to Opportunity” button on the top left corner.

Once you click this button, the Odoo wizard will give you some options:

Because this is a new customer, the “Create a new customer” option has been chosen. As you

can see, there are other options to choose from.

Now that you have created the opportunity, if you go to your pipeline you will see it under the

New column.

You may not always need to create an opportunity from a lead. You may want to create an

opportunity on its own.

Creating a New Opportunity

Going back to our real life case. Let’s say that our customer Mike Smith was so happy with his

first order that he now wants to discuss purchasing some products for his local sports team. We

can create an opportunity for this as this is a potential sale.

From your pipeline click Create.

Here you need to enter a title for the opportunity, this could be something to describe it. You can

choose the customer if it is an opportunity coming from an existing customer, but this is not

mandatory. Opportunities do not always have to be tied to a customer at this point. You can also

enter an Expected Revenue, as this is a potential sale you will be expecting to earn something if

all goes well.

Once you have created your opportunity, you will be able to see it in the pipeline.

Clicking on the opportunity will let you see detailed information which you can also edit.

Here you can add detailed information about the opportunity such as Email and Phone

information. You can also assign a salesperson to this opportunity. The Expected Closing is the

date that you expect this opportunity to end in a sale. You can also see that there is a Probability

next to Expected Revenue. This is the probability of this opportunity ending with the expected

revenue. As the opportunity changes stages throughout the pipeline, this probability will increase

automatically.

Here we have set a different person as the salesperson for this opportunity, and have set an

expected closing date.

Now, if you go back to your pipeline, you will not be able to see this opportunity. This is

because we have assigned this opportunity to another salesperson and our pipeline has a

filter “My Pipeline”. If you clear this filter you will be able to see all other opportunities.

Accessing the System as a Different User

We created a salesperson at the beginning of this module as a user of this system. We gave them

an email address and password. We can access the system as this user to see the differences

between user access rights.

Firstly, we will need to log out as Administrator. Click on Administrator at the top right corner

of the screen and click Log Out. This will take you back to the login screen. Here you can enter

the email address and password of your user.

This person has entered the exact same system, but with some differences. You can see that the

menu at the top has less modules. This is because we restricted access to the modules that this

specific user should not be able to access. We created this user as a salesperson and gave them

access rights to only sales related modules. This user cannot configure any settings for this

system either. They can only create leads and opportunities and view other team member

opportunities.

Click on CRM to see this user’s pipeline.

As you can see, we have 1 opportunity. This was the opportunity we created as Administrator of

the system and had assigned it to this salesperson. If we clear the “My Pipeline” filter, we will

be able to see the other opportunities.

Changing the Status of an Opportunity

You can change the status of an opportunity by simply dragging it to a different column on the

pipeline.

You can also change the status by clicking on the opportunity and choosing the status from the

status bar on the top right corner.

You can also choose to Mark Won or Mark Lost. Marking an opportunity as lost means that

something didn’t go according to plan along the way and the customer didn’t want to go forward.

Marking the opportunity as won means that it has been successful and can be converted to a sale.

Modifying the Stages of the Pipeline

In order to modify the pipeline, you need to either have manager or admin access rights. This

user is neither. So we need to log out and log in as Administrator.

Once we have done this, we can come back to the Pipeline under the CRM module. Click on

Add New Column at the end of the pipeline. Write the name of the column and click add.

In this real-life case, printing jobs need to have technical approval before moving on to the next

stage. Therefore, we have added a Technical Approval stage. New columns are added to the end

of the pipeline but you can drag them to the appropriate place.

Up until now, these actions have only affected the CRM module. The next part will trigger

actions from other modules.

Closing the Sale

After a lot of hard work, we have won the opportunity, and now we need to turn it into a

quotation. This is where the Sales module comes in.

Open the opportunity by clicking on it on the pipeline. Then, click on New Quotation. The

following screen will appear:

This form allows you to enter the product information to create a quotation triggering a

sale in the Sales module.

Click on Add an item to add the item(s) from the opportunity and click Save.

Now if you go to the Sales menu you will see a new quotation. From here you can follow the

same steps for the sales process. You can confirm the sale and invoice the sale.

You will still be able to see the opportunity in the pipeline. Go back to the CRM module and

click on the opportunity then click on Mark Won. This will close the opportunity and put it in

the Won column.

Creating a New Sales Team

In the CRM module click on Sales Channels under Configuration, then click Create.

You can create as many sales teams (channels) as you want from this form. You can also assign

a Channel Leader (manager) and add Team Members. This will make it easier to track and report

sales from different channels.