This is my next instalment in a series of posts aimed at anyone preparing for the MB2-713 certification. (Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Sales)

In this post I am going to look at business process flows.

Note:
As with all of the posts in this series it is important to remember that these are simply my revision notes! Using these notes should help you prepare but I strongly suggest you spend as much time of possible getting some hands on time.

Business Process Flows – Overview

All organisations will have specific business processes they follow with regard to sales, these might cover lead generation, closing an opportunity or even order fulfilment. Each business process will include a number of stages and each stage will contain a number of steps. (or actions). Some steps may be mandatory before allowing the user to progress to the next stage in the process.

These business processes are referred to as business process flows. They may be linear with all stages applying in all situations, or they may contain condition branches. For example: Very large value opportunities may follow a different process to small opportunities.

The benefits of business processes include;

• Consistency
• Condition branching to enforce business best practice
• Easy customization to tailor them to specific organisational need
• Direction based conditions, meaning that one business process flow can span multiple record types. For example, when a lead becomes an opportunity.

Lead To Opportunity Sales Process

You may need to be aware of the lead to opportunity business process flow, as it is fundamental to the core sales processes. I am not going to cover this in detail here! Using CRM is the best way to understand how this process operates. (Give it a try!)

As you use the process, a few things to notice …

• Each stage is represented by a name chevron (arrow). Such a qualify, develop etc.
• The flag denotes the current active stage.
• The highlighted / coloured chevron is the currently selected stage.
• Below the coloured chevron you see the steps (field) that must be completed to complete this stage
  • Some maybe mandatory, moving to the next stage will be prevented until entered
  • Fields shown on in the business process may be repeated in the main form

The lead to opportunity business process flow is shown below;

Notice that with the lead to opportunity business process flow, qualifying the lead will progress from the qualify stage to the develop stage. And load the opportunity just created. Again it is important you try this.

It is worth noticing that the flag has moved to the now active develop stage. Clicking on Qualify would display the lead that has been qualified to create this opportunity.

It is also possible to click on the arrows (next to the next stage button) to make a previous stage the active stage.

Tip:
If you moved all the way back to the qualify stage, the lead would be displayed. But as the lead will have already been qualified it would be read only. If you do this, don’t forget that you’d need to also reactivate the lead if you need to change it.

Conditional Branches

For the MB2-713 exam I think it unlikely that you need to understand how to configure / customize the system in detail. But understanding how to create a business process flow with a conditional branch could be required. Plus, creating a conditional branch will help you understand them. Again the best thing to do is create one to see how it performs. Below you can see that I have created a conditional branch which effectively adds an extra stage for leads with a budget greater than 20,000. In my example process some additional fields become mandatory before progressing to an opportunity.

You can see below that once this change has been applied an additional stage appears when the budget amount is greater than 20,000.

Hopefully I have given you a flavour for how business process flows and conditional branching operate.

Next time I will continue this series by looking sales literature. J