I am an independent contractor without a staff so I don’t really have a need for operational reports, but I really (really) would love a simple way to print out Activity Reports (with an editable date range) for each project blog. Don’t get me wrong, I think the current feature that allows us to publish a project blog for clients to see via the internet is great, but I have found that my clients also enjoy receiving something tangible in the mail from me. A feature that could allow me to print out activity reports on all my project blogs (with 1 or 2 clicks) and mail them to my clients could really help give me an edge over my competition. Thanks for listening!

For me the new report would be useful if it linked:
- logged/scheduled events and milestones
with
- information content and discussion about documents and stakeholder feedback.

The success of our development work is often associated with being able to reflect and react to new possiblities and realities DURING the development process.

The trail of learning on the journey from reality A to new reality Z is very important. We still have more predictable linear plans associated with getting from from objective A to planned result B, but these are easier to schedule with other tools.

I would like to see the ability to query and report on contact activity, as we need to identify when follow ups are not being scheduled (so customers do not go off the radar). For example: all contact matching criteria (field x) who have not received a call/visit within x months. Is this possible to do?

The closest is the filter option “Show {All contacts > Additional filters > Not touched in the last 30 days}.

It might work some, or even most, of the time but I can envisage a possible problem. For example, if there was contact with a client (or even just a note added) regarding a project but the sales team had not made their scheduled monthly courtesy call (unconnected with the project) then that sales call being missed could go unnoticed. It would be better for me if I could filter by type of activity rather than just touched/not touched or viewed/not viewed, so I hope your new reporting feature will help with that.

Hi Steve,
I would love to be able to have some kind of dashboard with better metrics, tracking sales efficiency that goes beyond the current features in Activities.

To illustrate, here is a example of the project that I am currently working on, and the setup I customized to get the data I need.

I have a sales campaign targeting potential advertisers for our new travel guide. The goal is to maximize sales. To achieve it, I want to make sure that all prospects who fit the target profile are contacted and an offer is presented to them. Also I want to make sure that my sales staff (full time and part-time) has an optimum allocation of their time, in order to contact the maximum number of prospects in the time available.

Step 1) I’ve customized “Company” form by removing unnecessary fields and added the custom fields “current sales status” (not contacted, in discussion, won, lost) and “Company type”
Step 2) I’ve created a special Tag for this sales campaign and used it on all companies in Solve that fit the target profile. The ones not in Solve I’ve added in the system.
Step 3) In order to track the results of this campaign I select the campaign tag and export the list into Excel. From there, using filters, I pull out data for this campaign like:
- How many prospects are being contacted daily; total, broken down by sales person, company type
- What is the % of won/lost by sales person, by company type

The problems I have:
- each time I want an update I need to export and filter in Excel
- “Related to” field is not exported, and I use a lot of part-time sales agents. I assigned all such Companies to one person on my staff, who than uses “Related to” field to add sales agent responsible for that company

I consider this a improvised fix, that fact I can do it attests to the great flexibility of Solve360. Fortunately I have one product type so I can customize “companies” form to get the data I need.
But I think it would make more sense if I could do this through “revenue opportunities” . I know I can customize this form, but I can’t filter it by customized fields (i.e.product / campaign) nor can I get calculation of the tracking data I need.
It sure would be great if I could.

I hope this helps.

In addition to Vedran’s points, it would be nice to have some tracking of time stamp differences.  For example:
I might create a task - Solve creates a timestamp. 
Some time later, I might allocate this task to Amy - Solve time stamps this task allocation. 
Amy then completes the work and another time stamp is given.
I know Solve already does these timestamps, but having the activity sheet show how long it took from task creation to allocation to completion would be really useful.  It would show how quickly tasks are allocated, and how quickly those people complete them.  We could look at the average time each person takes to complete tasks and work out how to help them do it more quickly (this is rarely laziness and more often over-commitment).
Having a record not only of the task, but also the contact/blog and task list to which it belongs would also help us understand who is getting what type of tasks, and how long each task type (eg call, quote, installation) is taking, which helps us in future programming.
Simples!

Agreed, there are still a number of reports that could provide real value to S360 users. We are always adding them when we get the chance and we usually base those decisions customer on feedback such as this. Thanks.

Special Ops,  the tenor or your comment hints at the fact I may not have answered Steve’s original question.  If that is the case, please let me know and tell me why (I’m all grown up now and can take humiliation!) , as I may have missed an important angle in what you are trying to do with the latest development.

Carl Benfield - Jul 22, 2010 10:07am

Special Ops,  the tenor or your comment hints at the fact I may not have answered Steve’s original question.  If that is the case, please let me know and tell me why (I’m all grown up now and can take humiliation!) , as I may have missed an important angle in what you are trying to do with the latest development.

Not the case. I was just chiming in and sharing my 2 cents like everyone else.