project management - ITM Platform | Projects Programs Portfolio

Customer acquisition & sales funnel, inbound/outbound lead, MQL, SQL and more

Customer acquisition funnel

Customer acquisition funnels can be of much use for SaaS companies. They track and monitor leakages when prospects move between stages. It’s an effective way from companies to measure how well the company is doing in attracting and retaining customers. This is often a difficult step because moving prospects from the marketing team to the sales or customer success teams can create a high risk of losing data, miscommunicating between employees or mixing up responsibilities and metrics.

As you move through the funnel, you will realize that analyzing your content strategy is extremely important, especially when looking at it from a customer lifecycle perspective. Content strategy is a very effective way that you can get your company to increase the speed that your prospects take to pass through stages.

Customer lifecycle funnel

The customer lifecycle funnel consists of 6 stages with each one representing an action the customer must do. The first stage, at the top of the funnel is known as “Visitor”. This means that somebody must visit your company’s webpage and it isn’t until they apply for a free trial or submit a form that they can be considered a “prospect”. If you want the customer to become an “activated user” meaning they are actually using your product (either for the free trial or whatever you have offered them), you need to put in time and resources into creating a unforgettable experience for them. This will take them from being an “activated user” to an “active customer”.

However, once you have the sale, you can’t stop. Customers that pay for the product once, don’t guarantee they will pay for a second time. It’s important for SaaS companies to analyze and discover was usage related to high lifetime customer value and a high renewal rate. Once you have this information, you can work on improving these areas which will help to earn you some “loyal customers”.

Sales funnel

The sales funnels main goal is to demonstrate what internal processes companies should follow if they wish to efficiently move their prospects through the funnel. The funnel shows specific processes, actions and workflows which can augment the effectiveness of companies sales process. Sales funnels consist of a variety of different components which each need to be focuses on.

Inbound and Outbound Lead

Sales funnels begin by retrieving leads which can be either inbound or outbound. Inbound leads exist when prospects will provide the company with information in exchange for an asset, for instance a whitepaper or even a free trial. Outbound leads are created after SDRs (Sales Development Representatives) target individuals who may be unaware of the companies existence. This will often take place in many different forms including cold calling, mass emailing or targeted social media messages.

Marketing Qualified Lead

It can often be difficult to make the sale even if with a good lead. Marketing Qualified Lead, known as MQL for short, helps to calculate the probability of closing a lead. Companies can help to attract users and communicate to prospects through nurturing campaigns, newsletters, webinars, etc.

Sales Qualified Lead

After prospects reach a higher score, they will be considered to be a part of the Sales Qualified Lead stage. At this stage, your sales team should have enough information to decide what level of interest prospects have in your company.

Understanding all of these different concepts and definitions will help you immensely on your path to becoming a successful project manager.

If you wish to learn more about Kanban or other project management related topics, feel free to browse through the rest of our articles at http://www.itmplatform.com/en/blog/

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As quoted in the PMBOK, project scope is the portion of project planning that requires determining “the work that needs to be accomplished to deliver a product, service, or result with the specified features and functions.” Scope Management consists of 3 different processes: planning, controlling and closing. To understand how to successfully manage scope, you must have a detailed understanding of these 3 facets:

Planning

This is the first step. It requires you to define and document a list of all of the work that needs to be completed.

Controlling

Once you know what needs to be done, you’ll have to monitor scope creep, approve and disapprove project changes and track all processes. If you’re unfamiliar with the term scope creep it is also commonly known as function or feature creep. Scope creep refers to all of the continuous growth of a project’s scope or the unforeseen and uncontrollable changes that may occur.

Closing

This is the final process, it requires an audit of the deliverables where you will have to assess the outcome and compare it to what you originally envisioned the final product to be like.

As a project manager you understand that you’ll often bounce back and fourth between different project methodologies. However, regardless of which you choose to use, you’ll need to define the project scope. Make sure you are able to identify all of the following:

Project goals
Working schedule
Project phases and sub-phases
Budget

Once this is done, you should move onto completing the following 2 steps:

Step 1: Know what you need

You want to be able to develop a project timeline and get all of the resources you’ll need. To do so you should first start off by defining these needs- in other words the scope. Once you have completed this, you’ll be able to allocate tasks to specific team members.

Step 2: Understand what your objectives are

If you want to have a well-defined scope, you’ll need to have a clear understanding of what you wish to achieve through the completion of this project. For instance, you may want to develop an enhanced product or a new service. Regardless, you’ll need to outline all of the central objectives you have for your project. And as a project manager, it will become your goal and role to make sure that team members continuously aim to achieve these objectives.

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

The WBS is a very important component of Scope Management, however many project managers don’t realize this and choose to skip the step. This can lead to developing inaccurate plans that create complications for the completion of the project. WBS is extremely useful because it allows project managers to break down their scope statements into small units of work that are much easier to manage. These units are frequently known as packages and the result of following the WBS is that you’ll have a list of all the work packages necessary to complete your project.

Advantage point

Being familiar with Scope Management and all of the concepts previously listed will absolutely provide you with numerous benefits. You’ll be able to manage your projects more successfully and with less uncertainty and risk of failure. However, even with the knowledge you’ve just attained, there is always the chance you’ll come across unexpected circumstances. While you can’t prevent this from occurring, you can prevent your business from crashing by depending on a strong project management tool like ITM Platform. ITM Platform has an abundance PM tools which will help you manage scope and decrease ambiguity, relieving you from unnecessary work and confusion. ITM Platform continuously guides you in the right direction by requiring you to follow the proper steps of establishing a scope: completely defining your scope, finalizing and distributing it to all team members with the help of an integrated communication system.

Scope Management is easy to implement but does require time and effort. The reason why ITM Platform would be so useful is because it aids in extending past human thinking and defining scope with little granularity.

Go to http://www.itmplatform.com to learn more and see how you can sign up for a free demo.

Top 5 most read blogs on ITM Platform:

The Monte Carlo Method in Project Management

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Three disastrous project management failures

The project in the face of adversity: what should a project manager do?

What is the Virtual Sock Management or Periodical Online Management?

Isidora Roskic-Blogger ITM Platform

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“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”

The famous words spoken by Benjamin Franklin should be those which all project managers live by. What’s the point of trying to exercise proper project management if you aren’t capable of finding the time needed to do so? This is where time management comes into play.

Start off by assessing yourself before you do anything else. This will give you a good sense of whether or not you will need to change your current time management methods and what you can do to improve. Ask yourself how often you complete tasks before deadlines? Are you normally punctual or late? Do you ever leave things to last minute or feel as though you are running out of time?

The truth of the matter is that time is an extremely valuable resource to all project managers and is a terrible thing to waste. You want to be able to develop a strong reputation for yourself and never let down clients. As a project manager you aren’t only required to manage your own time but also the time of the entire team. Start off by creating a schedule that everyone can follow on a day-to-day basis. A simple scribble on a paper won’t do. Implement a project management software, such as ITM Platform, into the business. Great tools such as those provided by ITM Platform will assist you creating calendars with important deadlines and setting time limits for tasks. Furthermore, you can set reminders and check on the progress of your co-workers. This will help everyone maintain their focus and complete work on time.

Time management is best done when each of the following things are completed:

Defined Activities

Depending on the level of detail of a task, known as granularity, high-level tasks will first be broken down into different activities which will all be found in a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).

Sequencing all of your Activities

The activities you just identified in the previous step will now be used to create an activity sequence. This is extremely important because it will allow you to execute tasks on time and in a specific order to stay organized and on time.

Resources necessary

This is when you will need to estimate the amount of resources required for the completion of each task. This step probably sounds very familiar and that’s because it is frequently listed as being crucial for project managers to do. The reason why is because the duration of the task depends on how many resources will be allocated. You’ll need to know all of this to be able to accurately manage your time.

Effort Estimation

Many companies will follow the WBS mechanism previously mentioned in order to estimate how much time and effort will be needed to complete tasks. After you feel as though you have fairly educated predictions you should identify your projects critical path. This will allow you to calculate approximately how long the entire project should take to complete.

Create a Schedule

You can’t just skip to this step because you’ll need to input all of the information you previously received in order to create an accurate schedule. Trying to do this on your own or manually will be difficult and time consuming. Your best option would once again be to use a software like ITM Platform which can assist you in creating a reliable and effective project schedule.

Schedule Changes

Nothing can be perfectly planned. There is always the chance that something unexpected could occur and you will need to make changes to your original schedule. Don’t panic! To make sure you don’t fall behind, continuously update your schedule to reflect any project alterations. This will prevent you or your teammates from experiences shock if something unanticipated occurs.

Just like anything else, time management requires you to put in effort. The more you know, the better you’ll do. This is why you should familiarise yourself with other common project management tools and practices which can be found at http://www.itmplatform.com

Top 5 most read blogs on ITM Platform:

The Monte Carlo Method in Project Management

Extra Extra Extra!

Three disastrous project management failures

The project in the face of adversity: what should a project manager do?

What is the Virtual Sock Management or Periodical Online Management?

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There’s nothing worse than going over budget or going into debt while working on a project. To prevent this from occurring businesses develop cost management, companies can employ the cost management structure to single projects or their business as a whole.

Cost management is the process of planning and controlling a business’s budget. It starts from the initial planning phase and covers the full project cycle. After applying cost management, all costs will be calculated, recorded and monitored. This allows a business to predict future expenditures in order to reduce their chances of going over budget. Once the project is completed, predicted and actual costs will be compared in order to help calculate future budgets.

To help you develop a stronger understanding of the topic, take a look at the following 4 steps of project cost management which are outlined in the PMBOK:

1. Planning Cost Management

The initial phase of cost management involves defining the resources required for the completion of all project activities. A good way to get this started is by creating Work Breakdown Structures (WBS) or listing previous information and comparable projects that will help you discover which resources will be needed. Make sure you also take into account other resources like labour and required time for task completion. Once you know all the necessary resources and their quantitates, you’ll be able to easily calculate their cost.

2. Estimating Cost

The biggest component of cost management involves predicting how much it will cost you to complete the project. The cost estimating method that you choose to use will depend on the amount of information you have available about the project and project tasks. Naturally, estimates can be altered as more information becomes available. Over time you will have a cost estimate with a very high accuracy. However, until then you should seek assistance from a strong project management software, such as ITM Platform. Project management tools like ITM Platform offer cost management which will help your business monitor costs, decrease uncertainty and increase profitability.

3. Determining your Budget

Cost estimates will help define the expenditures involved with specific project activities and the overall cost of the project. Whereas the budget allocates project costs over a longer period of time to create a cost baseline which should be the starting point for your current and future projects. Essentially it will provide you with a good idea as to how much money you have to spend on the project.

4. Controlling Cost

Cost control involves measuring any inconsistencies that arise and are different from the set cost baseline. Once you discover them, you will need to take corrective actions to avoid cost overruns. Anything that strays away from the cost baseline needs to be recorded and the forecasted total cost should be altered to include these changes.

Use a cost control tool like the one provided by ITM Platform to help define cost and track, apply and approve all changes. Furthermore, cost accuracy and consistency are more likely to maintain when you have a strong software and great staff guiding you.

Go onto http://www.itmplatform.com to find more useful information about the fantastic PPM solution.

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As the famous poet Mattie Stepanek once said, “when there is collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.” But what happens when those who are meant to collaborate are geographically separated, physically incapable of meeting with one another? The answer is virtual collaboration.

Rather than having projects run on generic face-to-face communication, businesses become reliant on technology-mediated communication. This approach integrates online tools into the workplace to help maintain interactions amongst group members. Now you may wonder where and when this would be used?

Why virtual collaboration?

Simply put, virtual collaboration is made for virtual teams. If you’re unfamiliar with the term “virtual teams” you can always refer back to the article on remote work because the two are very familiar. Regardless, virtual teams are known as groups of individuals who work together despite being geographically dispersed. In this case, they highly depend on communication technologies to link them with one another and keep their team strong.

In fact, many companies today prefer virtual collaboration rather than the traditional one. The reason for this is because with traditional collaboration you run into an unavoidable barrier. Confused? Well, picture this: you and your colleagues sit around a table brainstorming ideas for your latest project. You want to be productive but can only have one person speaking or writing on the white board at a time. Virtual teams don’t come across this problem because technology permits them to make group chats, audio calls, face-time, or even use shared documents and whiteboard all at once.

Even though virtual collaboration has been implemented across millions of businesses it is still a fairly new concept and way-of-work. Many are still unsure how to go about of incorporating virtual collaboration into their own businesses. The following tips can help you with using virtual collaboration for your next project:

1. Create team rules

It’s essential for all team members to understand expectations for virtual communication. Agree upon the standards for decision making, resolving conflicts and meeting business protocol via technological softwares. Furthermore virtual team members must have a very firm grasp on company objectives and priorities, their particular duties and responsibilities. Because this will be communicated virtually, it’s extremely important that it’s done efficiently to help reduce confusion.

2. Play online games

A fun and effective way to get team members familiar with virtual collaboration is through the use of virtual games. Workers can find online versions of “scavenger hunt” customized to their particular industry. Such games encourage players to pool their knowledge and develop connections with co-workers to solve problems. In many multi-player games, workers have to collaborate and continuously communicate with one another if they wish to survive.

3. Don’t be afraid of social media platforms

When individuals feel comfortable with one another they tend to work better together. Furthermore, people are more prone to being more willing to collaborate if they feel as though their co-workers are similar to them. This is where social media sites step in. The trick is to use these websites to find common ground amongst team-members. Put work aside and use social media tools to encourage and enable employees to communicate about non-work related topics.

Apart from taking these tips into account when planning the development of your own virtual team and the virtual collaboration that inevitably comes along with it, there is still one extremely important thing that must be done. You must find a strong, effective and virtual project management solution such as ITM Platform. ITM Platform is a cloud-based solution therefore it is perfect for virtual collaboration since it can be used across numerous technological devices, at any time and anywhere.

Learn more about how ITM Platform will help you with the creation of your own virtual team and all of your future projects by visiting http://www.itmplatform.com/en/

Top 5 most read blogs on ITM Platform:

The Monte Carlo Method in Project Management

Extra Extra Extra!

Three disastrous project management failures

The project in the face of adversity: what should a project manager do?

What is the Virtual Sock Management or Periodical Online Management?

Isidora Roskic-Blogger ITM Platform