For sales teams, success depends on the pipeline and winning deals.  But managing the sales pipeline today is full of frustrations.  Poor visibility, bad data, and insufficient reporting mean that pipeline reviews are inefficient at best, and more typically frustrating and unsatisfying experiences for everyone.  Basic questions like “What has changed?” or “What deals are going to close?” are left incomplete or unanswered.

Akoonu for Pipeline Reviews, a native app in Salesforce, is game changing for pipeline reviews. It gives sales reps, managers and executives quick access to powerful views in order to inspect and manage the pipeline they own or oversee. They can stop the guesswork, stop the spreadsheets and custom reporting, stop the endless clicking, and focus on winning.

Here are 5 things you may not know about Akoonu for Pipeline Reviews:

1. Immediately know what has changed

The first question in most Pipeline Review meetings is “What’s Changed?” , which is surprisingly hard for most teams to answer!  The Pipeline Flow view in Akoonu is built to clearly answer this question.  It is the perfect starting point for any sales manager or executive to dig into the pipeline.
In this view, the deal changes are analyzed for a specific time.  For example, it will summarize how the Current Quarter’s deals have changed in the last 7 days.   The results are presented in two easy to digest ways: 1) a flow chart depicts new deals, wins, losses, pushes, pulls and value changes, and 2) a waterfall chart clearly illustrates how these changes impacted the overall pipeline number.

2. “Cross Object” Filters and Groupings 

Sales Ops could spend all of their time creating custom reports, but never fully satisfy the needs of how sales management would like to view their pipeline.  Things change, different people want to look at things in different ways.  Two powerful capabilities in Akoonu allow users to focus on exactly what opportunities they want to review, eliminating the endless streams of custom reporting requests.

First, users can add any number of filters to their views.  They can select a part of their team hierarchy, and can include filters on any opportunity field, any field from related objects (like the Account or Owner), and even any Product field. For advanced users, Custom Logic can be applied to craft the perfect view.

Second, users can choose how to group and summarize deals in the List View.  Again, users have the choice of grouping on any Opportunity field, any field on related objects, or any Product fields.  Sub-totals summarize the pipeline value for each group, and users can use “nested groupings” and layer subtotals to an unlimited depth.

3. Support your Sales Process with embedded components and configurable Actions

One of the primary objectives of pipeline review meetings is to evaluate the status of each opportunity, guide and coach reps to the next appropriate action, and enforce compliance of the company’s sales process.  

Akoonu for Pipeline Reviews can be customized to deeply support any sales process, be it a variation of industry standards like BANT or MEDDIC, or something completely homegrown.  This is enabled through the use of embedded UI components.  Organizations can create new Lightning Components, or use existing ones, directly in the Akoonu user interface creating a seamless, guided experience for sales reps and managers.  

Additionally, user Actions can be created to trigger Lightning Flows, Lightning Components, record edits, and more to put the reps’ key activities directly in the app.

4.  Guided Setup and Configuration App

Akoonu for Pipeline Reviews is highly configurable, and comes with a fully featured setup and configuration app for system administrators.  Every setting and option are available in this UI with contextual help content, eliminating the confusion and errors of directly editing configuration metadata.

Starting with a “Click to Configure” launching point, organizations can be fully configured in no time.  

5.  Data Security:  Data never leaves the Salesforce Platform

Most tools that provide sophisticated analysis of Salesforce data work “off platform”, exporting or syncing data to outside systems and applications to do complex analysis.  Not Akoonu.  Akoonu for Pipeline Reviews works in Salesforce, in real-time, with algorithms specifically built to perform and scale within the limitations and restrictions of being native in the Salesforce platform.  

Customer data stays locked down, in-place, within Salesforce’s secure Cloud, and Akoonu users don’t experience any of the data-syncing headaches and Info Sec concerns typical when connecting to outside applications.

Want to see Akoonu for Pipeline Reviews in action?  Both a Test Drive and a 30 day trial are available from the Salesforce AppExchange listing.