Outlook Customer Manager (OCM) enables you to manage deals. A deal is a business opportunity or potential transaction with your customers. You can use OCM to manage, track progress and view all information related to the deal.
You can create a deal directly from OCM business contact view. When you receive an email from your business contact, you open Customer Manager and click + on the deal section. Type the deal name then click on the name to navigate to the deal view.
Similar to the business contact view, the deal view shows list of related contacts, tasks, timelines, notes, and files. Since the deal is created from Alex's view, he is automatically linked as a contact to the new deal. Furthermore, any future communication between you and Alex is automatically shown on the deal's timeline view.
A new deal is created with no amount and due one week after the create date. You can manage the deal and update value by clicking View Details on the deal header.
You can find the list of all deals you created by going to the Outlook's add-ins view.
You can search for deal and filter based on the deal column value. You can also customize the list by updating the deal stages and adding column(s).
To update deal stages, click on the edit icon next to the Stage header:
The customize stages view allows you to create, remove and re-order stages. For example, I add a new stage Under Review under Open category.
All the active stages should be created under Open category. A deal can be moved to inactive stages such as when a deal is won or lost. You can create a new stages to define a new inactive stage (For example Project on-hold) under Other.
You can add new column to the deal list:
For example, I add a new column to track win probability for the deal.
Note:
- OCM currently supports 3 data type: text, number and date, with support for more data types are planned in the future releases.
- A maximum of 25 columns can be added to the deal list
OCM helps you to track deal due date by showing upcoming deals and deal past due on the Focused section the deal page.
The past due and upcoming deals are also shown on the OCM iOS mobile app to enable you to stay on top of your deals while you are on the go.
In addition to create a deal from a contact, you can also create a deal from a company as well as create a stand-alone deal from the add-in view.
In this article, we talked about managing deals using Outlook Customer Manager. It helps you to manage deal, track progress and due date. In the next article, Miriam will talk about how to share the information with your team.
