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Followup CRM’s New Project Management Tool Overview

September 28, 2021
Erick Vargas

At Followup CRM, we recognize the importance of constantly improving our platform so we can help our users succeed and receive the best user experience possible. We’re excited to announce that we launched a new project management feature to Followup CRM that will allow users to stay on track, keep organized, and thoroughly monitor their progress for each and every project.

At Followup CRM, we recognize the importance of constantly improving our platform so we can help our users succeed and receive the best user experience possible. We’re excited to announce that we launched a new project management feature to Followup CRM that will allow users to stay on track, keep organized, and thoroughly monitor their progress for each and every project. Every construction project is a team effort, requiring multiple hands on deck from start-to-finish. This new feature holds all team members accountable and allows for extensive collaboration so that everyone stays on track and you deliver a seamless project every step of the way. Here’s how it works:

Once you have a completed contract, you'll see a new project management button in the top right corner. Once you click on this, it creates a project management file that looks very similar to the files in the sales side of our software. However, you’ll notice that the main colors of the page change to black, making it apparent you have switched over to the project management side of the tool, but with the same familiar functionality.

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In your project management file, it automatically pulls the information from your sales file that you previously filled out, such as the project name, address, contact name, etc. The project management tool also includes different drop downs in the miscellaneous section specific to your project. This also includes project management behaviors, which is similar to our sales behaviors.  

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Underneath the Job Information tab, we have the Record Details. The Record Details is going to pull over the contract date and contract amount from the sales file. The very first thing you need to do when setting up a new project management file is to determine when you want your pre-construction activities to begin. Once you determine that date, you will need to adjust the date in the PM Contract Date field to that specific date. It’s important to set this up because this is what’s going to trigger the dates for each item under the Project Management Behaviors section. This allows you to keep track of the schedule for all your pre-construction, production, and close-out activities.

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Next, you’ll want to jump over to the miscellaneous information section and select the project duration. For most users, this would be either a small, medium or large project. Other users who offer multiple types of service types may have the option to select more specific durations such as repairs, residential, commercial, tile, etc. The project durations are customizable and something that your admin will set up.

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Once you’ve selected the project duration, you’ll need to assign the job titles to the corresponding users. This will automatically assign the tasks listed in the project management behaviors section to the tasks they are responsible for completing. For example, if Bob Smith is the Project Manager you assigned in the miscellaneous information section, he will automatically be assigned to the tasks in the project management behaviors section such as the intro email to the client, recording the NOC, and any other tasks the project manager is responsible for completing.

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In the project management behaviors section, we break this down into the three phases to completing a project management job: pre-construction, production, and close-out. This tool is meant to track the status of activities that have been completed and those that still need to be completed. For example, in the pre-construction phase, you’re putting your permits in, ordering the materials, emailing operations, allocating budgets, and all those additional administrative tasks you need to prep for the job.

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Next, we have the project management behavior hours section, found below the miscellaneous information section. Much like the sales behavior section of a sales file, the tasks in the project management behaviors section have a time credit assigned to them. The estimated column includes the total number of credited hours for every task in each phase of the job process. The actual column includes how many hours you’ve completed in each phase. Last, you’ll see the total hours remaining, showing you how much total time is left before completing the entire project.

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Once you’ve filled out the information in all the sections listed above, hit save in the top right corner and you’ve officially created a project management file!

You can also visit the dashboard that breaks down what needs to get done for the day in each category (pre-construction, production, close-out). You can filter this by date as well as user by selecting the date range and name in the drop downs at the top and hitting apply.

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Followup-CRM-Project-Management-Overview

All the tasks that have a red mark next to it means it’s due, or past due. Clicking on the tasks will bring you back to the project where you can check the boxes off as you complete them. All the tasks that have a green mark next to it means it’s not due yet.  

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If you’re a project manager responsible for 80 tasks per job and are managing 10 jobs at a time, the dashboard is a great way to keep you on track, stay organized, and remind you when things are due or upcoming.

The homepage of the project management side of our tool allows you to see at a high-level when a project starts, when it ends, and what stage the project is currently in.  

On this gantt chart, we have the project name, project manager, start date, end date, and current stage.  

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Every project that is in the pre-construction stage, you'll see on your chart as yellow.

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Any job that you see as production is going to be green.  

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The jobs that are in the final stages or closeout will be red.  

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Any job that's completed is going to be shown as blue.

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You can click the show details button to see who else is on this file. In this example, you can see the project engineer, admin, superintendent, and crew leader on the job.  

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Followup-CRM-Project-Management-Overview

There are a few different ways to view the calendar. You can view the calendar by week, month, or quarter. You also have the ability to scroll to the right and left. So, if you wanted to see what's going to be done this week, you can click on week and you're able to scroll through the weeks to see when things started and end. You can do the same when you view the calendar by month and quarter.  

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The entire chart is sorted and filtered by what we see at the top. You have the dates, user, office, contract type, stage, or report type, which allows you to view a pie chart.

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The pie chart takes all the project management behavior hours data from all your projects and displays every stage of the process. These charts reflect how many hours have been completed vs. how many hours are remaining in each category. You can filter these pie charts by user or view it as a company whole.

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If you wanted to see all the jobs that you currently have in production, you can click on the filter by stage drop down, select production and click apply, and then all of your green jobs will appear in the calendar, allowing you to schedule those appropriately.  

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Let's say you have a job that's overlapping. What you would do is click on the job and have your project manager update the activities to push the job out so that it's not interfering with other jobs and reschedule the job at the appropriate time.  

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Followup-CRM-Project-Management-Overview
Followup-CRM-Project-Management-Overview

Have any questions about how this new feature works or want to request a live demo? Click here to set up a time to chat.  

 

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