Building and tracking Success Plans

Erika Villarreal

Hello to the community! Happy Sunday!
I'd like to ask your advice on the best automation tools for building and tracking Success Plans. Our product is software for the moving industry and it's somewhat complex. At my previous work, I used Microsoft Project to track success plans but it was somewhat difficult to share with our customers and to update and track progress towards our customer's goals. If you've had experience with success plan automation, know of any tech tool I could start using, I would very much appreciate to hear your thoughts!
Best,
Erika

Andrew Schneider

Unable to help much, as I'm just starting to really formalize success plans. We tried a new structure, just in ppt over 2020, but it was slow and clunky. Looking for some insight from others!

Jordan Silverman

@Erika Villarreal we use Trello internally as a project management tool. Last year we started using it with clients.

Each client has their own board and as you go through onboarding you can set up cards that both we and the client can move.

Not a dedicated tool for success plans but we have had good success with it! Why?
- Team already knew how to use it so not adding another software
- Really easy for clients to sign up and use

Really awesome on a kick off call to be able to show the plan to the client and it is really gratifying for them to check off tasks and move them from to do, to started, to completed.

Erika Villarreal

Hello Jordan!!!
Thank you very much for this information!! We are currently using Trello for Professional Services management, so I'm very familiar with the tool. Would you be open to having a 20 min conversation so I can understand better how is it you're using it? I'd love to hear more and see how I can adjust it to our operation!

Best,
Erika

Jordan Silverman

Absolutely, I will DM you!

Laura Lakhwara

Hey Erika,

I've started with Excel, then moved to Asana, then used a mix of Hubspot/Asana/Salesforce. I've also used Trello for another company. If you ever want to chat this, happy to give feedback!

- Laura

Mahesh Motiramani

Hi Erika,
We use Quip (part of Salesforce) which is a collaboration platform. Within a Quip document you can embed different modules like tables, lists, Kanban boards, project trackers and there are plugins to integrate with Salesforce and some other SaaS so you can pull in some data/KPIs, etc.
This document can also be shared with customers or partners and actions/due-dates (with reminders) assigned to them which allows us to track progress & status. There is also a commenting and chat function so you communicate on specific issues/text/data.
Happy to chat more or get on a show-n-tell call if you need one.

Cheers,
mahesh

Jennifer Griffin

We have had success using Asana to build out plans.  You pay for your internal users by seat but can invite unlimited guests (clients) which is great.  We set this up so each customer has an internal account plan that CSMs live in (with renewal info, triage tasks, etc.) and this main project has a success plan section. That success plan section is tied to the customer-facing version so that the client sees just the info they need - but if you update in either one, the other one syncs!  This has also worked well for CSMs since they can also add any non client tasks, create tasks for Gmail/Slack, etc. so that all of their to-dos are in one place:)

Erika Villarreal

Hi Jennifer!!
Thank you so much for this! This sounds exactly like what I'm looking for. I was concerned as to if they would need to buy a licence, but if I can invite unlimited guests to that, that can definitely work. I've personally used Asana for my team and project management in the past.
Thanks again!
Erika

Erika Villarreal

Thaaanks Laura!
I'll look for time with you for sure!! Asana seems like it could possibly solve my needs. We also use hubspot CRM and would love to hear more about how you used it. I need an easy way to share the plan with the customers to make them accountable. 

thaaank you!

Jennifer Orlando

We leverage Salesforce and have opted to use an app that creates project types once an new deal closes.  It's called Milestsones PM.  So far, so good.  You can create multiple project types depending on what was purchased or what phase of onboarding you're in.

Tim Hutton

Hi Erika,
There are an awful lot of tools out there currently so it's probably worth having an evaluation of what it is that you want to track and how you want to track it, along with how that integrates with other key business platforms that you use such as Salesforce. We currently use a mixture of JIRA and Confluence (all part of the Atlassian suite), which integrates to Salesforce. So we use Confluence as part of the intake process and relevant documentation, and JIRA as part of the project tracking, with relevant automation in place to updates goals/milestones of the Success Plan as these move along. For example, you can relate particular Epics to milestones, and when all tasks in an epic are complete, that milestone is marked as done and the date/duration can be shown in Confluence and then Salesforce.
Gainsight is a pretty good tool for this as well which integrates very well with Salesforce, although i believe external access can be pretty difficult in this - but I could be wrong.
Let me know if I can help in any way!

Thanks,
Tim

Erika Villarreal

Thank you Jennifer!!!