The Importance of Tracking Goals:

 Understanding your customers' strategic goals both long and short-term, along with any changes in their industry is key to keeping your business relationship status as a valued partner rather than a costly vendor.

 Establishing regular questions about the customers' business goals and industry factors is an ideal way to get the conversation started on strategic goals.  Below are a few sample questions to ask:

 
How is your business changing over the next 12 - 18 months?

Are you planning on expansion and/or new locations?

Are you downsizing and/or closing locations?

What is changing in the industry? New technologies?

This will allow you to align your customer's strategic goals with a set of technology goals that you can take the lead on.  For example: If a business has a targeted rebranding goal, you can align technology goals such as planning for changes to email, Active Directory, applications, and websites.  This will increase your value to your customers and help to create a long-term relationship with them. 

 Listing these goals in LCI will give you the tools you need to deliver a QBR that goes a step beyond the normal 

business review.  

Creating and Editing Goals

 To work with the LCI Goals module, select Customer Detail in the Customer Success navigation pane.

 Select a company to work with from the drop-down selector at the top of the window.

Select the Goals tab from the customer details toolbar.  This will display the Goals table. 

To add a Goal, click the plus icon at the top-right corner of the table. 

Enter the Title, Description, Status, and optional due date in the Add Goal window.  Then click Save when done.  

The goal will then show on the goal table.

Click the Edit icon to edit the properties (Title, Description, etc.)

Click the down arrow icon to reveal the goal details and association options.

You can associate Contracts and Recommendations with Goals.  You can also attach task items to track your progress.  You can also add Tags to goals for more insightful tracking of related goals or tag your client's goals for sales targeting.

Adding Tags to Goals

Use the drop-down selector to add tags to the goal.  You can select from an existing tag, or type the name of a new tag and hit enter to create the tag and apply the tag to the goal. 

You can also manage your goal tags by clicking the tag icon at the top of the goals page.

From this menu, you can Search, Add, Delete, or Edit your Goal tags.

Click the Green "+" icon at the top of the menu to add a Goal Tag. 

Enter a name then use the color selectors to customize the colors for your tag. 

Click Save or Cancel to exit.

Assigning Tasks to Goals

Click the green '+' icon shown next to the Tasks heading to add a task to the Goal.

Enter the Title, Description, and optional Due Date in the Add Task pane.

The Tasks will show in the goal details window of the goal table.

Use the edit icons to edit the task details.   

You can change the status of the goal or tasks by clicking on the status icon and selecting the new status.  Statuses set to Done will change the icon color to green and date tracking will no longer display in the tile

Use the order icons to drag and drop the tasks in the order you prefer

Click the trash icon to delete a task

 Linking Recommendations

You can now create or link Recommendations to a goal. Click the 'link' icon to associate an existing recommendation to the goal or click on the "+" icon to create and link a new recommendation to the goal.

Check the recommendation(s) you would like to associate with the Goal by clicking the available selection boxes, then click the Save button.

Linking Contracts

You can now create or link Contracts to a goal. Click the 'link' icon to associate an existing contract to the goal or click on the "+" icon to create and link a new contract to the goal.

Check the contract(s) you would like to associate with the Goal by clicking the available selection boxes, then click the Save button.

Below is a sample goal with associated tags, tasks, contracts, and recommendations.

Deleting Goals

Click the 'trash' icon to delete the goal.

Other Features

Percentage complete

The completion percentage assigned to each goal is based on the status of the goal, the status of the associated tasks, and the status of the recommendations.  

To change the status of the goal you can click the status button.  A status of On Hold or Cancelled will set the goal to a 0% completion status, while a status of Active will default to 50% until tasks are added and statuses updated. 

Use the status buttons to update the status of tasks assigned to the goal. 

Recommendation status updates will also affect the completion percentage of the goals.

Goals Reporting

Click the slider icon to toggle on or off the visibility to the customer.  This will determine if the Goal is listed in the Goals module of the Report Builder

You can export company goals to a MS Word document or PDF document by clicking the export icon located at the top-right of the Goals window.

vCIO Features

Linked goals will show in Recommendations list.  You can also link goals to recommendations within the vCIO Recommendations module.

Recommendations Roadmap Board view can be filtered by Goals. 

A report builder component is available to include company goals in your business reports. 
You can add this component to any existing or new report templates.