Customer Onboarding
From the moment a client agrees to move forward, to the moment their agreement is signed and billing is live — without the account manager assembling a single document by hand.
The Gap I Found
The CRM said Proposal.
Nothing else moved.
When an account manager moved a deal to the Proposal stage in the CRM, that was the last automated action in the process. From there, everything was manual: find the template, fill in the client details, build the document, send it from email, track feedback in an inbox thread, draft the agreement from scratch, send it, and hope it came back signed.
Each step was a separate task performed by a person, dependent on that person's bandwidth and memory. A version of the proposal might exist in someone's Sent folder. The agreement terms might live in a reply chain. The CRM record often stayed unchanged until after the signature — sometimes days later.
The tools existed to do this work. A CRM with the client data, a template library in the SOP database, an e-signature tool. None of them were connected. Each one stopped where the next one needed to start.
Why It Happens
A CRM stage change has no
downstream trigger by default.
CRM tools record what happened. They do not initiate what should happen next. When a deal moves to Proposal, the CRM updates a field — and that is the end of its contribution. It does not reach into the SOP database to pull a template. It does not read its own client record to populate a document. It stores data; it does not act on it.
The same gap exists at every stage of the pipeline. Agreement generation, follow-up timing, downstream system updates — each has a clear trigger event in the CRM, and none of them are wired to anything. The trigger fires into a void, and a human picks up from there.
Feel the Gap
Walk the old process.
This is what the proposal and agreement process looked like before the automation existed. Step through it and feel where the account manager's time disappears.
What I Designed
Each CRM event fires
the next step automatically.
The workflow runs from the first CRM stage change to the last system update after signing. At each stage, the system handles what is purely executional — drafting, saving, reminding, updating — and routes only the decisions back to the account manager: review this draft, trigger this send, approve these terms.
The proposal draft is generated the moment the CRM moves to Proposal, pulling the SOP template and populating it with CRM data. The account manager reviews and sends. Every version is auto-saved to the CRM. When the client agrees, the agreement is generated from the accepted terms. If unsigned after 24 hours, a reminder fires automatically. On signature, CRM and billing update without anyone touching them.
Workflow Architecture
Account manager moves deal forward after meeting
Template pulled from SOP DB · client data from CRM
Reviews and triggers email send to client
AM updates terms, resends · new version auto-saved
Every sent version logged to the CRM record
AM triggers agreement generation
Generated from agreed proposal terms
Reviews agreement draft, triggers send
Auto reminder email fires without prompting
CRM stage updated · billing system seeded
Systems Involved
What Changed
The account manager reviews.
The system does everything else.
Auto
Proposal on stage change
The moment the CRM moves to Proposal, the draft is generated — template pulled from the SOP database, client details populated from the CRM record. No manual assembly, no hunting for the right version.
0
Versions lost or scattered
Every proposal version is auto-saved to the CRM record on send. The full history lives in one place — not across three people's email outboxes and a shared folder nobody maintains.
24h
Auto follow-up if unsigned
If the agreement hasn't been signed within 24 hours, a reminder fires without anyone having to notice or find time to chase. Follow-up is consistent because it is not a human's job.
→
CRM + billing live on signature
The signed event updates the CRM stage and seeds the billing system in the same action. No manual data entry after signing. No delay before billing is configured. The operation starts the moment the client does.
The account manager's role in this process changed from builder to reviewer. Before, they assembled documents, tracked feedback in email threads, chased signatures, and manually updated systems at the end. Now each trigger in the pipeline generates what is needed and routes it for review. The judgment — is this draft right, is this ready to send — stays human. The execution does not.
How It Connects
The signature is the seed event
for delivery and billing.
Everything downstream of the onboarding pipeline depends on the records it creates. Project Management needs a project record to staff against. Invoice & Billing needs a schedule seeded from the agreed terms. The Report Dashboard needs a confirmed deal to track. This workflow produces all of it — cleanly, immediately, and directly from what was agreed — not from what someone remembered to enter.