Why week-one matters
Most CRM problems are definition problems: stages mean different things to different people. Automation then amplifies the confusion.
Week-one audit checklist
- Lifecycle + pipeline definitions: confirm what each stage means and who can change it
- Key properties: required fields, validation, and default values
- Automation inventory: list workflows, triggers, and failure modes
- Data sources: where contacts and companies come from; dedupe rules
- Reporting assumptions: what dashboards assume, and where it breaks
Two-week outcome
By the end of week two, you should have a reliable data model, a clean “happy path” workflow, and monitoring for failure cases—before you scale automation.
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