"Service Opportunity" is a Cloud feature that lets you present service plans to maintain, repair, or replace products.
Cloud lets you add service plans directly to the project proposal when you present it. However, if you want to present a Service-Only opportunity or provide services for products installed in a previous or ongoing Cloud project, you can do it using the service opportunity.
You need the "Create new opportunity" permission in the "Opportunities" permission group or be a member of a group that has it to create service opportunities.
To create the service opportunity, go to the "Opportunities" tab in the left navigation menu and click "New service opportunity."
Creating the service opportunity has three parts.
#1 - Opportunity details
First, enter an opportunity name and set a priority.
If the opportunity is to provide service plans for an ongoing or completed Cloud project, select the project from the "Associated Project" dropdown.
Then, do the following;
Opportunity owner - select the salesperson who will propose the service plans to the customer.
Associated project - select the project for which you are creating the service opportunity.
Salesperson - select the salesperson responsible for quoting and sending the proposal to the customer.
Engineer - select the engineer you want to assign to this opportunity. You can remove or change the engineer when you create the project.
Building type - select one of Residential or Commercial.
Market sector - select a market sector. You can create more under Settings > Opportunity > Market Sectors.
Project type - keep it as is, since this is a service opportunity.
The following screenshot shows a service opportunity being created for an ongoing project.
#2 Account details
The account details are auto-populated if the service is for an ongoing or completed Cloud project.
If this is a service-only opportunity, enter the account details.
The following screenshot shows the account details being auto-populated.
Select a tentative close date in the top-right corner of the modal and click "Create."
If you have the address-validity check enabled on your Cloud account, Cloud may prompt you to enter all required billing and site address details, or it may not allow you to create the opportunity. This also applies when you want to update an opportunity's addresses.
Check out this article for more details.
#3 Service plans
Cloud automatically creates a quote for the opportunity and shows you a modal with all available service plans.
If you are new to Cloud and want to learn more about creating service plans and making them available for selection in a proposal, check out this collection of articles.
Select one or more plans and click "Add."
Set an estimated start date for the service contract in the top-right corner. If you don't want to set a date now, you can set it in the service contract.
Check out this article for more details about creating a proposal from a quote.
You will see the new service opportunity under the "New" stage on the Kanban board.
Winning the opportunity and beyond
Once the customer accepts the service proposal, you can change the opportunity stage to "Won." On the modal, click "Create service contract."
Here are two things to note when a service opportunity is Won.
Cloud will create a service contract for the service plan the customer selects. You can see this on the "Service > Contracts" page.
If the service proposal was for a completed project, the Project Details view now has a "Service Contract" tab. The "Service > Contracts" page will list the relevant service contract.
Check out this collection of articles to learn more about managing service contracts on Cloud.