CRM & Pipeline Module

CRM for Consulting Firms

Leads, a Kanban deal pipeline and a weighted revenue forecast, with proposals and legally compliant digital signature built into the same product. When the client signs, the deal becomes a contract and the contract becomes a project, so nothing gets retyped at the point where most firms lose the detail.

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Where a sales CRM stops, and a consulting firm keeps going

A product company can treat the signature as the finish line. The order goes to fulfilment and the CRM's job is done. A consulting firm signs and the work starts: there is a contract to hold, a scope to stand up as a project, and a client relationship that has to survive the handover from the person who sold it to the people delivering it.

That is why so many firms end up running three subscriptions for one commercial process. The CRM holds the pipeline. A separate e-signature product handles the proposal. The signed contract ends up in a shared drive, and someone sets the project up by hand from whatever they can find. Every hop loses a bit of context, and the losses are invisible until a client asks what was actually agreed.

SUNAGO Matrix keeps that chain in one product. Leads convert to deals, deals are forecast on a weighted pipeline, proposals go out and come back signed from inside the system, contracts are tracked through their lifecycle including amendments, and a contract converts into a project. One plan, one audit trail, one place the client's history lives.

A weighted pipeline, not a wish list

Most firms quote each other the total of everything still open. It is the easiest number to produce and the most optimistic one available. Weighting each deal by the stage it has actually reached gives a figure you can plan against. Illustrative deals below.

Open dealStageValueStage weightWeighted
Retail client, operating model reviewProposal signed outEUR 120,00070%EUR 84,000
Utility client, systems integrationQualifiedEUR 90,00050%EUR 45,000
Public sector, feasibility studyVerbal agreementEUR 60,00080%EUR 48,000
Total-EUR 270,000-EUR 177,000

The open pipeline says EUR 270,000. The weighted forecast says EUR 177,000. The gap between those two numbers, EUR 93,000, is the part of the quarter that does not exist yet, and it is the part firms routinely spend against.

The weighting is not a guess applied at the end of the month. Each deal sits in a stage on the Kanban pipeline, and moving it forward moves the forecast with it. Pipeline KPIs report the result continuously, so the number in the partner meeting is the same number the system held on Monday.

This is genuinely more than most CRMs in this price bracket do. Plenty will total your open deals and call it a pipeline report. Fewer will hold a weighted forecast as a standing KPI, and the difference shows up in how often a quarter lands where you said it would.

Proposals and digital signature, without a second subscription

This is the part of the module most CRMs simply do not have. Sending a proposal usually means exporting a document, uploading it to a separate e-signature service, paying for that service per envelope or per seat, and then filing the signed copy somewhere that has no idea which deal it belongs to.

In SUNAGO Matrix the proposal is built from a customizable template, you place the signees and their signature fields directly, and it goes out for digital signature from inside the system. Email status tracking tells you when it was opened rather than leaving you to guess whether silence means no. When it comes back signed, an automated post-signature process picks it up.

The signatures are built to eIDAS, ESIGN and IT Act requirements, which covers the EU, the United States and India. For a firm selling across borders that is the difference between a signed PDF and a document that stands up when someone disputes what was agreed.

Customizable proposal templates
Signee and signature placement
Digital signatures, eIDAS, ESIGN and IT Act compliant
Email status tracking, including opens
Automated post-signature process
Signed proposal stays attached to the deal

Everything in the CRM module

One plan, no CRM add-on to buy later, and proposals and contracts included rather than sold alongside.

Deal Pipeline

A Kanban pipeline with the stages your firm actually uses. Move a deal forward and the weighted forecast moves with it. Custom lists let you slice by service line, owner or client.

Leads and Conversion

Capture and qualify leads, then convert straight to a deal without retyping. Lead-to-deal conversion carries the contact, the notes and the history across with it.

Proposals and Signature

Customizable templates, signee and signature placement, digital signatures meeting eIDAS, ESIGN and IT Act requirements, and email status tracking so you know when it was opened.

Revenue Forecasting

Pipeline KPIs weight open deals by stage into a running revenue forecast, so the number you plan against is not simply the total of everything still open.

Follow-ups and Activity

Notes, mentions and activity tracking against every contact, with follow-ups on a calendar. The record of who said what, and when, stays with the client rather than in someone's inbox.

Contracts

Contract management with lifecycle and status tracking, amendments, folder organisation and manual uploads, plus contract-to-project conversion when the work begins.

Generic sales CRM versus a consulting CRM

Sales tools like HubSpot and Pipedrive are good at what they were built for. This is where the job differs once the thing you sell is project work.

Step in the commercial processGeneric sales CRMSUNAGO Matrix
Lead capture and qualification Core strengthLeads management with conversion to deal, carrying notes and history
Deal pipeline Core strengthKanban pipeline with the stages your firm uses, plus custom lists
Weighted revenue forecastOften a higher tierPipeline KPIs and weighted forecasting on the one plan
Proposal documentUsually exported to another toolCustomizable templates with signee and signature placement
Digital signatureUsually a separate subscriptionIncluded, and built to eIDAS, ESIGN and IT Act requirements
After signature Not coveredAutomated post-signature process
Contract lifecycle and amendments Not coveredContract management with status tracking, amendments and folders
Turning the sale into delivery Not coveredContract-to-project conversion

Comparing against a professional services suite instead? See SUNAGO Matrix vs Scoro or vs Deltek, both written with published prices.

Connected to delivery, not bolted onto it

Project Management

A signed contract converts into a project, where budgets, phases and milestones take over.

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KPI Reporting

Sales reports alongside project, resource and employee reporting on the same dataset.

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Resource Planning

An availability calendar and allocation heat map for staffing the work once it is won.

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CRM for consulting firms: common questions

Forecasting, proposals, digital signature and what happens after a deal is won.

What makes a CRM for consulting firms different from a normal CRM?
Two things, and both come from the fact that a consulting firm sells work rather than a product. First, a deal is worth a forecast rather than a receipt, so a pipeline that only totals open deals overstates the quarter every time; SUNAGO Matrix weights the pipeline and reports it as a revenue forecast. Second, winning the work is the start of the job, not the end of it, so the deal has to become a contract and then a project without anyone retyping it. Most sales CRMs are built for the moment of sale and hand you back to a spreadsheet immediately afterwards.
Is this suitable as a CRM for a small consulting business?
Yes, and the pricing is built for it. SUNAGO Matrix is EUR 3 per seat per month billed yearly, one plan, every module included, and you can buy a single seat. There is no five-seat minimum and no feature ladder to climb, which is usually what makes a professional services CRM expensive for a firm of three to ten people. Proposals, digital signature and contract management are in that same plan rather than sold as add-ons.
Can it produce quotes and proposals, or is it pipeline only?
Both, and the proposal side is unusually complete for a CRM at this price. The Proposals module ships with customizable templates, signee and signature placement, digital signatures that are eIDAS, ESIGN and IT Act compliant, and email status tracking so you can see when a proposal was opened. Once it is signed, an automated post-signature process runs, so the paperwork does not sit waiting for someone to remember it.
Are the digital signatures legally valid?
They are built to the three frameworks that cover most of the markets our customers sell into: eIDAS in the EU, ESIGN in the United States and the IT Act in India. That matters because the common workaround is to send a PDF to a separate e-signature product, which means a second subscription, a second audit trail and a signed document that lives outside the system holding the deal. Here the signed proposal stays attached to the deal it belongs to.
How does revenue forecasting work?
Pipeline KPIs weight each open deal by the stage it is in, so the forecast reflects the probability of the work landing rather than the total of everything still open. The figure updates as deals move through the Kanban pipeline, with no separate spreadsheet to maintain. A plain open-pipeline total is the number most firms quote each other and it is almost always the most optimistic one available.
What happens to a deal after we win it?
It converts rather than being re-entered. A lead converts to a deal, the deal is carried into contract management with lifecycle and status tracking, and a contract converts into a project. Amendments are handled on the contract rather than as a new document, and contracts can be organised in folders and uploaded manually where the paperwork started somewhere else. The point is that the client record, the notes and the history follow the work instead of being stranded in the stage where they were created.
We already use HubSpot or Pipedrive. Is there a reason to move?
If your problem is lead capture, email sequences and marketing automation, those tools are deeper than this and you should stay where you are. The reason to look here is if your commercial process keeps falling apart after the pipeline: the proposal goes out from one tool, the signature comes back through another, the contract lives in a folder and the project gets set up by hand from scratch. That chain is one product here, on one plan.

Pipeline, proposal and signature in one product

EUR 3 per seat per month billed yearly. One plan, every module included, free onboarding and data transfer. Start with a 14-day trial, no credit card required.

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