# Problem Space (SME Sales + Service CRM MVP)

Target market: small-to-medium sales and service teams.

## What teams are trying to do

SME sales and service teams need a simple, reliable system to:

- Keep a single source of truth for people and organizations they interact with.
- Track active deals (opportunities) through a pipeline of stages.
- Capture follow-ups as tasks so work does not fall through cracks.
- Add notes as context so anyone can pick up a conversation.
- See a lightweight dashboard for “what needs attention today” and pipeline health at a glance.

## Common pain points in the target market

### Fragmented information

- Contacts and companies live in spreadsheets, inboxes, and individual notes.
- Duplicate records and inconsistent naming make searching unreliable.
- Context is lost when someone is out sick or leaves.

### Unreliable follow-up

- Follow-ups are tracked in personal reminders or calendars with no shared visibility.
- Tasks are not clearly connected to a contact/company/opportunity.
- Managers cannot reliably see what is blocked or overdue.

### Poor pipeline visibility

- Opportunities are tracked informally or in spreadsheets with no standard stage progression.
- Forecast conversations devolve into “status” instead of actionable next steps.
- Stage definitions are inconsistent across reps, making comparisons meaningless.

### Slow handoffs between sales and service

- Service requests and renewal conversations often start as notes or emails without a clear owner.
- Past interactions are hard to find quickly during customer calls.
- Teams lack an easy “timeline” of notes + tasks against a contact or company.

## MVP scope boundary (explicit)

This discovery pack is intentionally bounded to an MVP that supports:

- Authentication and user access
- Contacts
- Companies
- Opportunities
- Pipeline stages
- Tasks
- Notes
- Dashboard

## Non-goals (explicit)

Out of scope for MVP discovery (do not design or build):

- Email/calendar sync, call logging, SMS, chat integrations
- Marketing automation, lead scoring, sequences/cadences
- Quotes, invoices, payments, CPQ, contracts, e-sign
- Customer support ticketing, SLA management, knowledge base
- Advanced analytics, forecasting models, AI recommendations
- Mobile apps (native), offline-first features

