# Problem space

## Scope
This research stays inside the bounded CRM MVP:

- Auth
- Contacts
- Companies
- Opportunities
- Pipeline stages
- Tasks
- Notes
- Dashboard

It does not assume email sync, calendar sync, marketing automation, quoting, ticketing, or advanced forecasting.

## What SME teams are actually trying to run
Across small sales and service teams, the recurring operating loop is simple:

1. Identify the customer or prospect.
2. Record the company and people involved.
3. Track the current revenue or follow-up opportunity.
4. Capture the next action with an owner and due date.
5. Preserve context so another teammate can pick it up later.
6. Review the week’s pipeline and overdue work in one place.

That loop shows up whether the business is handling inbound enquiries, outbound follow-up, account growth, onboarding coordination, or lightweight post-sale service work.

## Current-state reality in SMEs
Before a CRM is adopted, the work is usually spread across:

- Spreadsheets for account lists and deal tracking
- Individual inboxes for customer history
- Personal notebooks or chat threads for meeting context
- Ad hoc task lists for follow-up promises

This works while one person owns everything and deal volume is low. It breaks when:

- More than one person touches the same account
- Work spans days or weeks instead of a single interaction
- Managers need a current view of pipeline health
- A missed follow-up has visible revenue or customer impact

## Bounded problems the MVP needs to solve

### Fragmented account history
Teams lose time reconstructing basic context:

- Who is this person?
- Which company are they linked to?
- What was promised last time?
- Is there an active opportunity or open follow-up?

Without one record for contacts, companies, notes, and open work, handoffs are slow and repeat conversations are common.

### Pipeline drift
In many SMEs, the pipeline exists, but only loosely:

- Opportunities are entered late
- Stages are updated inconsistently
- Stages mean different things to different users
- Deals remain visible even when nobody has a next step

The result is a dashboard that looks populated but does not help a manager decide what needs attention now.

### Follow-up failure
The real operational failure in small teams is rarely "we lacked a feature." It is usually:

- No next task was created
- The task had no owner
- The task had no due date
- The task existed, but nobody could see it among other work

For this MVP, tasks are the control point that turns customer context into accountable action.

### Weak continuity between sales and service work
SMEs often do not separate pre-sale and post-sale work with different systems. The same small team may:

- Qualify an opportunity
- Move it through a few stages
- Capture delivery or onboarding commitments as follow-up tasks
- Add notes for requests, constraints, and decisions

That makes notes, tasks, company records, and opportunity context more important than advanced automation.

### Low-trust visibility
Owners and managers need fast answers to a narrow set of questions:

- Which opportunities are active by stage?
- Which tasks are overdue or due today?
- Which accounts were updated recently?
- Which active opportunities do not have a clear next step?

If the system cannot answer those questions reliably, adoption drops.

## Why the bounded MVP is enough
Major SME CRMs consistently anchor their core workflows around:

- Contact and company records
- Deal or opportunity pipelines
- Notes or activity history
- Tasks or activities with ownership
- A summary or dashboard view

That pattern is enough to support the operational loop above without expanding into enterprise CRM scope.

## Problem statement
SME teams need a lightweight system of record that keeps contacts, companies, opportunities, tasks, and notes in one place so they can run a dependable weekly pipeline and follow-up process. The MVP succeeds if it reduces missed next steps, improves shared visibility, and makes day-to-day account work easier to continue across people and across time.
