This guide shows how sales, delivery and consultants work together in Cinode, from building a skill inventory to following up on delivered projects. It describes the recommended order of work and the best practices behind each step, and links to the detailed guides for each view.
The guide is for everyone involved in sales and delivery: consultants and team managers who keep profiles up to date, sales managers who create projects and roles, delivery managers who staff them, and managers who follow up on results.
Note: Which views and features you can use depends on your permission level and your Cinode package. Read more in Managing Permission Levels and Roles.
What does the sales and delivery flow in Cinode look like?
The sales and delivery flow in Cinode has six steps. Each step uses the data from the step before, so the quality of your matching, planning and reports depends on the data you collect early in the flow.
Build your skill inventory: consultants keep their profiles, skills and CVs up to date.
Capture demand: sales creates projects and roles with skill requirements, manually or from your CRM.
Find and match: open roles are matched with available consultants, candidates or partners.
Staff and communicate: consultants are booked preliminarily, assignments are confirmed and everyone is kept updated.
Plan delivery: delivery managers follow utilisation, availability and staffing levels in Planner.
Follow up: reports and exports show the outcome and point to what to improve in the next round.
Tip: Agree internally on who owns each step of the flow. When everyone knows who updates profiles, roles and statuses, sales and delivery can trust the same data.
How do I build a reliable skill inventory?
The skill inventory in Cinode is built from your employees' profiles. Matching, CVs and skill reports all use the same profile data, so complete and accurate profiles are the foundation for the rest of the sales and delivery flow.
Best practices for building a reliable skill inventory are the following:
Let each consultant own their profile and fill in every section, including presentation, assignments, skills, courses and certifications, education and languages.
Review the profile together with the consultant, with a focus on how each skill is graded. Some people grade themselves lower than others, so compare the grading with the consultant's actual experience.
Talk about which skills the consultant wants to develop, and mark them as favourite skills so they can be considered when you match roles.
Use Skill Sets so that everyone uses the same company-approved skill names.
Let Cinode suggest related skills for the profile with Suggested Skills.
Read more in Work with Skills, Add skills from Skill Sets to your profile and CV, Suggested Skills on Your Profile, Favorite skills and Exporting your profile and CV in Cinode.
For tips on keeping your data quality high over time, read Become a Cinode PRO - ensure high data quality.
How do I capture demand from sales?
Demand from sales is captured in Cinode as projects and roles. A project can contain one role, for an assignment for a single consultant, or several roles, for a team assignment. Each role is connected to one person.
Best practices for capturing demand are the following:
Add a date interval, extent and price to every role. Cinode uses these values to calculate the order value in sales reports and the expected utilisation in forecasts.
Add skill requirements to every role, based on the customer's description of the assignment. Matching uses these requirements to find consultants.
Fill in Project Responsible and Sales Responsible on every project, so that sales and delivery can filter on the projects they own.
Collect all information about the project in Cinode, including customer contacts and events, so that sales and delivery work from the same picture.
Read more in Creating and Managing Projects and Roles and Working with Created Projects.
Can projects come directly from our CRM?
Yes, projects can come directly from your CRM when you connect it to Cinode. A CRM integration means that deals from sales reach delivery without anyone entering the same information twice. Cinode integrates with the following CRM systems:
You can also import customer contacts automatically with Customer Contact Sync. To browse, install and configure integrations directly in Cinode, read Cinode Flows.
How do I find the right consultant for a role?
You find the right consultant for a role in Cinode by matching the role's skill requirements against the skills and availability in your organisation. Matching works in both directions: from a role to find consultants, and from a consultant to find roles.
You can find consultants for a role in the following ways:
Skill matching on a role: match the role's requirements against your consultants' skills. Read more in Matching Skills and Roles in Cinode.
Semantic Skill Matching: recognises related skills and terminology, so that a good match is not missed because a skill is named differently. Read more in Semantic Skill Matching.
Quick booking: book a consultant directly from Planner or the skill search. Read more in Quick booking.
Find role and the Available list in Planner: start from a consultant with free capacity. Read more in Working with Delivery in Cinode.
Is the best match always a 100% skill match?
No, the best consultant for a role is not always the one with a 100% skill match. Consider the following when you choose between matched consultants:
Development goals: a consultant who wants to grow in an area can be the right choice for a role in that area, even with a lower match.
Mentorship: a consultant with a full match may be over-qualified for the role, but can work as a mentor for junior consultants on the same project.
Availability and preferences: the consultant's availability during the period and their own preferences matter as much as the skill match.
What can I do if no consultant is available for a role?
If no internal consultant is available for a role, you can widen the search in the following ways:
Match the role with candidates in Recruit. Read more in Get started with Recruit/Candidates in Cinode.
Staff the role with a subcontractor. Read more in Managing Subcontractors.
Announce the role to your partners and the Partner Network. Read more in Announce roles to your partners and the Partner Network and What is Cinode Partner Network?
If the situation is the reverse, and you have available consultants but no matching role, Cinode Market helps you discover open assignments and new collaboration opportunities.
How do I staff a role and keep sales and delivery updated?
Staffing a role in Cinode goes from a preliminary assignment to a confirmed assignment, and the statuses on the role and the project show the outcome. Keeping these statuses updated is what makes your staffing statistics reliable.
Best practices for staffing a role are the following:
Book the consultant preliminarily as soon as they are offered to the customer. A preliminary assignment reserves the consultant's time and shows both sales and delivery who is planned for the role.
Use the role status to record the outcome of each offer, for example whether the consultant was accepted or rejected. You can then export statistics on offered consultants.
Set the project status to Won when the deal is closed, and confirm the assignment. If the deal is lost, update the status of both the role and the project.
Duplicate the role when an assignment is extended with new conditions, such as a new extent or price, so that the history of the original role is kept.
Document what happens in the project with events, and mention the colleagues who need to act. Mentioned colleagues get a reminder in their overview.
Read more in Creating and Managing Projects and Roles and Event Management & Mentions.
Important: Agree on how your organisation uses preliminary assignments. If a preliminary assignment means different things to sales and delivery, the Delivery view and the forecasts will be interpreted differently by each team.
How do I plan delivery and keep track of capacity?
Delivery is planned in Cinode in Planner and in the Delivery view under Projects. Delivery planning is described in detail in Working with Delivery in Cinode, including a weekly routine for delivery managers.
The views used to plan delivery are the following:
Planner > Forecast: utilisation, availability and capacity for your company, business units or teams. Read more in Forecast & Utilization rate.
Projects > Delivery: which roles need to be staffed.
Planner > Delivery Rate: how well your customer projects are staffed. Read more in Delivery Rate.
Project Planner: plan project and team delivery per week or per month. Read more in Project Planner.
How do I follow up on results in sales and delivery?
Follow-up in Cinode uses reports and exports that are built on the data from the earlier steps in the flow. Use them to evaluate outcomes on an individual, team or company level.
The reports and exports used for follow-up are the following:
Revenue forecast report: expected revenue based on assigned roles.
Utilisation forecast report: expected utilisation based on assigned roles.
Skills Forecast: plan upskilling and reskilling in your organisation.
Exporting Data: download company, project and user information for reporting and analysis.
Can I connect follow-up to our finance system?
Yes, you can connect Cinode to your finance or ERP system, so that follow-up is based on the same data in both systems. Cinode integrates with the following finance systems:
To build your own automations, read Cinode Webhooks and MCP Server.
Tip: Use follow-up to improve the start of the flow. Skill gaps in the Skills Forecast or roles you could not staff internally show which skills to develop or recruit for next.