The previous article touched on some high-level concepts and strategies that we recommend your team adheres to vigilantly: keeping everyone on the same page is absolutely critical during implementation. In this article, we will relate some of those concepts to MeasureSquare CRM and provide detailed guidance on each component of a successful implementation.
Let’s start with step 1: someone needs to be solely responsible for tracking and managing your CRM implementation.
This concept may seem obvious and simple, but it’s particularly easy to lose sight of priorities when implementing a new system like MeasureSquare CRM.
For small/medium businesses (10 users or less), it makes sense to assign one person as the implementation manager and call it a day.
For larger organizations, it may make sense to have the implementation manager positioned above a few department heads, where each department lead tracks individual tasks for their department, and the implementation manager supervises and coordinates. This gives the implementation manager a bit more room to breathe, which can allow them to take a high-level perspective and plan for the next stage of your implementation.
Regardless of the structure you choose, your implementation manager needs a significant amount of time to dedicate towards this process. With this in mind, simply having someone at the center of your organization does not automatically qualify them to be the best implementation manager.
One of the primary benefits of using a CRM is data consolidation. MeasureSquare CRM allows you to have your entire project workflow in one place, and if you use all of the modules, that will include customers, vendors, installers, and more. If you previously tracked your list of projects in another software platform, or in a spreadsheet, you have the ability to import those as well.
Before importing anything, take the time to audit your existing data. Messy imports create downstream problems that compound over time: duplicate contacts generate confusion for sales staff, inconsistent company names break reporting, and incomplete records leave gaps that erode trust in the system. If your team doesn’t trust the data, they won’t use the CRM.
Many users with scattered or unreliable data decide to start fresh in their new CRM rather than import historical records. This is a valid approach, especially if legacy data is spread across multiple spreadsheets, email inboxes, and disconnected systems. A clean starting point often outperforms a messy import.
If you do import data, sequence matters. Projects in MeasureSquare CRM reference Contacts, Companies, Vendors, and Subcontractors. If you import Projects before those supporting records exist, you’ll end up with orphaned references and broken associations. Follow this order:
Contacts and Companies first — these are the foundation that everything else references.
Vendors and Subcontractors second — these tie into pricing, purchasing, and field management workflows.
Projects last — once all supporting entities are in place, project imports will link correctly.
Identify which data (if any) needs to be imported: Projects, Contacts, Companies, Vendors, Subcontractors.
Export all data into Excel (CSV, XLS, XLSX) format.
Download the CRM Import Templates, paste your cleaned data, and upload.
Verify imported records inside the CRM. Spot-check a handful of contacts, companies, and projects to confirm that associations imported correctly.
For detailed import instructions, refer to the following guides: How to Import Contacts in MeasureSquare CRM, How to Import Companies in MeasureSquare CRM, How to Create and Import Vendors in MeasureSquare CRM, How to Create and Import Installers and Subcontractors in MeasureSquare CRM.
MeasureSquare CRM has a strong roles and permissions system that works in conjunction with the Team structure to provide significant control over your organization’s access model. Depending on your team size, the approach here can vary substantially.
One of the most common early mistakes is inviting your entire team to the CRM before roles and teams have been configured. When everyone joins as an Admin with full access, it creates a false sense of normal. Users build habits around unrestricted access, and later tightening permissions feels like something is being taken away. Instead, your implementation manager should set up the role and team structure before sending invitations. This way, each person logs in for the first time with the right level of access from day one.
Teams in MeasureSquare CRM are not just an organizational chart. When combined with pipeline access controls, teams become the mechanism for ensuring that users see the right data and operate in the right workflow lanes. A salesperson doesn’t need to see active installation schedules, and a field crew doesn’t need access to the sales pipeline. Designing teams and pipeline access together prevents information overload and keeps each user focused on their responsibilities.
Your initial configuration is a starting point, not a final state. As your team learns the CRM and your implementation progresses, you will almost certainly need to revisit roles and permissions. New workflows may require adjusted access, new hires will need to be placed into the right teams, and you may discover that certain permissions are too restrictive or too open. Plan to review your access model at each major implementation milestone.
For in-depth guidance, refer to our detailed configuration guides: Roles, Permissions, & Teams for teams of 10 or less and Roles, Permissions, Teams & Pipelines for Large Teams (10+).
Starting to use a system like MeasureSquare CRM is not the same as adopting a takeoff program like MeasureSquare 8. CRM occupies a unique gray area: it does follow a defined workflow — the subcontractor project lifecycle from lead to closeout — but within that lifecycle, there is enormous potential for variation. The way a 5-person residential shop manages their bids is fundamentally different from how a 40-person multi-branch commercial contractor runs their operation. No two companies are quite the same.
With that in mind, the best approach to workflow design depends on your team size, your existing processes, and how much structure you already have in place. Below, we break this into three tiers.
Regardless of team size, the first workflow you should operationalize in the CRM is your sales and bidding process. There are two reasons for this. First, your team likely already has a well-defined approach to pursuing and closing work. Whether you use Quotes, Bids, or both, your estimators and salespeople already know what a proposal looks like and how it should be delivered. This means the mapping exercise is relatively straightforward: you’re translating existing habits into a new tool, not inventing new processes from scratch.
Second, the sales workflow is the entry point for all downstream activity. Procurement, scheduling, field management, and billing all stem from a won project. If the sales data isn’t clean and consistent, every process that follows inherits those problems. Getting sales right first ensures that the rest of the system is built on a solid foundation.
For small teams, process design is usually intuitive. With so few people involved, handoffs are informal, everyone understands what’s happening, and there are fewer competing opinions about how things should work. The best approach for small teams is to learn the CRM for a few weeks before formalizing anything. Use the system on real projects, experiment with the pipeline stages, and let natural patterns emerge.
After a few weeks of usage, sit down with your team and document the processes that have started to take shape. Write lightweight SOPs that capture what’s working — not a 40-page manual, but a shared document that clarifies how your team uses the CRM. From there, you can refine and enhance these processes over time as you introduce additional modules.
At this stage, complexity increases significantly. You have multiple people who may be responsible for different parts of the same project, and handoffs between roles become a real consideration. Questions that didn’t matter for a 3-person team suddenly require deliberate answers: Who is responsible for moving a project from the sales pipeline to the execution pipeline? Who manages pricing — the estimator within the takeoff, or the PM within the CRM? How should MeasureSquare Field be deployed across your installation team? How do you divide data visibility so that each user has what they need without being overwhelmed by irrelevant information?
For medium teams, it’s important to define pipeline stages deliberately before asking your team to use them. Think about the stages as a shared language for your organization: if “Takeoff Complete” means something different to your estimating team than it does to your sales team, the pipeline loses its value. Take time to define entry and exit criteria for each stage, even if informally, so that everyone shares the same understanding of where a project stands.
Additionally, medium teams should plan for how takeoff data flows into downstream processes. If your estimators work in MeasureSquare 8 and your PMs manage execution in the CRM, the configuration choices you make around diagram imports, pricing methods, and bid structure will directly impact how smoothly that handoff works. These decisions benefit from coordination between departments rather than being left to individual preference.
Large organizations face a different challenge entirely. With multiple departments — sales, estimating, project management, purchasing, field operations, and accounting — each with their own priorities and workflows, trying to implement everything at once almost always leads to confusion, conflicting usage patterns, and slow adoption.
The most successful approach for large teams is a phased departmental rollout. Start with your sales and estimating teams. Get them fully operational in the CRM, producing Quotes or Bids, tracking opportunities through the pipeline, and following up on sent proposals. Once that workflow is stable and the upstream data is reliable, bring in project management and operations. Then layer in purchasing, field management, and finally finance and reporting.
This sequencing matters because each downstream department depends on the data quality of the departments above it. If sales isn’t entering contacts and companies consistently, the PM team inherits incomplete project records. If estimating isn’t structuring bids properly, purchasing can’t generate accurate purchase orders. Each phase should be stable before the next one begins.
For large teams, the design of pipelines, teams, and role-based access becomes critical infrastructure — not an afterthought. Multiple Sales-type pipelines may be needed if different divisions pursue work differently (residential vs. commercial, for example). Multiple Other-type pipelines may be needed to manage execution, procurement, and billing as separate workflow lanes. Team membership and pipeline access controls ensure that each department operates in its own lane without creating silos that prevent collaboration.
For detailed guidance on structuring roles, teams, and pipelines at scale, refer to CRM Implementation Methods: Roles, Permissions, Teams, and Pipelines (For Large Companies).
Cross-department handoff mapping should be completed before go-live for any department beyond the first. Document who is responsible for moving a project from one pipeline to another, what data must be present before that transition, and what actions are triggered by the handoff. Without this, large organizations end up with projects stuck in limbo between departments.
The CRM is very flexible — it’s built to meet the needs of organizations across the flooring industry, and there are a significant number of options available. These options can drastically change your CRM experience at every turn. In other words, your implementation manager should familiarize themselves with what the CRM can do and what it can’t. The settings and options within the CRM are a big part of that.
Not all settings carry the same urgency. Some are blockers that must be configured before your team can use the system effectively, while others can be refined over time as your team gets comfortable. Focus your early configuration effort on the items that directly impact your ability to start working:
Tax Rates — Quotes and Bids cannot calculate correctly without properly configured tax rates.
Accounting Integration (QuickBooks/Xero) — If you use QBO or Xero, enable this early so approved documents sync correctly from the start.
ERP/Accounting Integration (other systems) — If you do not use QBO or Xero, notify the CRM team immediately. Excel-based integrations typically require 4–6 weeks to implement.
Pipeline creation — Your team needs at least one pipeline configured before they can begin tracking projects.
Settings that can be refined later without disrupting existing work include Email Templates, Order Templates, Inclusions & Exclusions libraries, and Terms & Conditions. These are important, but they can be iterated on after your team starts using the core workflow.
As your implementation manager works through system settings, they should maintain a simple log of every configuration decision and the reasoning behind it. This doesn’t need to be elaborate — a shared spreadsheet or document with the setting name, the value chosen, and a brief note about why is sufficient. Without this, future changes become guesswork. Six months from now, when someone asks why a particular email template is structured a certain way, or why a specific tax rate was configured, the log provides an immediate answer instead of requiring a team-wide investigation.
Go through every section of the System Settings, and also your personal profile (mouseover your name in the top-right and click ‘Profile’).
Configure each section using your best judgment.
Identify and list which settings warrant discussion with your team. Examples: Terms & Conditions, Inclusions/Exclusions, Email Templates, Order Templates.
Run through the CRM workflow by yourself, step by step. Identify and list which parts warrant configuration and/or discussion with your team.
Coordinate with appropriate teams to configure the CRM based on your organization’s needs.
MeasureSquare CRM includes a guided onboarding program consisting of five sessions with a MeasureSquare trainer. These sessions cover system setup, project and diagram workflows, pricing, proposal creation (Quotes and Bids), and post-award processes. The onboarding program provides significant value and accelerates early adoption — but it’s important to understand what it covers and what it doesn’t.
Onboarding sessions teach your team how to use the CRM’s features. Implementation is the broader effort of configuring the system, designing workflows, migrating data, and driving adoption. Training accelerates the learning curve, but the implementation manager still owns the strategic decisions: which features to introduce when, how to structure pipelines, and how to enforce consistent usage across the team. Don’t expect five training sessions to replace the work of a thoughtful implementation plan.
Not everyone on your team needs to learn every module. A salesperson needs to understand pipeline management, contacts, and proposals. An estimator needs to focus on diagrams, pricing, and bid creation. A project manager needs execution workflows, work orders, and scheduling. Training is most effective when it’s scoped to each person’s actual responsibilities rather than attempting to make everyone an expert in the entire system.
During onboarding sessions, the implementation manager should work with the trainer to prioritize topics that align with the current phase of rollout. If your team is still in the sales workflow phase, spending an entire session on procurement modules creates confusion and wastes time.
After formal training concludes, your team will still have questions. The most sustainable approach is to develop one or two internal power users who become the go-to resource for CRM questions within your organization. These individuals don’t need to be technical experts — they simply need to have used the system enough to answer common questions, troubleshoot basic issues, and know when to escalate to MeasureSquare support.
Power users dramatically reduce the friction of day-to-day adoption. Instead of submitting a support ticket for every question, a team member can walk down the hall and get an answer in two minutes. This keeps momentum going during the critical early months of adoption.
Outside of training sessions, all team members should be utilizing the self-service resources available to them. MeasureSquare’s Knowledge Base provides detailed articles covering every module, workflow, and configuration option. The CRM User Manual offers step-by-step walkthroughs of complete project workflows. The Starter Guides included in the onboarding program provide quick-reference materials for common tasks. And the support team is always available at support@measuresquare.com for questions, issues, or feedback.
MeasureSquare CRM connects to several external platforms that extend its functionality. The timing and sequencing of these integrations matters: some should be activated on day one, while others are best introduced once your core workflows are stable.
Email and Calendar integrations (Google or Outlook) are necessary for full CRM functionality. Every user should connect these integrations as early as possible — ideally on their first day in the system. Without them, email communication and calendar-based task management operate outside the CRM, which fragments the data that makes the system valuable.
Common blocker: Many Microsoft 365 users need to enable the admin consent workflow through their M365 dashboard in order to successfully activate the email/calendar integration. If a user experiences this issue, it can typically be resolved quickly by providing the Microsoft Exchange365 Integration document to their IT department or IT vendor. Flag IT involvement early in the implementation process to avoid delays.
If your organization uses QuickBooks Online or Xero, enable the integration from Settings as soon as your team begins creating proposals. This ensures that approved Quotes and Bids sync to your accounting system automatically, eliminating double data entry from the start.
If your organization uses any other accounting or ERP system, send an email to crmteam@measuresquare.com and allen@measuresquare.com as soon as possible. MeasureSquare can build an Excel-based integration to bridge data from the CRM to your accounting system, but implementation typically requires 4–6 weeks. Starting this process early prevents it from becoming a bottleneck later in your rollout.
Zapier integrations unlock automation capabilities that can significantly reduce manual work — but they should be introduced only after your core workflows are stable and your team is using the CRM consistently. Automations built on top of inconsistent processes amplify the inconsistency rather than solving it.
Common Zapier use cases with MeasureSquare CRM include:
Automated follow-up reminders when a Bid or Quote status changes to “Sent.”
Automatic pipeline stage transitions based on document status changes.
Notifications to specific team members when projects enter certain stages.
For organizations that collect payments directly through proposals, MeasureSquare CRM’s Stripe integration enables payment collection tied to Quotes and Bids. This is particularly useful for residential and retail-focused companies that collect deposits or full payments at the point of sale.
Immediately: Email and Calendar (all users, day one).
Early: Accounting integration (QuickBooks/Xero) or ERP integration request (all other systems).
After workflows stabilize: Zapier automations and Stripe.
Standard Operating Procedures may sound like a corporate formality, but in the context of CRM implementation, they serve a very practical purpose: without them, ten users will create ten different workflows. SOPs are the mechanism that keeps your team aligned on how the CRM is actually used day to day.
Don’t write SOPs on day one. Your team hasn’t used the system yet, and anything you document will be theoretical rather than practical. Instead, let your team work in the CRM for two to four weeks. Allow patterns to emerge. Observe which processes your team gravitates toward and where confusion or inconsistency starts to appear. Then formalize what’s working into lightweight documentation.
Focus your SOPs on the areas where inconsistency creates the most damage:
Pipeline stage definitions — What does it mean for a project to be in each stage? What must be true before a project moves to the next stage?
Proposal workflows — When does the team use a Quote vs. a Bid? Who creates it, who reviews it, who sends it?
Naming conventions — How should projects, contacts, and companies be named? Consistent naming makes search and reporting dramatically more effective.
Data entry standards — Which fields are required? What information should be captured in notes vs. custom fields?
Handoff protocols — When a project moves from sales to operations, what steps must be completed? Who is responsible for the transition?
The best SOPs are the ones people actually read. A shared document that covers your key processes in clear, concise language will outperform a 40-page manual that nobody opens. Write for practicality, not comprehensiveness. And plan to revisit your SOPs at each major milestone — 30 days, 90 days, and 180 days into your implementation — to ensure they still reflect how your team actually works.
Go-live is the point at which the CRM transitions from a tool your team is learning to the system of record for your organization. This distinction matters. As long as the CRM is “something we’re trying out,” it will always take a back seat to whatever your team was using before. Go-live means the CRM is now the primary system, and previous tools (spreadsheets, email-based tracking, whiteboards) are retired.
For most organizations, a phased go-live is more effective than flipping the switch for everyone at once. Start with the sales workflow: all new opportunities are entered into the CRM, all proposals are generated from the CRM, and all follow-ups are tracked in the CRM. Once the sales team is fully operational and data quality is consistent, expand to operations, then field management, then finance and reporting. Each phase should be stable before the next begins.
Without clear milestones, it’s easy to assume progress without measuring it. Define what success looks like at each checkpoint:
30 days: Basic adoption is underway. Users are logging in, creating projects, and managing their pipelines. Core integrations (email, calendar, accounting) are connected.
90 days: Cross-team usage is in place. Sales, estimating, and operations are all working within the CRM. Handoffs between departments are functioning. Pipeline data is reliable enough for leadership to review.
180 days: The CRM is the system of record. Reporting reflects actual business performance. Adoption is high because workflows feel intentional and integrated into daily routines.
Adoption isn’t a feeling — it’s measurable. The implementation manager should be monitoring whether users are consistently logging in, creating and updating projects, using notes and tasks, keeping pipeline stages current, and generating proposals from the CRM rather than outside tools. If a team member hasn’t logged in for a week, that’s a signal that needs to be addressed — not ignored.
Be aware of the patterns that consistently derail CRM adoption:
Parallel systems — If your team is still maintaining spreadsheets or email-based tracking alongside the CRM, the CRM will always be viewed as “extra work.” The old systems must be retired for the new one to stick.
No enforcement from leadership — If leadership doesn’t use the CRM for pipeline reviews, reporting, or decision-making, the team has no incentive to keep it updated. Leaders set the standard by using the system themselves.
No feedback loop — If users encounter friction and have no way to voice it, frustration builds silently. Create a simple mechanism for users to report issues, suggest improvements, and ask questions. This keeps the implementation manager informed and keeps the team invested.
Go-live is a milestone, not a finish line. The implementation manager should continue to monitor adoption, refine workflows, update SOPs, and coordinate with MeasureSquare support as the organization’s usage matures. The most successful CRM implementations are the ones that are treated as ongoing, evolving systems — not one-time projects.
For any further questions, please reach out to our Support team:
Monday – Friday from 7:30am–4:30pm PST: (626) 683-9188 ext. 3
All Hours: support@measuresquare.com