Businesses often have complex multi-stage and multi-step sales processes. These processes can be challenging to manage and track, particularly so if they are not well-defined or documented. This might result in inconsistencies and gaps in the process, which can ultimately hurt sales performance.

Let's consider the example of the Deal Follow-up process. Before the deal is won or lost, this process goes through various steps, including qualifying, negotiation, value offer, legal review, etc. However, one may have questions like: When should a deal move from the "Negotiation stage" to "Discount Approved"? How do you determine if a lead has reached the "Contacted" status? Is it after one contact, two contacts, or perhaps five? And if it's five contacts, are all your sales representatives following the same procedure?

This is where the Blueprint feature comes in. Blueprint is an online replica of your offline business process. It captures every detail, including the steps, people involved, and the criteria for moving from one step to the next. Blueprint can also be used to automate tasks, validate data, and team collaboration.

Let us consider a sample scenario of a company that manages vehicle after-sales using a vertical application built using Vertical Studio to facilitate its day-to-day activities. Their after-sales support involves the following activities:

These are the different stages of the process involved.  

A Blueprint is designed by creating a sequential order of different stages in a process. Here, the primary building blocks of a Blueprint are - States and Transitions. 

Each stage in a process is referred to as a "State" in Blueprint. For example, in the above scenario, the different stages are New Request, Check Warranty, Check Severity, etc. Each of these stages will be called a “State”. States must be dragged and dropped in the Blueprint Editor to design the process flow.