What are Flexible Approvals and who benefits most from them?
Flexible Approvals ensure consistency across your organization by automating review workflows. These workflows trigger based on specific criteria you set, such as discount percentage, margin requirements, or overall deal size. It is designed for sales teams, especially sales operations and managers, who need to maintain governance and speed up their deal cycle times.
By defining thresholds, you build governance directly into the process. This means your sales reps receive real-time feedback and guided fixes, while managers approve deals quickly with all the necessary context. This feature is essential for growing companies using the Hoop platform that need to scale their commercial operations without losing control.
How does the Flexible Approvals feature actually streamline manager review?
The feature provides managers with a streamlined review process that offers full context instantly. Instead of digging through multiple screens, managers see a concise view of the deal details and rationale for changes. This accelerated review process significantly reduces cycle times, ensuring deals do not stall.
- Line-item deltas and rationale are shown at a glance, highlighting the changes that triggered the approval.
- Comment threads allow for quick clarification of decisions and next steps between reps and managers.
- Mobile approvals ensure managers can keep deal momentum going even when they are away from their desks.
Hoop ensures managers have the power and information to make swift, informed decisions.
How are custom approval rules configured and what is the typical setup time?
Custom approval rules are configured by setting criteria based on specific fields or complex formulas within the Hoop platform. This allows governance to be built-in from the start, matching your unique organizational structure and commercial policies.
You can route approvals to specific individuals, or to pools of approvers based on business unit or region. For example, you can set team-specific thresholds for SMB versus Enterprise segments, or regional rules for different currencies and taxes. Initial setup is straightforward, often taking only a few hours to define core thresholds and routing, with immediate time to value as non-compliant deals are flagged instantly.
Which Hoop platform pricing plans include access to Flexible Approvals?
The Flexible Approvals feature is available across several subscription tiers on the Hoop platform to accommodate different business needs and scales. It is included in the core, pro, and enterprise pricing plans. The complexity and volume of the rules you can implement may vary depending on your chosen plan.
The enterprise plan generally offers the most extensive capabilities, including highly complex formulas and granular routing options necessary for large, multi-regional organizations. Users on the core plan benefit from essential approval workflows, providing crucial governance while scaling. We recommend reviewing the detailed plan features to select the tier that best aligns with your required governance complexity and business volume.
How does Flexible Approvals ensure security and data governance?
The feature is designed with robust security and auditability in mind, ensuring all approval activities are transparent and preserved. This provides the compliance needed for enterprise-level operations and strict industry regulations. Governance is maintained through detailed, immutable logs.
Hoop provides a secure environment for all deal information. Key mechanisms include:
- Time-stamped logs that preserve who, what, and when for every single decision made within the workflow.
- Version history capabilities allowing you to compare quote iterations and recover prior states if needed.
- Access controls tied to user roles to ensure only authorized individuals can review or modify approval criteria and deals.
This comprehensive tracking ensures complete accountability and allows for easy auditing of all commercial decisions.
What steps can users take to prevent bottlenecks in the approval process?
Avoiding bottlenecks is crucial for maintaining sales momentum, and Flexible Approvals includes specific tools to manage this risk. The system allows you to proactively set up alternative paths and notifications to keep the process moving efficiently, even when primary approvers are unavailable or slow to respond.
Managers and sales operations teams should utilize backup approvers to ensure a secondary person can step in immediately if the primary approver is out. Additionally, the system supports Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and escalation rules. You can configure it to:
- Notify leadership or automatically reassign the request when a deadline is nearing.
- Set explicit timeframes for review to maintain predictable cycle times.
This structure prevents deals from stalling and ensures continuous progress toward closing on the Hoop platform.
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