StoriesOnBoard vs. Traction Complete

As mentioned earlier, we also use StoriesOnBoard to create other processes (customer and employee journey). We use the swim lanes to differentiate between measures, tools and processes and working with them is very easy and understandable for this purpose.

Less easy is the use of context, i.e. when one part of a story map depends on another story map. This cannot be avoided (at least for us) to avoid creating redundancy (and the risk of creating different stages). At appropriate places, we refer to the other map in the title.

Traction Complete is very well suited for lead to account matching and for automatic, criteria based lead routing and processing. For example, when a lead is created, it can be matched to an account, and Traction Complete can populate account demographics like Industry or Annual Revenue. And once the lead's score reaches a certain threshold, Traction Complete can then evaluate any of the leads data (including the industry and annual revenue that the lead was previously enriched with), route the lead to a person or queue , and at the same time update the lead status and or enrich the lead with information to track funnel progression (e.g., MQL Date, Assigned Date, etc.).

• User role management
• Jira integration
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Filtering by personas

• Lead to Account matching
• Lead Routing
• Easy to configure and maintain in visual interface
• Many advanced functions to support different types of round robin, scheduling etc.

• Switching the view to a vertical mode (easier to scroll).
• Better availability of information on user story mapping.
• Possibility to link to activities and steps from other maps (Context).

• Functionality for flow version management, e.g. properties / description fields
• Popup windows for flow elements are sometimes hard to move (but could be isolated to Safari)
• Broader self-service customer portal/knowledge base (but the support and customer success functions are very good)

Traction Complete continues to improve and innovate, and their staff does a great job of informing us of new functionality and how we can use it to get more value from Traction Complete. And at its core, it covers a gap inherent in Salesforce CRM - the fact that leads are a standalone object and not connected to the other main CRM objects like accounts, contacts, and opportunities. Traction Complete bridges that gap without requiring us to convert leads to contacts and degrade the data quality of the contact records. This functionality is key to a holistic process from initial inquiry to MQL, SAL, SQL, New Customer, and repeat business.

StoriesOnBoard works really well; all features are well thought through. It could look a bit fresher, although the new updated dashboard is already much better than it was.

It's very usable overall and much easier than using native functionality. If there is anything I'd want to improve, and I'm being critical here, there are a few minor items. 1) It would be nice if the initial load time of flows was faster, but I understand that given the number of elements we have in the assignment flow, I should not expect a two second load time. 2) It would be great if the different flow versions had fields to capture properties/attributes like a verbose description to make version control better. My sense is that it will be available in a future version. 3) When editing flows, every now and then, the pop-up windows of elements are a bit sticky on the screen when trying to move/drag them - however, I usually experience this only in Safari and am often too lazy to fire up Chrome.

The support team at Traction Complete has always been responsive, knowledgeable, and professional. They took the time to understand our business needs and helped us during the initial implementation, as well as with configuration changes when needed.

I've been part of 3 implementations, and the Traction Complete team has always met or exceeded expectations and delivered on their commitments/promises.

The only other competitor we looked at was cardboardit.com. Both had solid functionality, but StoriesOnBoard was more user-friendly and quick to learn and use in our opinion.

Traction Complete offered more ease of use, less complexity, and an overall lower cost of ownership compared to other options. And while Salesforce can handle some of the automation, which requires more technical skill to configure, it does not provide the lead to account matching.

• StoriesOnBoard (and story mapping in general) creates a low-cost visual method of aligning on high-level business and technical requirements early in a project and provides an ongoing reference as the project progresses. Having this alignment is critical for the later stages of the project.

• Faster actioning of leads by routing them to the correct user without manual review
• Improved lead segmentation based on matched accounts demographics
• Lower maintenance of lead assignment and automatic processing