The Evolution of QLab – From Client Pain to Practical Innovation

Over the past two decades, QGate has helped organisations deploy, optimise, and evolve their Dynamics 365 CRM environments. We help these businesses meet objectives and to grow. In doing so, we noticed the same patterns and challenges emerging as organisations got to grips with their CRM system.

Whether it was wanting to get to grips with reporting or understanding their sales pipeline, the crux of the issue was their desire to move faster. To get the insight, get the value and place Dynamics 365 at the centre of their business.

The result of a CRM that’s working the way teams across the organisation need it to is, adoption rates increase, best practices are upheld, data integrity increases and bottlenecks ease. Essentially it lives up to the promise of being a growth and efficiency driver for the business.

Rather than continue solving these problems one client at a time, we founded QLab, a focused innovation unit within QGate. It’s aim is to build no-code CRM enhancements that are ready to deploy, easy to use. Each solutions is directly aligned with the real-world challenges our clients face.

How QLab Helps

While QLab delivers no code plugins native to Dynamics 365, that’s just the mechanism. The output is about about enabling smarter, more efficient business practices through thoughtful, scalable technology.

Ideas are pressure-tested by consultants, shaped by developers, and validated through real client use cases. The result is a suite of tools that do exactly what they say on the tin. No bloat, no disruption, no false promises.

QLab’s first wave of modules is focused around driving efficeincy around sales. Sales processes is the achilles heal of so many businesses. They know they’ve got leads coming in but they can’t always say where from. And quite often those leads disappear into the pot once they’re qualified so beyond the invidiual working on them, the business has no visibility in terms of how well that lead is progressing.

This naturally has a knock-on effect as forecasting becomes difficult, but so does resourcing. If you don’t know how many opportunties are going to convert it’s very difficult to make sure you have the capacity or the products you need to deliver what was promised.

These plugins overcome many of these most common sales related pain points.

Wave 1

Here’s a summary of our Wave 1 releases.

• QLab.CreditView – surfaces real-time credit risk directly within Dynamics, enabling more confident deal qualification.
• QLab.Pipeline – applies RAG logic to accounts, quotes, and opportunities to highlight pipeline risk before it disrupts forecasting.
• QLab.Scorecard – brings structure to lead scoring, promoting consistency across sales teams.
• QLab.Quote – enables customers to configure, accept, and confirm quotes online.
• QLab.Lead – automates lead source categorisation to support accurate campaign attribution.
• QLab.Insight – provides a ready-to-deploy Power BI foundation, enabling business leaders to extract insight from their CRM without the need for a custom build.
• QLab.Feedback – introduces in-app CRM feedback, empowering users to flag issues or suggestions in real time.

Design Philosophy

Every QLab product starts the same way: with a problem. If it’s a recurring challenge that slows teams down or creates friction in CRM, it goes on the list. From there, we look for the simplest possible solution. One that delivers clear value, works natively in Dynamics, and doesn’t require formal training or development resource to deploy. If it needs a user guide to explain, it’s probably too complex and it gets refined. And before anything launches, it’s validated in a real production environment.

These tools are particularly valuable for the types of clients we serve: CRM and marketing managers, operational leaders, and business directors who want to increase adoption, standardise processes, and gain deeper insight from their CRM without turning to costly development cycles.

With QLab in place, sales forecasting improves, reporting lag disappears, customer journeys become more seamless, and decision-makers get faster access to what matters.

This is just the beginning. QLab is shaped by the same principles that define QGate: grounded innovation, integrity in execution, and an unwavering focus on delivering measurable business outcomes.

Every tool we release is built to do exactly what it promises, nothing unnecessary, nothing abstract, just practical impact where it matters most.

If you want your CRM to contribute more directly to business transformation – from operations to sales, marketing, and leadership, QLab was created for you.

To learn more about how QGate and QLab can help your business, talk to a member of the team.