Topic overview

CRM or Customer Relationship Management generally means a holistic approach to company management which orients towards the customers and keeps them in focus. An important task of a company here is to manage the relationships with its customers professionally.

In Comarch ERP Enterprise, the term Customer Relationship Management generally deals with partners. A partner can accept several partner roles at the same time in Comarch ERP Enterprise. Therefore, a partner can be a customer and a supplier at the same time, for instance. This is why we talk of Relationship Management in Comarch ERP Enterprise and the facts described for customers below is also applicable for other partner roles. Normally, the external partner is activated first. eCRM (electronic Customer Relationship Management), better known as E-Business Relationship Management, is also represented by the technology in Comarch ERP Enterprise.

The Relationship Management framework includes functions such as planning, assessing, and tracking sales projects such as opportunities and sales campaigns. Successful sales rely on knowing the client and other people involved in the sales project and their influence on the purchasing decision.

Relationship Management thus enables you to record addressees, assign contacts, and highlight the interrelationships between the people involved via partner references.

In doing so, special partner reference types are created that are valid only for Relationship Management and used only here. Based on them, other contact persons can be assigned to the sales projects and described in their actual, specific roles. For example, partner references can be used to answer such questions as:

• Who are the decision makers?
• Who has what influence on the decision-making processes?
• What relationships do the participants have with each other?
• During the opportunity, which persons are for us and which against?

This document describes how partner references and partner reference types are displayed in the system and how they are used in the opportunities. You can also find information on how the application Partner reference types is structured.

Instructions for handling partner reference types, for instance how to create or edit a new partner reference type, have been provided in the document Procedures: Partner reference types.

Definitions of terms

Partner Reference Types – In Comarch ERP Enterprise, internal and user-defined partner reference types are used to create and assign partner references in opportunities. User-defined partner reference types are freely definable partner relationship categories for Relationship management, usable only in opportunities. They exist in addition to the two available internal partner reference types, representative and competitor. Partner reference types are always specific to partner roles.

Activities and applications in Relationship Management

Following applications are available in Relationship Management with the exception of applications which are relevant for the transfer and evaluation of the Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) data. The OLAP data is saved in an OLAP database.

The OLAP data are generally transferred from the transaction data of the company which are saved in the Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) data to the OLAP database, transferred with special export applications in Data
warehouse framework to the OLAP database. These data are available there for statistical analyses with appropriate external software programs and tools. This is applicable for opportunities data in Relationship Management.

The Opportunities and Sales campaigns applications are used for creating and editing the sales projects. In the Sales campaigns application, an opportunity is generated from a sales campaign for all or individually selected addressees.

The other applications in Relationship Management are used to control the editing of the sales projects and to create specific master data, meaning the background information for sales projects, for Relationship Management.

In general, sales projects consist of several sales stages and numerous individual activities. Sales stages can be specified individually for companies. The activities in the opportunities and sales campaigns are specifically scheduled and are assigned to a responsible person for executing the activities.

In opportunity and sales campaign types, those settings are saved that are applicable for all opportunities and for all sales campaigns that use them. For instance, partner relationship types can be selected in the opportunity types. The corresponding partner relationships are finally automatically displayed in the opportunities under the Partner references tab if they have been created for the partner of the opportunity.

There are also special partner reference types that are valid only for the Relationship Management. Other partner references can be manually created through these partner reference types in the opportunities. With this you can assign more contact persons to the opportunities even if these partners are not yet connected directly to a company.

In an opportunity, the participating persons can have relationships with each other and their specific roles for the opportunity are described more precisely through the partner relationships and references. When qualifying persons, you may use internal and also user-defined partner reference types.

Partner reference types are the precondition for creating partner references in the opportunities manually. Both Sales representative and Competitor partner reference types available in the system are only displayed in the Partner reference types application. In addition, other user-defined partner reference types can be created. These types are used only within Relationship Management.

There is no predefined partner relationship category for competitor partner role. Only in the course of an opportunity can partners with Competitor role be used. A partner has the Competitor role if Competitor is checked in its partner master data in the Base view under General. Partners with Competitor role can be manually assigned to an opportunity through the internal partner reference type Competitor.

There is a predefined partner relationship type for Sales representative partner role. If the Sales representative partner relationship type is selected in the opportunity type and if the target partner of an opportunity has representative relationships, then this representative is automatically displayed. The representative relationships from partner master data are copied where the copy is generated on the basis of internal partner reference type Sales representative as partner reference and assigned to the opportunity. Sales representatives can also be manually assigned to an opportunity through the internal partner reference type Sales representative. Automatically generated and manually assigned partner references can be deleted.

The partner assigned to the two internal partner reference types Competitor or Sales representative, can be transferred to the OLAP database. Every change in partner reference of both internal partner reference types in the opportunity is logged in the historical data of the opportunity.

Application description

The Partner reference types application is used to view and create all partner reference types that are to be used for the opportunities. The Partner reference types application has two views:

• Internal: For viewing existing internal partner reference types.
• User-defined: For editing and creating user-defined partner reference types.

The same fields are displayed in both views. However in the Internal view, the data in the fields cannot be changed.

Internal view

The Internal view is used for viewing the existing internal partner reference types. You can search for and display one of the two existing types with the Type field. The two internal partner reference types are:

User-defined view

The user-defined partner reference type data are displayed in the following fields. They can be created or changed there, if necessary.

Type – The Type field displays the unique identification of the activity type. The identification of the partner reference type is used to use the correct type in the opportunities. Enter an identification. This identification can comprise of a maximum of 20 numbers, alphabets or a digit-alphabet combination. It can be chosen as desired by the user.

Description – The description serves as an additional distinguishing characteristic. Its text can be chosen by the user. Enter a descriptive and as unique a description as possible to facilitate searches for it.

Partner role – The selected partner role or partner utilization limits the partners that can be assigned to the partner references in the opportunity. You can admit only one of the following partner roles or partner utilizations:

• Contact
• Only “organization” partner category
• Customer
• Employees
• Competitor
• Sales representative
• Contact person
• Freight carrier
• Any (default)

Cardinality – The cardinality determines the number of permitted partners to be assigned to the opportunity with this partner reference type. Select one or both following cardinalities for the partner reference type.

• 1:1
• 1:n (default)

The cardinality selected here is validated in the partner references in the opportunity. For instance, if you permit only a 1:1 relationship for the decision-maker, you can only enter or assign one decision-maker in the opportunity.

Customizing

Relationship Management can be switched on or off as a whole in the Customizing application under Relationship Management grouping. Other settings in Customizing application do not affect the Partner reference types application.

Business entities

Following business entity is relevant for the Partner reference types application that you use, for instance, for:

• Assigning authorizations,
• Providing activity definitions or
• Importing or exporting

Partner reference type

com.cisag.app.general.obj.PartnerReferenceType

The business entity is part of the following business entity group:

com.cisag.app.crm.MasterData

Authorizations

Authorizations can be assigned by means of authorization roles as well as by assigning an organization. The authorization concept is described in the technical documentation Authorizations.

Special capabilities

There are no special capabilities for Partner reference types application.

Organizational assignments

An organization assignment is not possible for the Partner reference types application.

Special features

There are no features for the Partner reference types application.

Authorizations for business partners

The Partner reference types application is disabled for the business partners..