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 general, sales projects consist of several sales stages and numerous individual activities. The sales stages are used in opportunities and sales campaigns to plan process sequences. You can save them in the Sales stages application separately for companies. Sales stages act as classification and will be accepted where relevant in the OLAP database.
This document describes the structure of how sales stages can be displayed in the system and how the application of the same name is structured. Also described are the role sales stages play for opportunities and sales campaigns.
Instructions for working with sales stages, such as how to enter or process sales stages, can can be found in the document Procedures: Sales stages.
Definitions of terms
Sales stages – In general, sales projects consist of several sales stages. Sales stages are used in Relationship management to classify opportunities and sales campaigns, and for planning timed process sequences. Every opportunity and every sales campaign is assigned to exactly one sales stage at any given time.
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 data warehouse export applications 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 applications Opportunities and Sales campaigns are used for creating and editing the sales projects. In the application Sales campaigns, 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.
Existing sales stages are a precondition for creating opportunities and sales campaigns. Sales stages are updated manually in the applications Sales campaigns and Opportunities to document process progress.
If opportunities are generated from sales campaigns, then the sales stage will be accepted from the campaign. Changes in sales stage in Opportunities are logged in the historical data of the opportunity and can be transferred to the OLAP database and analyzed in the Warehouse.
Application description
The application is used to create and manage all sales stages to be used for opportunities and sales campaigns. The view consists of a query pane and a work pane. You can limit the sales stages to be displayed in the work pane by setting search criteria in the query pane.
Query pane
The following search fields are displayed in the query pane.
The operation of search fields has been described in Operating guidelines.
- Sales stage – Enter in this field the identifications of one or more existing sales stages you want to display in the work pane.
- Description – Enter in this field one or more descriptions as search criteria of sales stages you want to display in the work pane.
- Deletion marker – Select in this field the sales stages to be displayed in the table of the work pane. Following options are available:
- All
- Marked for deletion
- Not marked for deletion
Activate the search of the system according to appropriate sales stages with the [Update] button.
Work pane
All sales stages are displayed in the work pane after update that correspond with the search criteria created in the query pane. A line is displayed for every sales stage. You can edit the sales stage data if required or create new sales stages.
Following data of sales stages are displayed, newly created or edited in a table under the entered column headings.
- Sales stage – This field displays the unique identification of the sales stage. The identification helps in identifying the correct sales stage to be used in other applications and queries. For existing sales stages, the identification cannot be entered. Enter in this field identification for new sales stages. This identification can comprise of a maximum of five 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, to the extent possible, unique description to facilitate searches for it.
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 Sales stages application.
Business entities
The following business entity is relevant for the Sales stages application that you use, for instance, for
- assigning authorizations,
- providing activity definitions or
- importing or exporting
com.cisag.app.crm.obj.OpportunityStage
The business entity is part of the following business entity grouping: 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
The Sales stages application has no special features.
Organizational assignments
An organization assignment is not possible for the Sales stages application.
Special features
There are no features for the Sales stages application.
Authorizations for business partners
The Sales stages application is not released for business partners.