Welcome to the topicon customer relationship management.
In this topic we will explore the options available for customer relationship management in SAP Business One.
Imagine that your company’s top goals are to increase sales and customer satisfaction. Your company wants to use pre-sales documents to track the sales pipeline and follow up on customer contacts.Sales team members use activities to manage their day-to-day responsibilities
On easy way to schedule activities, such as meetings, is to use the calendar. Just click on the calendar icon in the toolbar. The calendar provides monthly, weekly and daily views.There is even a group view that can facilitate scheduling team meetings. The calendar allows you to display, schedule and update activities by dates and users.
To create activities directly in the calendar, click on a given date and time, and SAP Business One takes you to the Activity window where you can describe activities and link them to business partners and documents.Even if you create an activity elsewhere, all time based activities (phone calls, meetings and others) are automatically entered in the calendar.
Activities can also be created and managed inside the business partner master data record.From the Business Partner master, you can open a list of related activities as shown in the graphics, or choose the option to create activities.When you create an activity from within the business partner master record, the business partner information defaults into the activity.
When you set up an activity in the business partner master data, SAP Business One has functionality that allows you to set an alert to be sent to the user for a specific type of activity - Phone Call, Meeting, Note, Other. You can also set a reminder and a time frame for when the alert should happen. The alerts for activities are controlled by the “Send alert for activities scheduled for today” checkbox on the Services tab of General Settings. The date used is the date you set on the activity.
Activities can be set to occur on a regular basis. Here we see an activity that is set up for a weekly meeting. You can manage changes to a series or to individual activities within a series. Each individual occurrence of the activity can be moved or canceled without affecting the series.Use the Back or Next button to navigate to the individual occurrences of a recurring activity.
Activities are often linked to Sales Opportunities.A sales opportunity allows you to manage the sales cycle for an opportunity with a customer or lead.For example, a customer inquires about certain products your company is selling, you can respond immediately by creating a sales opportunity, allowing you to track the prospective sale and notify others about the status of the potential deal.As you meet with others and gather information, you can link any activities relevant to the opportunity.You can also view relevant activities, such as a list of planned activities linked to the opportunity.
Opportunities are structured into stages which reflect the stages of your sales cycle.On the graphic we see a sales cycle with 5 stages: lead, first meeting, second meeting, quotation and negotiations. This is a just an example Sales cycles and stages can be customized to match your company’s sales process.For each stage in the cycle, you can enter the potential amount of the deal and the system predicts the opportunity’s probability of success based on some percentages you have set up in advance.You can track information on what is happening at each stage.And ultimately, you can track whether you have won or lost the deal.Reporting is available for analysis of opportunities and for optimizing your sales process. Sales opportunities give you visibility into your sales pipeline, for individual sales employees or the company as a whole.
Before customers commit to ordering, they frequently want a sales quotation that they can review and circulate within their company. The sales quotation might come out of a sales opportunity or activity, or arise independently.The sales quotation documents an offer or proposal that you send to a customer or to a lead.As used in SAP Business One, it is not a legally binding document, but rather used for information purposes.One field that distinguishes a quotation from a sales order is the Valid until Date. This date specifies how long the offer for the specified items and prices is available. The default period is 30 days after the posting date, but it can be changed manually or by using different payment terms.When a customer accepts the proposal defined in the sales quotation, you copy the quotation to a sales order to begin the sales process.
You have the option of using the Microsoft Outlook integration add-on for SAP Business One to keep track of your day-to-day work on sales opportunities, sales quotations and activities.Microsoft Outlook integration gives you access to sales data without having to be logged on continuously to SAP Business One. This is especially valuable for sales managers who travel frequently and need to be able to view prospect and customer data while on the road. For example, a sales manager needs to prepare for a meeting at a customer’s site. What kinds of things can you do with Microsoft Outlook integration? Take a look at this list:Import contacts from SAP Business One and synchronize them with Microsoft OutlookSave e-mail messages and attachments as SAP Business One activitiesImport tasks and calendar activities created in SAP Business One into Microsoft OutlookEdit, view, and create sales quotations and save them to SAP Business OneMost importantly, Microsoft Outlook integration helps increase your productivity and simplify your work. It provides you with a holistic, integrated way to manage your schedule, e-mail, and activities while giving you access to all the latest information from SAP Business One.