About Sales Process

The purpose of the sales process is to guide the sales representative through the different stages of a business opportunity. It will tell the user which action to perform next during a stage. Different parameters like customer category, country or market can be used to assign the right process to the opportunity. Sales Processes are defined in CRM and SRM Basic Data.

Process Template

The sales process is created from a process template which contains all the stages the opportunity should follow. In the template you can also define a default value for probability for each stage. The probability will be set accordingly when the opportunity stage is changed but the user can update it manually. The probability can be forced from the process which means that the user will not be able to change it manually. For each stage you can also enter an instruction which will tell the user what to do during the stage.

When the process is created from a template it will inherit the stages from the template and you will create actions for each stage. It is also possible to copy a process. Then all stages and actions are copied to the new process. 

Sales Process

Each stage of the process should contain a number of actions. For each action you can define what the user should do. For example enter data in a specific field on the opportunity or create a Business Activity.

You can decide whether the action is mandatory or if the user can take the opportunity to the next stage without performing the action. This is controlled by the Validation Type. Possible values for the Validation Type is None, Notify and Stop. If Validation Type=None, the opportunity can go to the next stage even if the action is not done.

If Validation Type=Notify, the opportunity can go to the next stage even if the action is not done but the user will be notified that the action is not done. Note: If a user tries to set a stage to done when there are open actions with Validation Type = Notify then the user should get the warning message “One or more actions are not done, set stage to Done anyway?   Yes/No”.

If Validation Type=Stop, the opportunity can go to the next stage even if the mandatory action is not done but the user tries to set the stage to done then error should be raised “One or more actions must be set to done” if the stage contains mandatory actions which are not done. But user is allowed  to work with actions in a coming stage and even complete the stage which has not mandatory actions. The reason for this is to give more flexibility. The sales process should guide the sales representative and make sure that he does everything he is supposed to do but it does not always have to be done in exact order. In some cases, there could be one action in an early stage which cannot be completed (for example a meeting that gets postponed) then that should not stop you from starting with the following stage even if the opportunity will not be taken to the next stage. 

 If a Business Activity should be created from an action you can use the Business Activity Validation Type to decide when the action should be set to done. If Business Activity Validation Type=None, the user will have to set the action to done manually. If Business Activity Validation Type=Create, the action is set to done automatically once you create the activity. If Business Activity Validation Type=Complete, the action is set to done automatically once you complete the activity.

If the user is supposed to update any of the fields on the Business Opportunity as part of an action, you can specify the data entry fields by first selecting the Logical Unit (LU) and then the fields. (In Enterprise Explorer it is only possible to enter data for the Business Opportunity LU. Fields belonging to other LUs will only be available in Aurena.) The user will then be able to open a dialog box from the opportunity to enter data in the selected fields.

It is possible to define that another user must approve the action. A person group in Document Basic must be set up for the approval. The APPROVAL_ROUTE_COMPLETE and APPROVAL_ROUTE_REJECTED events are used for the approval of actions. An event action can be created for e.g. sending an e-mail to the user who should approve the action.

Default Process

You can have several different opportunity processes and it is possible to control which one of them that should be used when an opportunity is created. The following parameters can control which process to use: Representative, Customer, Customer Category, Country, Market, Company and Business Type. You can define which of parameters that are the most important by giving them different points. The sum of the points will be used to select the right process. Even the validity dates of the process will be considered.

Example

A typical sales process can have the following stages: Qualify, Propose, Negotiate and Close.

In the Qualify stage the sales rep should find out if this might lead to a deal. The stage consists of two mandatory actions. The first action is an initial phone call. As a part of the action the user should also update the Opportunity Value, add a contact and enter other customer information. The next action is to schedule a customer visit, i.e. a Business Activity. The action is automatically done once the activity is created.

In the Propose stage, the sales representative should create a quotation. The quotation should be approved by a sales manager who is a member of the ManagerGroup. It is also recommended to discuss with other sales representatives but it is not a mandatory action.

The Negotiate stage only has the Price Discussion action where Opportunity Value and Wanted Delivery Date should be updated.

In the last stage a customer order should be created if the opportunity is won.