Sales Management Features and Functions
Sales Management encompasses a group of applications that automates the data entry process of customer orders and keeps track of the status of orders. It involves order entry, order tracing and status reporting, pricing, invoicing, etc. It also provides a basic functionality for lead tracking, customer information, quote processing, pricing & rebates, etc.
|
Online Requirements (Sales Management)
Online functionality for sales management allows all types of users (employees, salespeople, customers, partners, etc) to easily perform sales-related activities such as searching for customer information; looking for available products in inventory; creating quotes and orders; managing sales documents; displaying sales history for one or more customers, etc. When these options are available online, all authorized users can access them from a Web browser, without requiring that a special program be installed on their computer.
|
Reporting and Interfacing Requirements (Sales Management)
Reporting for sales management is used to generate statistics about who has ordered what and when; or about how much of the ordered quantity has been shipped, returned, canceled, etc. This functionality provides the user with the ability to print invoices, either individually or as a batch (per customer, per product, per date range, etc.). Another important aspect is the ability to generate comparisons between quantities ordered and shipped by the same customer or for the same product in different periods of time (weekly, monthly, yearly, etc) In order to generate these reports, integration with other systems holding sales data is required.
|
Available-to-Promise (ATP)
Available-to-promise (ATP) refers to the quantity of product that can be ordered without affecting existing orders. In other words, when a certain quantity of a product has been ordered but not yet shipped and paid for, that quantity is reserved and will not be taken into account when another customer orders the same product. For instance, suppose that a product has 100 pieces in stock, but 30 have already been ordered by a customer: the ATP is 70 pieces (100 - 30).
|
Pricing and Discounting
Pricing and discounting modules help automate the data entry process of customer orders and track the status of orders. It involves order entry, order tracing and status reporting, pricing, and invoicing. It also provides basic functionality for lead tracking, customer information, quote processing, and pricing and rebates.
|
Customer Service and Returned Goods Handling
Goods may be returned by customers either because of their low quality or simply because the customers do not need the products they received. Depending on the situation, organizations define workflows to accept or reject the returned products. Functionality for customer service and returned good handling include tracking customer complaints, creating and managing documents for returns, and reporting statistics on what has been returned, by whom, for what reason, etc.
|
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and E-Commerce Requirements
Customer relationship management (CRM) covers a wide range of functionality, including campaign and leads management, sales force automation, customer service, etc. Most enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions cover basic CRM functionality, including functionality for electronic commerce (online catalogs, Web-based interfaces for orders) and CRM (interfacing with phone systems, personal digital assistants [PDAs], e-mail tools, etc.).
|
Order Entry
|
|
Mixed-Mode Manufacturing (ERP) Features and Functions
|