Sales 

Definition

The Sales enterprise process area includes the business processes for business relationships on the market. Sales supplies goods produced and services offered by the enterprise. Whereas long-term sales planning tasks, for example customer segment analysis, market research, and product planning, are in the Product Development and Marketing EPA, the Sales EPA includes Planning and controlling sales channels, Advertising, Processing customer inquiries and quotations, Order processing including Pricing, Delivery processing including Picking, and far as Goods issue checking as far as Billing.

Use

How the Sales processes are used depends on the products and services offered on the market, and on the way orders are placed.

Class of goods

Requirements on Sales

Short-life consumer goods

Sell product to distributors who sell on to consumers

Long-life consumer goods

Frequent personal and more extensive consulting, because of the technical complexity of the product

Capital goods (e.g. machinery)

Detailed technical expertise

Customers for short-life consumer goods receive standard price quotations. Prices for long-life consumer goods are often calculated in response to customer inquiries, using standardized modules.

Sales order processing for capital goods often includes creating comprehensive engineering and production documents. This is often the major part of processing (50-70% of overall sales order processing time). Quotations for capital goods are prepared in response to customer inquiries. The inquiry-to-order ratio for mechanical engineering manufacturers is often as low as 10-20%.

In the component supplier market, Sales tasks include:

When development is completed or when a market (global sourcing) inquiry is received, Sales creates a project (or extends the existing development project), quotes the product, and processes the customer outline agreement, the initial sample order, and the serial tool orders. The delivery of the initial samples may be billed. The tools stay with the component supplier or in the supply chain and are billed when the initial samples are homologated or amortized.