Sales Assistant 

Use

The sales assistant in mySAP CRM Opportunity Management leads the sales employee through a structured sales process, and supports him in planning his sales activities, without restricting his freedom. The sales assistant provides the sales employee with a checklist of recommended activities and tasks that he should execute in this phase.

You can adapt the sales assistant to suit the specific sales processes of your enterprise. If you work with different sales cycles, for example, one for business with existing customers and another for business with new customers, you can define different activity guidelines for each in the system.

Integration

The activity plan is closely linked to CRM Activity Management. All activities and tasks from the personal activity plan (for example, sales calls, phone calls, e-mails and conversations) can be referred to and processed at any time in mySAP CRM. Partner data (for example, customer, customer contact person and the responsible employee) or texts and notes are automatically copied from the opportunity into the activity of task. This saves time and makes all the sales activities for the opportunity transparent and comprehensible.

Prerequisites

The sales assistant is displayed on a separate tab page. This tab page is only displayed if you have made the required settings in Customizing.

The recommended activities for each phase are defined as actions in Customizing. Define an action profile in Customizing, and assign the required activities and actions to it. Then, assign the action profile to the corresponding transaction type. Further information on this is available in the Implementation Guide (IMG) for CRM under Customer Relationship Management ® Transactions ® Settings for Opportunities  ® Sales Methodology ® Sales Assistant.

Information on actions is available under Actions in CRM Enterprise.

An action profile with activities and tasks is delivered for the sales assistant in the standard configuration.

Functional Scope

You can display the recommended activities and tasks for each phase, and copy them to your personal activity plan for the relevant sales project. You can enhance your activity plan with your own activities at any time.

For each activity, you can refer to tips or background information based on best selling practices. For example, a tip for an “initial prospect visit” could contain key questions to ask and topics to mention during the visit.

In the activity plan, you can specify by what date an activity should be executed, who is responsible for it, and whether an activity is already completed. If an activity is overdue or not yet completed, mySAP CRM automatically displays an icon as a reminder.

You can use a selection box to restrict the display of recommended activities for a specific phase. The default value is the current phase in the opportunity.

All the activities that you have defined in Customizing for the individual phases are displayed as recommended activities. Each line contains a recommended activity.

The following data is taken from the opportunity:

·         Partner (for example, employee responsible from the activity plan)

·         Comment (description of activity)

·         Texts (for example, note, if text determination has been set up accordingly)

·         Date (completed by) from sales assistant as a proposal for the actual date / planned date of the activity

·         Reason for activity (reason for activity: opportunity)

 

If an activity is generated from the sales assistant and copied into the activity plan, this activity is linked with the opportunity, that is, the document flow is updated.

Activities

Special Features for SAP GUI

The sales assistant is in the opportunity on the Sales assistant tab page. You can copy activities from the activity plan in the upper half of the screen into the list of activities. To do so, select the required activity and then choose the Generate action function. The system then automatically creates the required activity.

Special Features for the People-Centric UI

The sales assistant is in the opportunity on the Sales assistant tab page. You can generate required activities here. These are then copied automatically to the Activity Plan tab page. The activity is also linked with the opportunity here, that is, the document flow is updated.

Special Features for CRM Mobile

You access the sales assistant on the Activities screen via the Sales Assistant button.

The following restriction applies during exchange with CRM Online: Activities that have already been executed in CRM Mobile are not deleted from the list of proposed activities. Similarly, information is not exchanged between CRM Mobile and CRM Online regarding actions that have already been carried out.