Importing External Target Groups 

Use

In the CRM Marketing Planner, you can export a marketing plan or campaign (together with the target groups assigned to it) to an external tool for target group modeling or campaign management. However, within the Marketing Planner you can only import those target groups that were previously exported as part of a marketing plan, that is, no "initial" upload of target groups is possible.

Using this function, you can import external target groups directly into CRM, without reference to a marketing plan or marketing campaign. These target groups may be linked to a marketing plan, though this does not have to be the case.

Having imported these target groups, you are then able to assign them to a marketing plan or marketing campaign in the Marketing Planner.

Note that the Marketing Planner cannot distinguish between external and internal target groups.

Integration

If the external system you are using is Protagona, the business partners are stored in the BW (Business Information Warehouse).

Prerequisites

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       1.      You have maintained the external application and RFC connection by which the CRM system and external system communicate. You do this in the Implementation Guide for Customer Relationship Management under Marketing ® Marketing Planning ® Maintain System Landscape ® Define External Campaign Tool.

       2.      If the external system you are using is not Protagona, you have implemented the Business Add-In CRM_MKT_EXT_PLAN_TG. To do so, in the Implementation Guide for Customer Relationship Management choose Marketing ® Marketing Planning ® Maintain System Landscape ® Implement Business Add-In for External Campaign and Target Group Tools.

Activities

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       1.      Select a connection to the external system by placing your cursor on one of the entries in the table and choosing Read target groups.

The system lists the target groups found for the given external system, together with the description, the plan and actual number of business partners, and information as to whether the target group already exists in CRM.

Note that the system reads the header info for the target group only, but at this stage does not save any data to CRM.

       2.      Select the target group(s) that are to be saved to CRM. To select multiple groups, hold down the Ctrl or Shift key.

       3.      Choose Save target groups

The system now transfers the target group header information (name, description, planned number of business partners) to CRM. This information is required by the batch job used to import the business partners. Without it, no business partners may be imported.

       4.      Choose Import business partners

The system displays the Job Wizard: Import Business Partners from External Target Group screen. Enter the relevant details and choose Schedule job.

The business partners belonging to the target group will now be imported into CRM.

You do not have to import the business partners immediately. You may for example wish to import them in the Target Group Maintenance transaction by choosing Selection.