Planning in Mobile Sales for Campaigns and Trade Promotions 

Purpose

As of CRM Mobile Sales Release 4.0 SP06, key account managers are empowered to perform campaign and trade promotion planning with the BW-BPS planning framework on their laptops. This enhancement gives key account managers the flexibility to plan marketing activities while they work in the field. Once back from the field, a key account manager can then synchronize the mobile client with the server to upload the new planning figures.

Through key figure planning, the key account managers can identify the gaps between the sales targets set by headquarters and their planning figures. They then perform additional planning to determine how to fill these gaps and achieve their sales targets. They may determine the need to run trade promotions to achieve the sales targets. For this, they perform trade spend and volume planning. By maintaining trade spend data, key account managers can manage the elements of a trade promotion, including whether a trade promotion will be carried out with variable expenses, such as rebates and free goods, or fixed expenses, such as a lump sum payment for advertising and displays. Once trade spends are entered into the system, along with the promotion type and relevant dates, the key account manager can carry out trade spend and volume planning and generate conditions for the trade promotion.

Additionally, the key account manager can plan for the costs of a campaign or trade promotion based on the attributes of the marketing activity, such as the business partner, sales area, and product or products. The key account manager can also plan and measure the success of the campaign based on key performance indicators.   

Planning is a critical step in the iterative process of campaign management and trade promotion management. For more information, see Campaign Planning with Mobile Sales and Trade Promotion Planning with Mobile Sales.

Mobile Sales 4.0 SP01 supports the following types of offline planning:

·        General key figure planning (see Planning on Key Figures in Mobile Sales)

·        Trade spend and volume planning (see Volume and Trade Spend Planning in Mobile Sales)

·        Cost planning (see Cost Planning in Mobile Sales)

·        Success key measure planning (see Success Key Measure Planning in Mobile Sales)

Key account managers also now have the added flexibility to perform planning in a Microsoft Excel format, which they can then save as a file in their laptop directory. For more information about this feature, see Planning in Microsoft Excel. 

Prerequisites

You have provided mobile clients with the following data:

·        CRM Enterprise master data

·        CRM Enterprise customizing settings

·        SEM planning layouts

·        SEM planning data

For information on working with BW-BPS, including how to create planning profiles and planning layouts, see the SAP Library documentation.

For detailed instructions on how to configure the Mobile-specific customizing settings required to carry out offline planning, see the documentation available in Solution Manager for the business scenario Field Trade Promotion Management with Mobile Sales.

When you define planning profile groups in Customizing at Customer Relationship Management ® Marketing ® Marketing Planning and Campaign Management ® Key Figure Planning ® Define Planning Profile Groups, it is mandatory that you set the New KPI Flag indicator to use the enhanced key figure planning features.

As an additional option when you are customizing the application: In the SAP CRM Mobile Application Studio Release 4.0 SP03 there are a set of predefined objects that you can implement to perform modeling at the business object layer. These objects, which serve a similar function as business add-ins in an ABAP environment, allow you to control the data presentation at the runtime of the DHTML on the mobile client. For more information, see Note 663841.

Process Flow

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       1.      For the campaign or trade promotion you are working on, you assign a planning profile group in the Marketing/Details tile set that corresponds to the type of planning you want to do. For more information about using planning profile groups in CRM, see Key Figure Planning in the Marketing Planner.

As of CRM 4.0 SP04, the system displays the long text name instead of the technical name of the planning profile. 

The planning profile group you select determines which planning types are valid for the campaign or trade promotion, such as key figure planning, or cost planning. The selection of the planning profile group also determines which planning layouts are available for the selected campaign or trade promotion and which tile sets appear in the navigation bar for offline planning.

If you change the planning profile group assigned to the campaign or trade promotion after you have already entered planning figures, the system will delete the planning data you have set up so that you can create a new planning information based on the new planning profile group.

       2.      You navigate to the tile set that corresponds to the type of planning you want to do and enter your planning figures.

Within the planning tile set, the system displays the default layout for the planning profile group you have selected. You can change the layout that is displayed by making a selection in the Planning Profile field and selecting the Start Planning button.

 

If you receive an error message while opening the DHTML layout in the planning tile the possible causes are

·         You have not yet assigned a target group to the campaign or trade promotion

·         There is an error in the Planning DLL, in which case you should contact your system administrator

       3.      You save your entries.

As of CRM 4.0 SP04, if you remove a product from a trade promotion after planning, it will still be considered in the aggregated promotion data in the planning layout that shows the sales targets. To correct this, open the plan and resave the plan data. 

       4.      You synchronize your data with the server to update the planning figures in SAP BW.

All planning data follows the campaign object in replication. The data is available to other mobile clients based on the rules of replication and the assigned subscriptions.