Processing Inquiries 

Use

You can enter and process inquiries from business partners in SAP CRM according to products, and then convert them into quotations.

This function is available to you in CRM Enterprise (SAP GUI), in CRM Mobile and in the Interaction Center WinClient. There is no application for inquiries in the CRM People-Centric UI.

The “Inquiry” transaction type is not available to you in the standard delivery.

Integration

Inquiries are not separate business transaction categories, but have the business transaction category of the business transaction item into which they are to be converted. Only the Inquiry system status flags them as inquiries. If, for example, you wish to convert an inquiry into a quotation, and then into the transaction type Sales Order, this has the business transaction category Sales.

Prerequisites

You have selected the “Initial in the Inquiry Status” option for the Relevant for Quotations flag when defining the item category for inquiries in Customizing.

You can also set up transaction types that are only allowed when you create inquiries, and define texts, actions and user statuses specific to inquiries for these transaction types. In Customizing for item category determination, you define that only inquiry items may be entered during the creation of these transaction types.

Functional Scope

·        Create and change inquiries

·        Convert inquiries into quotations

An inquiry can become a quotation in two different ways:

¡        You create a quotation with reference to an inquiry. In this case, there are two transaction documents: inquiry and quotation.

You can find information about creating with reference under Copying Business Transactions.

¡        You convert an inquiry into a quotation. In the SAP GUI, a button is available to you for this in the item overview. This means that the status of the item is changed. The original inquiry item is converted to a quotation item. In this case, the inquiry does not remain as a separate transaction document.

·        Validity

The system can determine validity data automatically from the date profile stored in the inquiry.

You can define the date profile in Customizing under Customer Relationship Management ®Basic Functions ® Date Management ® Define Date Profile.

You can also enter validity data in the transaction item manually. At item level, you can enter dates that differ from the header.If you do not do this, the dates in the transaction header are automatically valid for the inquiry item.

See Dates in Business Transactions.

·        Actions

Inquiries can be linked to actions. For example, you can specify the following:

¡        The follow-up action “Create business activity” is triggered shortly before the validity expires

¡        A query is created shortly after the validity start date, to gather initial feedback from the customer

You can find more information under Actions in CRM Enterprise.