Legacy platform

Creating an opportunity

An opportunity must be created to capture relevant information about the customer and the quote that can be presented to the customer.

An opportunity is a container for holding a quote or related alternative quotes that can be presented to a customer interested in purchasing a set of items. A Field Sales Representative may get leads about a prospective customer or an existing customer's interest in purchasing a set of items that are available in a catalog. An opportunity must be created to capture relevant information about the customer and the quote that can be presented to the customer.

Solution

Sterling™ Field Sales enables a user to create an opportunity. If a user has access to multiple enterprises, the user can select the relevant enterprise and create an opportunity. The getOrganizationList API is called to retrieve the enterprises the user has access to. A user can create an opportunity for an existing customer whose records already exist in the system, or for a new customer.

Users can assign an opportunity to themselves as the owner of the opportunity or choose a different user as the owner. Users can also identify a co-owner for the opportunity by searching for the user. The getUserList API is called to retrieve the list of users.

A user can specify an opportunity's lead origin, probability of success (in %), and opportunity value. You can configure the codes for the lead origin in the Channel Applications Manager.

When creating an opportunity for an existing customer, a user can search for the customer for whom the opportunity has to be created. You can configure the customer type that should be selected by default in the Customer Search dialog box. The getCustomerList API is called to retrieve the list of customers. After the customer is selected, the getCustomerDetails API is called to retrieve the details of the customer to be displayed in the Create Opportunity screen.

The names of the city and state in which the customer or the contact resides can be derived from the country or region and Postal Code fields, if the enterprise has defined a region schema in the Channel Applications Manager. The getCommonCodeList API is called to retrieve the values displayed in the country or region drop-down list. The country or region codes are stored as common codes with country or region as the code type. The getRegionList API is called to retrieve the names of the city and state. The region schema that is called corresponds to the enterprise to which the user belongs. If multiple values are retrieved for the city and state names, the first value returned by the getRegionList API is displayed.

When creating an opportunity for a new business customer, the getCurrencyList API is called to populate the Default Currency drop-down list in the Create Opportunity screen.

The manageOpportunity API is called to create the opportunity after the user provides the necessary information.

End-user impact

This section explains the end-user impact of this functionality:

  • Based on the configuration, a user can create and search for customers based on the customer type.
  • Based on the configuration, either the Business radio button or the Consumer radio button is selected by default in the Customer Search dialog box.
  • Based on the configuration, the State field is displayed as a drop-down list or a box when the user is creating an opportunity for a new customer.

Implementation

This section explains the configurations for this functionality:

  • The notes entered when a user creates an opportunity are saved in the opportunity using the SAA_OPPORTUNITY_CREATED note type.
  • You can configure the Enable Customer Type Search rule to enable users to create and search for a customer based on the type of customer.
  • You can configure the customer type that is to be selected by default in the Customer Search dialog box by configuring the Customer Type To Be Defaulted In Search rule.
  • You can configure the region schema to be used for deriving the names of the city and state when creating an opportunity for a new customer by configuring the country or region and state display rules.
  • You can configure the codes to be used for the Lead Origin drop-down list.