Legacy platform

Create business customers

Typically, business customers are buyer organizations that have several contacts. The user must be able to create the business customer and contacts that can be used during order creation.

Solution

The following section describes APIs, user exits, services, and other components.

A user can create a business customer from the Customer panel on Create Business related task on the home page. Alternatively, the user can also create a customer while creating an order. When the user chooses to create a business customer, a list of enterprises is displayed if the user has access to multiple enterprises. The getOrganizationList API is called to retrieve the list of enterprises. The user can select an appropriate enterprise to create the customer and then proceed to enter the customer details.

When a user logs in to the application, the organizations to which the user has access are automatically retrieved.
  • If the user has access to only one organization or all the organizations point to the same customer master organization, the Create Business screen is immediately displayed.
  • If the user has access to multiple organizations and the organizations are associated with more than one customer master organization, the user must first select an organization before creating a customer.

The user can capture the customer's primary details such as the customer ID, organization name, website address, parent customer, and status. The getCommonCodeList API is called to populate the customer statuses.

When the user does a search for the parent customers, the CallingOrganizationCode and CustomerType are passed to the getCustomerList API to retrieve a list of business customers. The CallingOrganizationCode is set to the enterprise selected by the user. The CustomerType is set to 01 for business customers.

The user can also capture the secondary details such as demographics and customer preferences.
  • Demographics:
    • The user can enter the appropriate DB D-U-N-S number (a unique nine-digit identification number, for each physical location of a business organization).
    • The getCommonCodeList API is called to retrieve the following demographic details:
      • Membership Levels: The user can select the membership level that best describes the customer. For example, Premium, New, and Regular.
      • Relationship Type: The user can select the relationship type that best describes the relationship of the customer with the current enterprise. For example, Retailer or Distributor.
      • Vertical: The user can select the vertical that best describes the current customer. For example, Telecommunications, Manufacturing, or Education.

  • Customer Preferences:
    • The user can select the applicable currency. The getCurrencyList API is called to display the currencies that are defined for the enterprise.
    • The user can also select the shipping preferences, default currency, and provide tax exemption details.

When the user saves the changes, appropriate attributes are passed to the manageCustomer API to create the business customer record. For example, if the user selects the shipping preference as "Group into as few shipments as possible", the OptimizationType attribute is set to "03" in the input to the API. This shipping preference is used when the user captures an order for the customer.

Creating contacts

After the customer record is created, the user is allowed to create a contact for the business customer.

To create a contact, the user must enter certain minimum details which include the First Name and Last Name. The user can also enter other details as applicable. In the Ordering Permissions tab, the user can define the spending limit for the contact by entering an amount in a particular currency. The getCurrencyList API is called to populate the Currency list.

After the user enters the required contact information and confirms the changes, the manageCustomer API is called. The customer contact details that are entered by the user are passed to the API to create the business customer contact.

After successful creation of the business customer and contact, the getCompleteCustomerDetails API is called to display the Customer Details screen. From the Customer Details screen, the user can create more contacts by using the "Create Contact" related task.

Implementation

The following section describes the rules that you must configure.

You must ensure that you have modelled the participants correctly. Before you attempt to create a business customer using the application, the organization for which you intend to create the business customer must have an Organization Suffix. For more information about participant modeling, see Defining an organization's primary information.

Configure the following options in Sterling™ Business Center. For more information, see the Sterling Business Center System Configuration.
  • Customer Contact Types
  • Customer Levels
  • Customer Relationship Types
  • Customer Verticals
  • Customer Titles

Creating a customer is a permission-controlled task. For information about administering user group permissions, see the Administering user group permissions.

For more information about the APIs, see the Javadoc.

End-user impact

Users can create a business customer to expedite the order capture process with the predefined customer information.