Overview of IBM Sterling Field Sales

IBM® Sterling™ Field Sales enables you to manage opportunities and quotes effectively to help you close business deals more efficiently.

An opportunity acts as a container for holding a quote or related alternative quotes that are to be presented to a customer. A quote, on the other hand, is a commercial document that allows a customer to see a predetermined set of products, their quantity, predetermined price, and delivery date. Note that a quote is always associated with an opportunity. When an opportunity contains multiple quotes, you can mark any one of the quotes as a primary quote.

In Sterling Field Sales, you can store all the information you require during the quoting process, including customer details, information about products and the adjustments made to the price of products, and the payment terms and shipment terms that will be used in the order if the quote is converted to an order.

An opportunity moves through the following statuses in its life cycle:

• Inquiry - An opportunity is in the Inquiry status after it is created. To create an opportunity, it is mandatory that you provide the details of the customer for whom you are creating the opportunity.
• Negotiation - An opportunity is in the Negotiation status when either:
  • The opportunity is automatically created after a quote was created.
  • A user creates a quote and associates the quote to an existing opportunity.
• Won - An opportunity is in the Won status after an order has been created from one of the associated quotes.
• Lost - You can mark an opportunity as Lost if the opportunity no longer serves the necessary purpose.

A quote moves through the following statuses in its life cycle:

• Created - To create a quote, it is mandatory that you provide the details of the customer for whom you are creating the quote. After providing the customer information, you can add products to the quote, adjust the price of the products if required, and define the payment terms and shipment terms.
• Approved - A quote must be approved by an approver before you can present it to a customer if any or all of the following conditions are met:
  • Any of the products in the quote fails validation. For example, a product in the quote may fail validation because the quantity of the product is either less than the minimum order quantity or more than the maximum order quantity configured for that product.
  • The quote violates an approval rule. For example, let us suppose that an approval rule has been configured such that the quote requires approval every time the expiration date of the quote is modified. In such a scenario, if you modify the expiration date of the quote, the quote must be approved by an approver before you can present it to a customer.
  • The adjustments applied to the quote or any of the products in the quote under a manual pricing rule exceeds the maximum discount limit configured for the rule. For example, if the maximum discount limit configured for a 32'' LCD television under a manual pricing rule is 5%, and you offer a discount of 7% to a customer, the quote must be approved before you can present it to the customer.
• Presented - You can present a quote to a customer after all the necessary approvals have been obtained.
• Accepted - After a quote is presented to a customer, if the customer wants to accept the quote in its current form, you can accept the quote on behalf of the customer.
• Rejected - After a quote is presented to a customer, if the customer does not agree to any or all of the contents of the quote and wants to reject the quote in its current form, you can reject the quote on behalf of the customer. After a quote is rejected, if you want to make modifications to the quote and present it to the customer again, you must rework the quote.
• Ordered - After a customer accepts a quote, you can convert the quote to an order.
• Abandoned - You can abandon a quote if the quote no longer serves a purpose.

The typical life cycle of a quote is illustrated in the following figure:

In addition to opportunity and quote management, Sterling Field Sales enables you to search for a product, opportunity, or quote. You can search for a product and view the details of the product. You can also search for an opportunity or a quote, and view its details.

The application also provides the following home pages that assist you in performing the tasks that you perform frequently, and enable you to view the information that you want to see most often:

• Dashboard home page- The application Dashboard home page displays information that is most important to you such as quotes pending approval, recently modified quotes, new product releases, and so forth.
• Opportunities home page - This enables you to perform certain opportunity-related tasks that you perform frequently, such as creating an opportunity or searching for an opportunity.
• Quotes home page - This enables you to perform certain quote-related tasks that you perform frequently, such as creating a quote or searching for a quote.
• Products home page - This enables you to search for a product. You can also narrow down the search results by performing a search for a product within the search results.