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Beyond the standard functionality of maintaining and managing Accounts and Contacts in SalesLogix, the client needed several new features added to these areas.  Because the intent of the system was to allow SalesLogix users to manage records from lead status through a sale, it was important that Accounts be easily identified as either a prospect or existing customer.  Existing customers exists as Accounts both in the SalesLogix and MAS databases.  For prospects, it was important to establish the type of potential customer they were in order to be able to provide accurate quotes that could turn the prospect into a customer.

The Account interface was modified to display two new fields.  Customer ID, which displays the Account’s accounting ID.  This ID field is searchable to allow users to locate accounts by their unique ID.  This field is read only and is automatically populated the first time the Account creates an order from within SalesLogix. 

The other field is Template Type.  This is a picklist field that users can use to identify the type of prospect a new account is.  The Template Type corresponds to a template company in MAS 500.  These template companies have specific terms and price levels that are used by the SalesLogix quoting process to determine an accurate price to use on quotes.    The system is set up so that an unlimited number of company templates can be added in MAS 500 and any of these templates can be selected in SalesLogix to drive pricing.  By utilizing these templates, an account in SalesLogix can utilize the back office system’s business rules without first having to exist in the back office as a customer.

The Template Type filed is used to link SalesLogix prospects and the MAS 500 template customer, in order to provide accurate pricing for the prospect when quoting.  The Customer ID field is used to link a SalesLogix Account record to the corresponding MAS 500 company record, once the Account has purchased from the client.

To ensure that all new prospects in SalesLogix have a template defined, the Insert Account/Contact screen was modified to enforce a template type is defined before a new account can be added.

All new Accounts added to SalesLogix must have a Template Type specified.

More details about how the Customer Template is utilized can be found in the Quote Integration postings, including Pricing, Taxation, and Order Processing.

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