Solution Sample Items

Marketing – Campaign Management in SalesLogix

Kris Halsrud — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 09:42:00 GMT

Our client wanted to expand the standard marketing functionality of SalesLogix to include a custom entity for tracking customer testimonials. These testimonials are recorded in a new main and reference the Contact and Account that made the reference. Tracking these testimonials allows users the ability to search through the testimonial list and use them in their marketing or sales efforts. Users may also add new testimonials. The testimonials must be authorized by the source before the client uses them with other clients....(read more)

Quote - Select Products

Kris Halsrud — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 22:00:00 GMT

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This area is used when adding a new product to a quote. A custom Select Products screen was developed. This screen allows for filtering products presented based on search criteria provided.

Multiple products can be added to the quote by moving Available Products into the Selected Products section. As products are added, the price of the product is returned, live, from the MAS 500 system, based on the customer being quoted and the quantity of product being quoted. More details on the price integration will follow later in this document.

The Select Product screen allows users to select and customize BTO Kits. When selecting products, the left most column in the “Available Products” grid identifies if the product is a BTO Kit or just a stand alone product. If a BTO Kit component is added to the quote, a dialog is presented to the user where they can modify the BTO Kit components, if required. See this post on BTO Kits.

Additional dialog presented to the user to customize the BTO Kit as it is added to the Quote

When products are added to the Quote, a real-time pricing query is made against the MAS 500 accounting system. Using the MAS 500 pricing APIs, an accurate pricing is returned for each product at the current time. See this post for specifics on pricing.

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Quote - Products

Kris Halsrud — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 21:30:00 GMT

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The Quote Products tab is the management interface to identify the products being quoted. The Product grid utilizes a standard SalesLogix data grid to display the product but also includes the following enhancements.

The quotes product grid includes several features for ease of use, including:

•    Ability to group products including the ability to copy and paste products between groups
•    Move product order within groups and move group order within quote
•    Export quote product list to Excel
•    Select multiple products and add discounts to them with one click.
•    Export the products from the Quote to an Opportunity linked to the Quote.
•    Load products from the associated Opportunity onto the Quote.
•    Export the Quote’s products to Excel.
•    Manually re-load pricing to check for updated MAS 500 pricing, real time.
•    Display Kit components of a line item in a separate grid.

Quote product tab displays standard and BTO Kit products.

The following posts describe the details behind the buttons on the product screen:
Select Products
Edit Products
Remove Product
Add Discount
Reload Pricing
Copy Product To Opportunity
Copy Products From Opportunity
Export To Excel

Additionally, the Product tab was designed to allow interaction with the back office concept of BTO Kits. BTO Kits display in the product grid with a kit icon in the left most column. When a user selects the BTO Kit product, the components grid opens to the right of the product grid.

Kits and their components display on the Quote Product tab.

See this post for more details about BTO Kits.

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Quote - Discounts

Kris Halsrud — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 21:26:00 GMT

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The quote discount tab was developed to allow the client to add discounts that are not specifically tied to a line item on the quote. Examples of this might include a 5% total discount given to the quote total, or a $20 off shipping credit. This tab displays those quote-level discounts that have been applied to this order.

These discounts do not affect the sell price of any one line item, instead the simply lower the quote total price.

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Quote - Shipping Information

Kris Halsrud — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 21:25:00 GMT

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The Quote Shipping Tab displays the information regarding where the order is to be delivered to. The Shipping Account, Contact, and Address need not be the same as the Billing Account.

Also defined on this tab is the shipment method. This pick list is retrieved from the valid shipping methods in MAS 500 and will determine the shipping charges for the quote, in conjunction with the address to be shipped to. The shipping charges are returned from MAS 500 using a call to the MAS 500 shipping API.

The Final Use Account and Contact is the actual end user of the products being sold. Again, the End User Account and Contact can potentially be an Account and Contact other the either the Billing or Shipping entities. This Final Use account is where the SalesLogix Asset record would exist. This Asset record is automatically created when an order is shipped from MAS 500, using a custom developed Asset Integration.

The Tax Schedule field is derived from the various tax schedules that are set up in MAS 500 for the defined Shipping Address. If the address is one in which the client is required to pay taxes, the tax schedule presents the list of tax schedules for that state. In the case the customer is exempt from paying sales tax, the tax schedule can be set to “Tax Exempt”. In this case, a field appears to save the tax identification number.

With the tax schedule defined, the system is able to correctly calculate the sales tax of the quote using a call to MAS 500’s Sales Tax API.

To eliminate having to re-enter the tax schedule each time a quote is made to a customer’s address, when a tax schedule or tax exempt ID is entered on the Quote, it is saved against the shipping Address record. The next time the Address is selected on another quote, these values will default from these stored values.

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Quote - Billing Information

Kris Halsrud — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 21:21:00 GMT

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The quote billing tab displays the information regarding the account which will be paying for the order, if it is placed. It also identifies which person at the billing account is the contact point for billing questions and the address where the bill is to be sent.

The Payment Terms are defaulted from the customer’s terms in MAS 500, or in the case of a prospect, the prospect’s template type as defined in MAS 500. Users may change the payment terms from the default value to another valid MAS 500 payment term type. If a non-standard term is selected and the quote becomes an order, the order will be placed on hold in MAS 500 pending acceptance of the terms.

If the Bill To Account is already an existing customer in the MAS 500 accounting database, a tab appears on screen called “Credit Info”. When this tab is selected, a real time display of the customer’s financial standing in the accounting system is displayed.

This information is pulled from a SQL view, providing instant real-time information about the customer during the quoting process.

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Quote - Comments

Kris Halsrud — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 21:19:00 GMT

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This tab allows for general comments to be added to the quote, both for internal and external communications. The internal comments are only visible within the SalesLogix interface. The External Comments are visible on the Quote output that is given to the customer.

Both Comment areas can have standard comments added via pick list controls linked to a list of standard comments.

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Quote - Processing an Order

Kris Halsrud — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 21:15:00 GMT

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When a customer requests a Quote from the system, the resulting document produced is an actionable document. If the customer wishes to purchase the order they simply sign the quote and provide payment options. When the Quote is received back, the order entry personnel verify the Quote is complete and then process the Quote to an Order.

When processing the Order it is necessary to transfer all of the information about the Quote from SalesLogix into the MAS 500 back office system as an Order. In addition, because the Order may be for a new customer (one who does not yet exist in MAS 500) the Order creation process must also check to see if a new customer record needs to be created first.

In order to ensure the back office business rules have been met, an additional series of data validations must also occur.

A custom integration was develop to meet this business process. Utilizing Microsoft SQL stored procedures and direct database access, information is transferred from SalesLogix to MAS 500. After this occurs, information is passed back to SalesLogix to update the processed Order with the MAS 500 Order number generated.

This posting will describe the process in transferring Quotes from SalesLogix into MAS 500 as orders.

The Order Entry Screen

As mentioned in this post, the Quote Detail screen has a button that when clicked, will launch the following screen.

This custom screen allows the Order Entry person to verify the Quote is complete and ready to be sent to the back office system. The Shipping Priority, Delivery Method, and Payment Types are all required. Additionally, special instructions can be added at this point. These instructions carry across to the sales order in MAS 500. If Special Instructions are added the order is placed on hold in MAS, until the instructions are reviewed and appropriate actions taken. After reviewing the Order the user may click the "Process Order" button.

Data Validations

Upon clicking the Process Order button, the system reviews the Quote. At this point the Quote and the associated Account(s) and Contact(s) are validated to ensure all required information is present. If any problems are found the user is presented with a dialog of the issue(s). The following items in SalesLogix are validated:
•    Billing Account is defined
•    Billing Address is defined
•    Shipping Account is defined
•    Shipping Address is defined
•    End User Account is defined
•    Shipping Priority is defined
•    Delivery Method is defined
•    Payment Type is defined. If paying by Invoice, that a PO number exists.
•    Quote taxes have been calculated
•    Shipping costs have been calculated
•    Quote Total is present and correct
•    Ship to Account and/or ship to Contact phone numbers are at least 10 digits
•    Ship to Account and/or ship to Contact fax numbers are at least 10 digits
•    Bill to Account and/or ship to Contact phone numbers are at least 10 digits
•    Bill to Account and/or ship to Contact fax numbers are at least 10 digits
•    At least one product exists on the Quote
•    A Requested Delivery Date is specified for each line item
•    No Optional Products are defined
•    All Products have been priced
•    All Products have a shipment method defined
•    All Products have shipping and tax calculated.
•    All Products are valid, sellable items.
•    All BTO Kits pass validations and contain valid, sellable items.

Process Order screen showing validation errors to the user. If any errors occur the data does not transfer to MAS 500 and the Order is remains in SalesLogix until the issues are corrected.

Transferring Data

After all data validations pass, the system will begin to transfer data from SalesLogix to MAS 500. The integration is a real time link between SalesLogix and MAS 500 in which data from SalesLogix is automatically passed to MAS 500. The following steps are performed during the integration:

A check is made to determine if the Bill to Account exists in MAS.

If the Account exists, the SalesLogix and MAS Account records are examined and any values that are different are updated from SalesLogix into MAS 500.
If the Account does not exist, the Account is added using the data from SalesLogix and the appropriate customer template record corresponding to the Account type in SalesLogix.

A check is made to see if the Billing Address exists at the Billing Account in MAS.

If the Address exists, it is compared to the data in SalesLogix. Any differences are updated from SalesLogix to MAS.
If the Address does not exist, the Address is added to the Billing Account in MAS.

A check is made to see if the Billing Contact exists at the Billing Account.

If the Contact exists, it is compared to the data in SalesLogix. Any differences are updated from SalesLogix to MAS.
If the Address does not exist, the Address is added to the Billing Account in MAS.

A check is made to see if the Shipping Address exists at the Billing Account in MAS.

If the Address exists, it is compared to the data in SalesLogix. Any differences are updated from SalesLogix to MAS.
If the Address does not exist, the Address is added to the Billing Account in MAS.

A check is made to see if the Shipping Contact exists at the Billing Account.

If the Contact exists, it is compared to the data in SalesLogix. Any differences are updated from SalesLogix to MAS.
If the Address does not exist, the Address is added to the Billing Account in MAS.

The Order is the inserted against the Billing Account in MAS. The order is placed on hold for any of the following three reasons:

The Quote contains special instructions
The Quote contains a Trade-in discount
The Quote has payment terms that are different from the default terms for the Billing Account in MAS.

During each step of this process, a dialog screen alerts the user to the step currently being run. If any errors occur they are returned on the Process Order screen. At the point errors occur the Order in MAS 500 is removed or canceled. The order can then be re-processed after the problems have been corrected.

A detailed workflow of the Order Process Integration. Click for a full size view.

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Quote - New Main View

Kris Halsrud — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 20:49:00 GMT

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The client had previously used their back office ERP solution to deliver quotes. This required users to use SalesLogix for most purposes, but also required the users to switch to MAS 90 to create quotes in. This required re-entering prospects into the accounting system so that a quote could be developed.

The accounting system did not allow for the speed or flexibility that the sales force needed in creating a quote for a customer. Outputting the data gathered from MAS 90 was tedious and often involved exporting the data to a document like Word or Excel so the users could format it the way they wanted. This resulted in the sales force taking an extreme amount of time developing and delivering a quote to a prospect. In some complex instances quotes took over an hour to produce.

Because of these issues it was decided to implement a custom quoting solution within the SalesLogix system that would still allow for accurate real time pricing being retrieved from the accounting system. This solution was designed with speed and flexibility in mind.

In addition to ease of use, the quoting solution also was developed to be the primary integration point between SalesLogix and the MAS 500 accounting system. At the point when a prospect accepted a quote and acknowledged they wished to purchase, a system was developed to check to see if the customer existed in the accounting system, if it did not the customer and sales orders would be passed across. If the customer did exists, the accounting system is checked to ensure the data matches SalesLogix and if not the customer is updated and the Sales order is added.

This solution eliminated the users need to switch between applications when creating a quote and eliminated the dual-entry that two systems required. This dramatically increased sales force efficiency, allowed for detailed analysis of quoting and sales trends, and decreased errors in quotes that were typical with the old workflow.

The following sections describe the many features that were developed in the custom quoting solution:

New Main View
A new main view was developed within SalesLogix to produce quotes. This main view allows the required Quote information to be collected and displayed in a format similar to other areas in SalesLogix. Developing the Quote solution in a main view allows for the standard ability to build groups of quotes and develop queries to quickly search for and find quotes meeting specific criteria.

A new main view area was added to SalesLogix for managing Quotes.

Within the Quote module, tabs exist for the various components of a quote these include the following:

On the Main Quote detail screen you can see the primary information regarding the quote, including the Account and Contact requesting the Quote, the linked opportunity to the Quote, the SalesLogix sales person handling the Quote, status information and quote expiration and delivery requirement dates. Also, the total dollars on the quote are summarized on this main screen.

There are also a series of action buttons on the right of the screen that change depending on the current user’s functional security. These buttons include the following:

Copy Quote
This button allows the current Quote to be used as a template for creating a new quote. This functionality allows for revisions to be made of a quote with various options presented, or can allow the quote to be used as a template when quoting a different customer for a similar purpose. Clicking this button will present the user with a dialog to determine what actions are performed.

This functionality greatly improves speed of re-quoting as much of a quote’s information can be re-used without re-keying.

Print Preview
The client needed the flexibility of outputting their quotes in various formats. When the user chooses one of the menu items the appropriate Crystal Report is opened in the standard SalesLogix quote viewer.

This button presents the user with a pop-up menu asking which Quote report the user would like to use.

As new Quote Crystal Reports are added to the system, this list automatically grows.

Using the Print Preview The Crystal Viewer control has the Print and export buttons disabled. This is a requirement from the client. Once a user prints a quote the quote becomes locked down from editing. This Print Preview button allows the user the ability to see what the Quote will look like without actually having the Quote locked down from further editing.

Output
Similar to the Print Preview button, this button presents the user with a menu of Quotes to print. When this option is chosen the Quote report is opened in the Crystal viewer. The viewer has full functionality enabled, including the ability to print the Quote or export it to a file.

Once this button is pressed, the Quote is locked down. This ensures that the Quote that was disseminated to the customer is not altered after the fact. A locked quote is represented with a padlock icon displaying on the Quote screen:

Once a Quote is “locked” it may only be re-output or copied.

Split View
This button toggles the list view from displaying to the far right of the Quote module. Having the list view on screen allows for quick navigation between Quote records in SalesLogix.

Email Quote
Similar again in functionality to the Output or Print Preview buttons, this button presents the user with the menu of Quote output formats they would like to use. Once a Quote is chosen the system exports the Quote to a PDF file then opens a new outlook email, preformatted to the Quote contact and with the Quote PDF attached.

The sales person may then add appropriate notes and send the email.

This direct email solution saves time by delivering a one click solution of emailing a quote to a customer. Using the standard SalesLogix email integration the email communication, and if desired the attached Quote can be saved to the SalesLogix Account History.

Fax Quote
The client had an emailed based faxing solution. This button functions similar to the Email Quote button, however instead of formatting the To address with the contact’s email it used a special format of the contacts fax number.

Approve Quote
Visible only to some users, this button appears when a quote has exceeded a sales person’s discount limits and needs a special exception before it can be output to the customer. Pressing this button records the manager who approved the Quote and unlocks it for the users to output.

For more on the approval process and discounting, see this post.

Calculate Total
This button is pressed once all products and discounts have been applied to the Quote. This button will retrieve from the accounting system the correct Sales Tax and Shipping costs based on the Shipping address location and the shipment method defined for the Quote. This price fetch information is performed real time to provide accurate totals that can be presented to the customer.

A Quote can not be output until the Calculate Total button has been pressed and all costs have been determined.

While shipping is automatically calculated, during the Calculate Total process, an additional feature was added that allows some user the ability to exclude shipping. A checkbox on the Quote detail screen identifies if shipping charges are to be excluded. If checked, the Quote’s shipping is reduced to $0. These same users can also manually override the calculated shipping charge, if desired.

Process Order
This button is used to transmit the Quote into Accounting as an Order once the client received back an accepted Quote. When this button is pressed a dialog will display summarizing the quote and prompting some final questions about the order. See this post for specifics on the order integration

In addition to the main Detail view of the Quote, several tabs were created based upon other components of a Quote. See the followings posts for information on each of the tabs:
Quote Comments
Quote Billing Information
Quote Shipping Information
Quote Discounts
Quote Products

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Product Integration

Kris Halsrud — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 20:06:00 GMT

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The client’s master product list exists in the MAS 500 back office system. In order to provide a complete quoting solution in SalesLogix, the product list from MAS 500 had to be integrated into SalesLogix. This would allow the entire product catalog to be available for Opportunities and Quotes.

In addition to the product list, MAS 500 also has a myriad of options for special pricing of the products. Pricing can be specific to a customer, dependent on time periods, and quantity driven. Because of the complex rules around pricing it was deemed impractical to recreate prices in SalesLogix. It was decided that an integration to MAS 500 would be created to provide real time pricing. SalesLogix users would be able to select products from the SalesLogix product list, however the pricing of the products would be determined by MAS 500. See specifics on the pricing integration here.

Standard Products
MAS 500 has the capability to track standard items as well as build to order kits (BTO Kits). Standard products are those items that are available for sale. These are the items that are available in the client’s catalog. These items all have a price associated with them. While a standard product can be a single component, it can also describe an entire set of sub components.

BTO Kits
BTO (Build to Order) Kits are a conglomeration of one or more products that make up a single sellable item. An example of a BTO Kit is a computer. A computer (which is a standard product) also consists of many components, such as a hard drive, processor, motherboard, etc. While each of these sub-components can be, individually, a standard product, when bundled together they produce a BTO Kit.

These kits of components are priced and sold as a single item. For the client’s purpose, the BTO Kits are all pre-configured with a set of some pre-defined products. Users may modify the components of a kit, however doing so does not modify the price of the Kit. More discussions on BTO Kits can be found here.

With these product requirements in mind, a custom SQL DTS package was developed to perform ongoing data imports from MAS 500 to SalesLogix. Also, the SalesLogix product table structure was expanded to support the BTO Kit model from MAS 500.

A custom DTS package was developed that uses data driven queries to add data from MAS 500 that is missing in SalesLogix. It also updates existing products when that information changes in MAS 500.

The DTS package utilizes standard DTS “data driven query” components in conjunction with the SalesLogix OLE DB Provider to add, edit and delete products in SalesLogix based on both the items and BTO Kit components from MAS. The DTS package is scheduled using the standard SQL Server Agent to run every day at 6PM, ensuring that any updates made to the MAS item catalog are reflected in SalesLogix the next day.

The import is designed based on a match between the MAS Item Key. This allows the flexibility to re-number the SKUs in MAS 500, if necessary, and have this information pass across to SalesLogix.

Standard Pricing
Along with loading the products themselves, the import also loads attributes about the product from MAS, including the standard “list” price, size and weight dimensions, tax and commission attributes, and the units in which the product is sold (Pallets, Cases, Each, etc.). The list price is then used to drive Opportunity pricing, as described here.

Comment Items
In addition to the standard item catalog, MAS 500 also has “comment only” items that may be added to quotes and orders. These items are comment placeholders, and do not actually reflect a sellable item. These items are flagged with a distinct SKU and are treated specially by SalesLogix in the quoting interface.

The product load also keeps in sync those products that are currently available for sale, those items that are no longer active, and those items that are available only as replacement parts, used during the customer repair process and tracked in SalesLogix tickets. This tracking is performed by loading the Status of each item with a defined value.

The following are the list of Product status values and how they affect usage of products in SalesLogix:
Available – An actively sold part, available to be added to a quote or opportunity.
Kit Available – A current item that is valid to be selected as a component of a BTO Kit, but may not be added as an independent item to a quote or opportunity.
Part Available – A current replacement part. These products can be added to a quote or opportunity as a normal product. These items have a special designation, in that they are the only items available to add as a part to an activity tracked against a ticket.
Discontinued – A product no longer sold. This product is not available to be added to quotes or opportunities

Product Management Changes
Since all management of products occurs in MAS 500, SalesLogix was modified to make the Manage Product interface a read-only view to the data loaded from MAS 500.

The interface was also expanded to display the custom attributes of a product that pass from MAS 500, such as BTO Kit components and Units of Measurement.

The customized Manage Product Interface in SalesLogix

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Opportunity Management

Kris Halsrud — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:46:00 GMT

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While a large percent of the sales reps time is spent creating quotes as customers request them, the client did want to utilize the Opportunity area of SalesLogix for pipeline tracking in order to gain strategic insight into the upcoming product requirements. The client manufactures their own products as needed so they need to be able to tell what kind of raw materials will be needed in the future. By utilizing the SalesLogix Opportunity area for sales forecasting the client is able to plan for future demand and ensure enough materials are ordered with enough lead time to match customer buying trends.

Opportunity List Pricing
Because the quoting tool of SalesLogix is designed to produce an accurate quote at the time the quote is produced it requires detailed input in order to return correct pricing. The client did not want the Opportunity area to be so detail oriented. Instead, the intent of Opportunities is to get a general idea of the type of products and their quantities that potentially will sell over any given upcoming period. For this reason the pricing in Opportunities utilizes “list” pricing, in order to calculate the sales potential of a deal. This is different than quote pricing, as quotes return real time pricing based on several factors, such as quantity discounts, customer specific pricing, promotions, etc.

To further enhance the capability of producing an accurate sales pipeline the Opportunity screen was modified to allow the Sales Potential to be manually set by the sales reps. If needed, reps can enter a sales amount without adding any products, or they can override the pricing driven by the selected products. By simply checking the “Manually edit Potential” checkbox, the user can then type in the amount they would like the Opportunity to represent. If they would like to switch back to use the value from the products, the user can simply clear the checkbox, at which point the Sales potential is recalculated based on the products.

The Opportunity area was modified to included increased flexibility in sales forecasting. Users can override the product driven pricing and enter their own

In addition to these customizations, the Opportunity area was extended to include associating multiple Quotes to the Opportunity. Also, the Product tab was enhanced with the same functionality found at the Quote Product area, including the BTO Kit functionality.

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Account Management - Filtering Active Contacts

Kris Halsrud — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:43:00 GMT

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Because of the dynamic nature of the client’s customer base, Contacts are constantly leaving Accounts. It was requested that the Account’s Contact tab be enhanced to allow filtering of the Contact list to only show active contacts. Active contacts are any Contact with a Status not equal to “Inactive”. A check box was added to the tab to allow the user to define if they wish to see all Contacts or just the Active ones. By default the screen only show active contacts, as these are the ones the reps are most interested in. The inactive Contacts can be displayed, if desired, for historical reasons.

A filter was added to the Account’s Contact tab to allow displaying only Active contacts.

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Account Management - Parent/Child Relationships

Kris Halsrud — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:41:00 GMT

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A large portion of the client’s customer base is the education system. To that end it was important for the client to be able to track the relationships between schools and districts, and all of the personnel in each of these entities. The standard parent child module proved to not be robust enough to handle the amount of data that could be presented. A custom Parent/Child interface was defined that executes many times faster than the standard version.

The custom Parent/Child dialog performs much faster and handles the client’s large data volumes better than the standard dialog.

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Address - Local Time Display

Kris Halsrud — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:39:00 GMT

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As described in the postal code import post, the client purchases a complete listing of the US postal codes. This list also contains the GMT offset for each postal code. During the import, the offset information is also loaded into the postal code table.

Because the client’s sales reps deal with teachers, it is important to know when a teacher is available for calls and when they are in class. The client therefore requested that a field be added to the contact screen, titled “Best time to call”. This field allows reps to know when they can reach the contact. In addition, we integrated the GMT offset from the postal code so that the Contact’s local time can be displayed simply by interpreting the postal code of the Contact’s address. Together, this functionality ensures that SalesLogix provides the rep with accurate information on when a Contact can be reached. This is an improvement over the standard SalesLogix functionality where the local time must be set by the user and visibility to it is only available from the Contact’s detail tab.

Contact screen displays Best Time to Call and Local Time derived from postal code.

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Address - Account Manager Auto-Assignment

Kris Halsrud — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:36:00 GMT

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The client’s sales territories are based on geographic divisions. For the most part an entire state is part of a reps territory; however this is not always the case. Some reps share a state. In conjunction with the address enhancements, the client requested that an Account’s Account Manager be auto-assigned based upon the SCF code of the Account’s address when the Account is added to SalesLogix. The SCF code (sectional center facility) is the first three digits of the postal code.

On the Insert Account/Contact screen, once a user adds an address, the postal code entered is used to auto-populate the Account Manager. The user can always override the default user, however this allows users entering new accounts to ensure the Account is assigned to the correct manager.

The Insert Account/Contact screen uses the postal code of the address entered to determine the Account Manager of the new record.

Management of the Account Manager Assignment
In order to assign the rules for Account Manager assignment, a custom management interface was built. This interface is accessed from a management level menu item in the SalesLogix client. The management screen allows users to be assigned to a specific SCF code. The interface also allows all SCF codes within a state to be updated at once, allowing quick definition changes if a territory realignment is needed. The list of available SCF codes is populated in conjunction with the postal code import.

Duplicate SCF code assignments are not allowed though the interface. Also, if an address is entered that does not have a defined account manager for the entered SCF code, the user entering the record is used as the account manager.

From the territory management interface, single territory definitions can by added, edited, or deleted. Also all SCF codes for a given state can be updated for quick territory realignments.

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Address - Postal Code Lookup

Kris Halsrud — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:24:00 GMT

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In order to assist in data integrity, and to facilitate a quicker address entry process, a custom zip code lookup was added to the Edit Address screen. Based upon the five digit zip code entered, a lookup is performed on a postal code reference table, and based upon a match the city, state, county, and country are automatically filled in. In the event that the zip code entered, has more than one match in the reference table, a dialog is presented to the user to have them select the correct information. Once the address information is populated, the Tax Schedule list is populated for the State selected.

Once a postal code is entered the system populates the rest of the address, if more than one possible match is found the user is prompted to choose the preferred information.

Management of the postal code reference table is handled via a custom management interface, accessed by a drop down menu item in the SalesLogix client.

From this screen, single zip code definitions can be added, edited, or removed. An import utility was also provided where an external zip code file can be used to populate the reference table. The client currently populates this table with all US zip codes, though it could be expanded to include worldwide postal code management, if desired.

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Address - Tax Schedules

Kris Halsrud — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:04:00 GMT

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Another important attribute of an address is the Tax Schedule in which the address belongs. The Tax Schedule is a back office attribute that determines what tax rate should be charged during a sale. The tax schedule is comprised of various tax schedules and classes that combine to give a total tax rate. For instance, a given tax schedule may have a state sales tax rate, plus a county rate, and possibly an additional charge for a particular city.

MAS 500 can have a multitude of tax schedules. Any time a new schedule is added in MAS 500 that schedule is made available in SalesLogix. The Tax Schedule information is loaded into SalesLogix on a nightly basis, via a custom SQL Server DTS package. The SalesLogix Edit Address interface then has logic that determines which Tax Schedules are available based upon the State selected on the Edit Address screen. Once specified, the Tax Schedule information can be used to determining the correct sales tax when quoting for an Account in SalesLogix.

Since the client also deals with many non-profit and institutional accounts they also need to track those addresses that are tax exempt, even if the address is in a taxable area. The Tax Schedule drop down list always presents a choice for tax exemption. When this is selected, a new field appears, allowing the user to specify the tax exemption ID specified by the customer.

Custom Tax Schedule and Tax Exemption fields have been added to the Edit Address screen. This information is passed to the back office system and is used to drive pricing and taxation within SalesLogix.

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Address - Residential Flag

Kris Halsrud — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:01:00 GMT

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A standard feature in MAS 500 is a flag to designate if an address is a residential address, as opposed to a commercial address. This attribute does not exist in a standard SalesLogix system. Since this was an important attribute needed by the client, this custom element was added to the SalesLogix address screen. Also, this field was incorporated in the customer nightly updates , and in the SalesLogix to MAS customer creation processes.

A Residential flag was added to the Edit Address screen in SalesLogix to match functionality in the back office system. Updates to this field pass back to MAS 500.

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Account Management - SalesLogix to MAS 500 Updates

Kris Halsrud — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 18:50:00 GMT

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Because SalesLogix acts as the master Account and Contact source, containing both prospects as well as customers that also exist in MAS 500, an integration was developed to update MAS 500 when SalesLogix customer information changes.

A custom SQL Server DTS package was created utilizing standard DTS Data Driven Queries to update the various customer attributes in the back office when they are updated in SalesLogix. This package runs on a nightly basis to ensure that both system’s customer bases are in sync. All records modified that day are checked for differences and only those in need of updating are touched in MAS 500.

The following information is checked and updated on a nightly basis.
•    Customer Name (SalesLogix Account)
•    Salesperson (SalesLogix Account Manager)
•    Address 1, 2, 3, and 4, as well as city, state, zip, country, and the residential flag
•    Contact Name
•    Contact Email
•    Contact phone (SalesLogix Contact’s work phone)
•    Contact phone extension (SalesLogix Contact’s work phone extension, if one exists)
•    Contact fax (Contact’s fax)
•    Contact fax extension (SalesLogix Contact’s fax extension, if one exists)
•    Customer the Contact belongs to (SalesLogix Contact’s Account. Contacts can move between accounts in SalesLogix)

In addition to this nightly check for updates, the SalesLogix system was designed to also do a live validation whenever an order is processed from SalesLogix to MAS 500. Details on this order process can be found in this post.

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Account Management - Credit Hold

Kris Halsrud — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 18:48:00 GMT

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When the sales reps are dealing with a customer it was important to be able to see quickly, and in one location the status of a customer. In order to instantly be able to tell the status of a customer, the SalesLogix Account and Contact screens were modified to give quick visibility if a customer is on credit hold. This same area also displays the customer’s support history, showing a brief summary of the ticket activity for the customer. All of this information is presented real time when the Account record is opened. The Credit Hold flag is being read live from the back office MAS 500 system for the customer.

With this modification the sales reps do not have to look through various tabs at the Account in order to see critical information

The Account screen shows the credit status as well as a summary of any support activity that has occurred for the Account. This same information shows on all of the Account’s Contact screens as well.

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Account Management - Consolidated Back Office Data Visibility

Kris Halsrud — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:54:00 GMT

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SalesLogix acts as the master customer list for this implementation. MAS 500 stores only those companies that have purchased items in the past. SalesLogix not only stores these customer accounts but also stores potential prospects, resellers, vendors, partners, and other entities. Not all of these SalesLogix entities should be passed into MAS, as the back office system is only concerned with customers.

Because SalesLogix was to be utilized as the primary application for users, it was critical that they be given access to the information that is contained in the back office system. Information on open orders, past sales activity, credit standing, and more, is needed for the sales and customer service reps to be able understand all aspects of the clients relationship with them.

Customer FX developed a solution to integrate customer records between SalesLogix and MAS 500. SalesLogix can then provide access to all relevant information. An integration was developed to tie SalesLogix accounts with their historic purchase history from the back office.

For this implementation the customer had recently upgraded from MAS 90 to MAS 500. However, because of business process re-mappings and other considerations it was decided not to bring the historic MAS 90 transaction data into MAS 500. Because of this, the client actually has two data sources to consolidate in order to get a true historic analysis of the back office history.

In order to achieve visibility of all of this data, it was necessary to aggregate both systems accounting data. It was decided to utilize SQL views as the means to consolidate the data and roll up the various data sources into a singular comprehensive view.

SalesLogix was modified to read data from the SQL views and to then display this data in custom SalesLogix views.

The following are sample screens showing the historic accounting data, rolled up from both the legacy MAS 90 and active MAS 500 systems:

Customer Information Summary- Displays a quick summary of credit history and sales.

Note Yearly Sales History dynamically change on screen as a new year starts. The last 5 years of data is shown.

Invoice History- Shows all paid invoices and detailed drill downs of specific items.

Open Invoices - Shows Invoices that are currently outstanding with associated payment information

Open Orders- Shows details of unfulfilled orders and their components

Payment History- Shows a listing of all payments made and which transactions they relate to.

All of this data is delivered real-time when viewing the various screens, from the MAS 90 and MAS 500 systems. This allows for real-time visibility to the back office history for all users in SalesLogix.

All of this information is easily searchable by utilizing custom SalesLogix lookups, accessed from the “Lookup” drop down menu in the SalesLogix client:

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Account Management - Template Types

Kris Halsrud — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:33:00 GMT

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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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