www.tres.pl - Baza wiedzy Trawers ERP - Spis treści
Customer Base Management 1. General description 2. Collected information 3. Customer features 4. Customer search 4.1 by symbol 4.2 by name 4.3 by tax ID number 4.4 by contact person 4.5 by part of name, city, website address 4.6 by query terms 5. Entry 5.1 Manual 5.2 Automatic 5.3 Duplicate prevention 6. Deleting entries 7. Postcodes 8. Contacts with customers 9. Marketing activities 10. Reports and statistics 11. Related topics 1. Description Customer base management functions supply necessary information for decision-making. They can be used for: * marketing (e.g. deciding to whom should a campaign be addressed) * trade (which offer to send, how high a credit limit should be set) * debt collection (defining stages of collection and content of notices) * etc. 2. Collected information The basic information on customers is accumulated in customer files in Receivables. The files create an archive in which the clients are identified by their symbol, name and tax ID number. The files contain thematic fields known as tabs. General data Basic data e.g. symbol, name, long name (4 lines x 60 characters), telephone and address, default warehouse, group, branch etc. Financial data Trade data Additional description (16 lines) Bank accounts EDI profile Our products at the customer People and addresses Contact persons Customer addresses Accounts Settled Unsettled History of events History of e-mails History of contacts/events History of tasks Significant dates Archives of documents Archive of sales invoices History of sales orders Sales offers: headings Sales offers: items Internet Location on Google maps Customer website Tabs can also be used for viewing data recorded in other files and transaction sets: settled and unsettled accounts (receivables), history of offers, orders, invoices, e-mails, contacts etc. All customers are collected in one file regardless of their status as prospective, active or inactive clients etc. This makes it easier to search through and manage customer information. The number of presented files can be narrowed down with the use of filters (terms). This makes it possible to exclude clients marked as inactive or blocked. 3. Customer features Customer files contains information on the profile, field of activity, size, business model, organizational structure, position in a structure, client source, financial terms of cooperation, terms of shipment, NACE information etc. Most of the features are defined in dictionaries in AD: Tables > Customer features. These features can be used to search customers (using query) and create reports of sales, purchases, marketing activities, correspondence etc. 4. Customer search The list can be viewed (scrolled) by positions, pages, you can go to the top and bottom of the list. The list can be sorted according to the symbol, customer name or tax ID number. You can perform a search according to all or part of characters from the fields of symbol, short name, full name, tax ID number, contact person and customer's company seat. 4.1 By symbol The symbol can be input in full 6 characters or partially, followed by pressing key <F2/F3>. The list is displayed in ascending order according to customer symbols. 4.2 By name Recommended method: 1. switch to the name field using <Tab> key 2. enter partial name, e.g. smith+ted and press <F3> key The program will find e.g. Smith Industries Limited and Ted Smith The <F3> key searches text for strings of characters. The search is not case-sensitive. The list is displayed in ascending order according to customer names. 4.3 By tax ID number You can provide a full number or a partial number followed by <F2/F3> key. Do not separate digits with hyphens [-] as they will not be included in the search. E.g. in order to find tax ID no. 123-00-08-431, input 12300 <F3> instead of 123-00 <F3> The list is displayed in ascending order according to tax ID numbers. 4.4 By contact person Input part of name or surname and press <F2/F3>. The list is displayed in ascending order according to contact person e-mail addresses. 4.5 By part of name, city, website When searching customers and suppliers by the name field, the program will also search for the string in the city and website fields. Specify part of name and the city and press <F3>, and the program will search through customers from that city. E.g., electr+warsaw <F3>: the program will display a list including e.g. Electric Enterprises Warsaw, Electro Holdings Warsaw. 4.6 By query terms Query provides an effective search method which involves building filters for any field (column) in a file. 5. Entry 5.1 Manual Manual entry requires filling the information in subsequent screens which show up in Receivables > Customers > Customer Master > Entry. Entries can be added on the fly anywhere in the program where <F2> is an available option for the customer file. Adding entries on the fly is enabled only for those users who are authorized to use the function in the first place (in its default location: Receivables > Customers > Customer Master > Entry). The <F8> key is used to speed up the entry process. All you need to do is fill in the key basic fields. On pressing <F8> the remaining fields will be filled with standard values and the file will be saved. Another option is to use sample customer data which will be treated in the exact same way as standard values would be. The symbol of a sample customer is specified in parameters of the Receivables system. 5.2 Automatic Automatic entry is performed through import of customer files. It is recommended that the imported data be saved in the common CSV format. 5.3 Duplicate prevention When adding customer file entries, it is important to avoid adding the same customer twice. Duplicates are difficult to remove once they are associated with transaction data such as sales invoices. The software offers solutions to resolve this problem, but users should also be aware of it and take certain precautions. The following mechanisms exist for the prevention of duplicate entries: * Checking tax ID number; each has to be unique. You will not be able to add a new customer with a number which is already present in the system. * Looking for a duplicate street address. The software will ensure that there is no previous entry with the same seat address (city and street). * Manual checking by searching for characteristic words from customer name, e.g. <dairy+cooperative> and pressing <F3> (search for specified characters) In general, it is recommended that only one person in a company be authorized to add new customer entries. Such person would be responsible for the integrity of the customer file. If this is not a viable option, another idea is to perform a periodic check of file changes. This information can be accessed through the Significant Dates tab and the log, which contains specific records of who added and changed what and when. Another way to do search for duplicate entries is to create a report ordered by city and street address and then look for consecutive double entries. 6. Deletion A customer entry can be deleted from Customer Master if no associated information has been entered in any of the remaining data sets, inc.: * orders * accounts * deliveries and pending invoices (Supplier Master) * contact persons * extra shipping addresses Generally, it is recommended to remove customers from file only if absolutely necessary. Inactive customers can be blocked. Indicator: Blocked = Y/N Y Customer is blocked No transactions can be added. No invoices, notes, orders, payments or warehouse documents can be associated with this customer. The additional description fields can provide information on who blocked the customer, when and why. N Customer is not blocked Another method is to add customers to the >inactive< group and build a query to exclude this group from choice lists. 7. Postcodes Trawers software contains a pre-defined list of postcodes (currently only Polish postcodes available). Users can add additional postcodes to the table. Postcodes are used during entry and entry editing in customer and supplier Masters. After specifying a postcode from the list of available postcodes, a city and a street address will be suggested. After specifying city and street address, a postcode will be suggested. 8. Contacts with customers Contacts with customers (and contact attempts) are recorded in the Contact Manager module. This is also where future contacts are scheduled. Upon start-up of the software, the program will notify the user about their scheduled contacts for the day. Contacts can also be delegated to other users. 9. Marketing activities Contact Manager includes a table with marketing campaigns. In the table we specify a campaign symbol, which can later be associated with contacts in order to enable tracking of campaign activities and costs. 10. Reports and statistics Sales reports --> Reports History of contacts with customers Today's Contacts Setting dates for future contacts with customers Stages in a sales process (sales funnel) Cost analysis of business processes Odds of sales Statistics: * How many customers were added ? * How many contacts were made ? Shows trade activities in particular time periods. * How many customers were issued an invoice ? * How many e-mails were recorded ? Shows the number of sent and received e-mails * How many e-mails are in a mailbox ? Shows the number of e-mails per each particular mailbox * How many e-mails are marked by a user ? Shows the distribution of activity between users in e-mail sending/receiving * How many e-mails are associated with a particular customer ? Shows the distribution of customer activity in e-mail contacts 11. Related topics * Customer management in a multi-division company --> Companies and branches * Authorization to add and review customer file entries * Authorization to review financial data (tab) * Authorization to add extra ship-to addresses (tab) --> System of authorization --> General and user parameters --> History (log) and monitoring of operations * Use of the inbuilt e-mail client for contacts --> E-mail client * Automatic Customer Master Entry --> Import and export of data * Sending serial mail according to own definitions --> Sample documents * Extra ship-to addresses --> Customer addresses * Business models
www.tres.pl - Baza wiedzy Trawers ERP - Spis treści