Market sectors

The sectors included in a market breakdown are listed in the selection panel.

It is recommended to enter a description. This will make it possible to understand the precise nature of the sector with greater ease than when only using the definition of the criteria entered in the definition tab.

This list is classed according to the sector code in ascending order. It is also in this order that the system goes through the sector list to calculate an allocation. This signifies that the code assigned to a sector confers a notion of priority to a sector compared to the other sectors.

For example, if a prospect/customer fulfills the conditions that allow it to be legitimately assigned to two different market sectors, it will be assigned to the first sector found in the list.

Viewing and allocation of sectors from a Business partner record

You can access the market sector inquiry and allocation window from any Business partner management function (Business partner, Prospects, Customers, Suppliers, Sales representatives, Carriers).
You can open this window by clicking Market sector from the Actions icon available on each address code line, from the Address and Business partners tabs.

This menus is always available in the Prospect and Customer functions.

In the other Business partner (BP) functions, this menu is only available for the prospect or customer business partners.

Allocation of a market sector

The first section of this window is related to the market sector.

If a sector is already associated with a business partner site, it is possible to view the sector description.

If no sector is entered, it is possible to assign any sector either manually via the sector selection window or via a zoom on the sector management function.

Sales representative allocation

Once a sector allocation is complete, you can proceed with the allocation of the sales representatives for the business partner site.

You can assign up to two main sales reps for each business partner site.

In addition to the principal sales reps, it is also possible to enter different secondary sales reps whilst at the same time specifying their role with respect to the BP site. The role of each secondary sales rep can be refined with the notion of a commercial group for the product.

If the allocations entered concern the default site for the BP, these will automatically be carried over to the prospect/customer record. The Sales rep fields are then updated based on the allocation performed in the window corresponding to the market sector. The Secondary sales rep table is also updated in the same way.

Otherwise, if the modifications concerning the principal or secondary sales reps are carried out directly in the prospect/customer record, they are transferred to the sales rep allocation for the BP default site.

This type of modification will always erase the automatically calculated allocations.

If a sector is entered in the allocation window, it is possible to obtain the sales reps entry in the allocation database described in the specified sector record. Click the Allocate according to sector option from the Actions icon available on the Primary sales rep fields of the allocation window.

Ship-to customer management

The market sector management is used to take control of the automatic allocation of the sales representatives to the population of the ship-to customers.

In fact, this population can itself contain a variable number of sales representatives as a function of the value of the activity code RED.

If the MSTDLV - Synchronize ship-to customers parameter (TC chapter, MST group) is set to 'Yes', the system behavior is the same as described in the following lines.

A customer record can contain a different number of sites and ship-to customers. A customer can for example may have five different addresses and only two ship-to customers.

As a consequence, during the automatic allocation of a sales representative to a customer site, the system will verify the existence of any corresponding ship-to record. If necessary, this allocation is also transferred to the corresponding Sales representative field(s) for this ship-to customer. On the other hand, each new manual allocation or modification of the sales representative to the ship-to customer is passed on to the customer site allocation.

Specific cases for the default site of the customer:

The default site for a customer record infers the existence of not just two linked allocations, but three that can be different :

These three allocations can be named under the following labels:

• The allocation of the customer site
• The allocation of the customer
• The allocation of the ship-to customer.

In this specific case, the system adopts the following behavior:

If the KEEPREP - Manual reps. Allocation parameter (TC chapter, MST group) is set to 'Always replace', the three allocations are always the same. In fact, they will be defined by the system and will always comply with the allocation dependent on the associated market sector.

If this setup contains a different value, it is then possible to obtain distinct values for these allocations.

In fact, it can be essential to have available the possibility for the default ship-to customer to have an allocation of sales representatives different to that defined in the customer record.

For a single site, it is possible to modify an allocation from three different locations:

• Market sector allocation window
• Management tab on the customer record
• Default ship-to customer record.

Sales representative modification from the market sector allocation window

When the market sector allocation window is open for the default customer site and a manual modification of the sales representatives is carried out here, this new allocation is automatically transferred to both the customer record and the default ship-to customer record. These three information storage sources then reflect the same information (insofar as the values of the different activity codes used are themselves also identical).

Modification of the sales representatives from the Management tab on the customer record.

When the sales representative allocation is carried out directly in the customer record, this is automatically carried over to the default customer site. These two items of information are thus always identical.

As far as the the ship-to customer record is concerned, the system asks the following question to the user:
Do you want to update the ship-to customer allocation?

• If the answer is negative, the new allocation will not be transferred to the ship-to customer.
• If the answer is positive, the new allocation will be transferred to the ship-to customer.

Modification of the sales representatives for a ship-to customer.

When the user manually modifies a sales representative allocation in the default ship-to customer, this modification is not carried over anywhere. In fact, this type of modification is considered as an extra customer allocation necessary for the correct functioning of the Sales modules functionality. In this case, the default customer site allocation remains when it is identical to that of the customer.

On the other hand, in the absence of the previous allocation, all new allocations carried out manually from the ship-to customer are carried over to the customer and default customer site.

Use this tab to create an allocation criteria table and, if needed, enter a more complex mathematical formula.

Each criteria is made up of:

• A criteria combination operator. This can be selected from the following list: 'And', 'Or', 'And not', 'Or not'
• One of the three table names making up a prospect/customer record, that is to say: 'Information relative to the business partners', 'Information relative to the prospects/customers', 'Information relative to the address'.
• The name of the field coming from one of the three tables specified above.
• A condition dependent on the selected field.
• The value for the field defined as a criterion.

This grid can have up to 25 combined lines.

Use this tab to specify the sales representatives to be assigned by the system when a prospect/customer has been automatically integrated into the relevant sector.

For each sector, you can assign up to two primary sales representatives and multiple secondary sales representatives. Each secondary sales representative can carryout a specific role with respect to a prospect/customer. The following list contains examples of some of the more frequent roles: 'Sales manager', 'Product expert', 'After-sales technician'…

In addition to the role, the mission of a secondary sales representative with respect to a business partner can be refined with the notion of the sales group of the product. Thus, a single prospect/customer can have several product experts or After-sales technicians for certain specific product ranges.