Sales and marketing

This section provides information about processes and procedures within the Microsoft Dynamics AX
Sales & Marketing module.

The processes are:

Setting up CRM
This section deals with the following setup procedures for the CRM module in Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Set up CRM default values

Use default values to reduce some of the manual data registration associated with creating new records,
especially if the records to be crea. ted are somewhat consistent, that is, resembling each other in many
aspects and differing only in a few aspects

If you create business relations that share many common characteristics—all may be from the same
customer group, speak the same language, use the same currency, and so on—you can define the
common characteristics in the relevant fields in the Parameters form.

The next time you create a business relation, the specified default values will automatically be inserted.

1. Select the relevant tab (General, Quotation, Campaigns or Activities).

2. Select the desired default value from the drop-down lists in the relevant field.

All defined default values can be subsequently adjusted for the new record when the record (business
relation, campaign, activity and/or quotation) has been created.

You can also set default values for the follow-up activities which are created in conjunction with a
telemarketing initiative or the expiration of a campaign or quotation.

Furthermore, you can define the default length of a campaign and when a follow-up activity is to be
created for the campaign or quotation in question.

Note

You can specify quotation defaults in more detail on the General tab in the Parameters form.

Checking for duplicate business relations

The number of registered business relations can grow rapidly, especially if many users are creating new
business relations, entire lists of potential sales leads are purchased and imported, or the Sales &
Marketing module has been in use for a significant length of time.

With a large number of business relations, it can be hard to make certain that they are all unique. You
can check the existing business relations for duplicates or you can enable a duplication check when you
create new business relations.

There are two separate procedures to check for duplicate business relations:

• Duplication check of existing business relations.

• Duplication check when new business relations are created.

 Note

Define which method the duplication check uses in the Duplicate method field in the Parameters form.
Checking for duplicate business relations in a large database will lead to a noticeable drop in working performance.
See Also

Check for duplicate business relations

Check for duplicates
Duplicate method

Associate an employee with a user ID

1. Click Administration > Setup > User relations.

2. Select the employee that you want to associate with a specific user ID.

3. On the General tab, in the Employee field, select the employee ID from the drop-down list.

Note

Only associate one user ID with each employee. If multiple employees share the same user ID, many of the forms in Microsoft
Dynamics AX CRM will not open because the automatic filter function in the forms cannot uniquely identify the employee.

Set up CRM transaction logging

1. Click CRM > Setup > Parameters.

2. On the Transaction log tab, in the Include tables section, select the relevant tables to include

in the transaction logging.

3. In the Days old field, enter the number of days that the transaction log will display the

information.

4. In the relevant fields in the Transaction mode section, select which transaction actions on the

selected tables to log (Insert, Delete and/or Update actions).

Contact person list

The following topics provide information about the contact person list.

Filtering the contact person list

To filter the contact persons in the Contact person form, enter the desired values in the filter fields.

Filter fields

Field Short description

Show all To display all contact persons, regardless of any other values in the filter fields, select this button.

Name To display only the contact person with that specific name, enter the name of the contact person.

Employee To filter the contact persons, select an employee from the drop-down list. Only the contact persons that the employee is
the main contact person for will be displayed.
When the Contact person form is opened from the Navigation Pane, this filter field contains the employee's name.

Sales unit To filter and display the contact persons by sales unit, select the sales unit from the drop-down list.

Note
You can use the TAB key to move through the form.

Update the contact person list

1. Click CRM > Periodic > Update > Update contact persons.

2. Select the Contact fields fields that you want to update.

3. Click Select, and use the query to select the business relations that you want to update. You can

select all business relations, or you can select only business relations that have you registered as
main contacts.

4. Click OK to return to the Update contact persons form and click OK to update your changes.

Business relations
Business relations are all the companies you do business with, and can be found on the Business
relations form. The following topics provide information about business relations in Microsoft Dynamics
AX.

About business relations

Business relations are all relevant entities with whom the company has relations with or expects to have
relations with, including customers, vendors, sales leads, and potential customers. A business relation
might also be a bank, a stockbroker, a municipal authority, state and government branches, and so on.

All types of business relations can be registered centrally in the Business relations form, enabling you
to use the aspects registering of business relations most relevant to your company's organization.

The information in the Business relations form can be synchronized with the Customers and Vendors
forms for business relations that are both customers and vendors.

Business relation types

Business relations can be of any type, depending on your company's requirements and policies. However,
the application requires two types to be registered: Customer and Vendor. Registering other business
relations types is optional.

Business relation types are set up in the Relation types form.

See Also

Categorize business relations

Business relations procedural flow

This procedure briefly describes the flow of working with business relations.

1. The salesperson receives information regarding a potential customer (a sales lead), registers this
new potential customer in the business relations form, and assigns the type Prospect to the
potential customer.

1. The salesperson who creates the business relation is automatically assigned as the main

contact. The main contact person can be changed in the Main contact drop-down list.
 2. The salesperson fills out the relevant fields about the business relation, such as contact
information and general information, and places the business relation in any relevant
categories that the company has predefined.

2. The contact persons of the prospect are contacted through typical sales procedures or through
special campaigns such as telemarketing initiatives or mailing initiatives.
The salesperson uses the Activities functionality to register and administer any meetings.

3. After several sales meetings, the prospect becomes a customer. There are several ways to change
this status:

o The prospect receives a quotation from the company and accepts it, intending to purchase the
quoted items. When the quotation is converted to a sales order, the prospect is automatically
converted to a customer.

o The prospect decides to purchase items from the company and is created as a customer in the
customer table. The business relations table is then synchronized with the customer table to
ensure that the information is registered correctly, which changes the prospect to a customer in
the business relations table.

o The prospect can be directly converted to a customer from the business relations form, without
purchasing anything.

2. All future contacts with the prospect-turned-customer are registered through the business
relations form. This includes, for example, issuing more quotations, creating campaigns with
special offerings, or conducting telemarketing initiatives. These activities can then be captured by
Microsoft Dynamics AX Management statistics, which creates a more precise picture of the
status, profitability, and overall potential of the business relation.

Note

The prospect might already be registered in the business relations form because of a prior registration or a mass import of sales leads.
In this case, the current salesperson can simply change the main contact person assignment for this business relation.

Check for duplicate business relations

1. Click CRM > Setup > Parameters.

2. In the Parameters form, select the Use duplication check check box.

3. In the Duplicate method field, select the duplication checking method from the drop-down list.

4. In the Response to duplicates field, select the desired response to any duplicate business

relations.

Check for duplicates

1. Click CRM > Business relations.

2. Click Functions, and then click Check duplicates.

3. Click OK to accept the Check duplicates routine.

Note

The duplication check uses the duplication check method defined in the Duplicate method field in the Parameters form.
Delete business relations
You can delete business relations from the Business relations form, as you can with any other record in
Microsoft Dynamics AX (for more information, see Delete a record). However, there are often many
records connected to the business relations, such as appointments, contact persons, campaigns,
quotations, telemarketing initiatives, and so on.

These records must be deleted manually prior to deleting a business relation, and deleting a business
relation with many connections to other areas in the application is not advisable.

Finally, deleting a business relation that is a customer or vendor will not delete the customer or vendor
record in their respective forms, (Customers and/or Vendors). This must be done manually after
deleting a business relation.

Change the employee responsible for a contact person

1. Click CRM > Contact person.

If the contact person you want to change the main contact for is not displayed, filter the Contact
person form to display the desired contact person.

2. On the Overview tab, select the contact person to be changed.

3. In the Main contact field, select an employee from the drop-down list as the newly designated

employee responsible for that contact person.

Categorize business relations

The values in the categorization fields will affect any statistics and reports that are generated. These
values can also enhance your understanding of the status of sales and pipeline management within your
company.

The following categorization options in the Business relations form have been left for your company to
define. With the Sales & Marketing functionality, this means that you can tailor many categorization
fields to your company's particular needs and business processes.

ABC classification

A business relations ABC value can mean anything at all, depending on your company's needs. There are
no preset definitions in the application of this value.

Your company can choose not to use ABC values, leaving the field blank, which is the default value of the
ABC field. If the ABC values are used, some reports will require minor adjustments to the report queries,
for the business relations ABC value to be included in the query generating the report.

Segment

The market segment that the business relation belongs to. Segments are solely defined by the company
and are set up in the Segments form.

Subsegments

A further subdivision of the market segment that the business relation belongs to, and more detailed.
Like segments, subsegments are also solely defined by the company and set up in the Subsegments
form.

Chain
If the business relation is part of a chain, the parent company or chain name can be registered in this
field. The parent company or chain name must be defined in the Company chains form.

Sales district

The company's own defined sales districts. The sales districts are set up in the Sales districts form.

Status

The status of the business relation. This is defined based on the working procedures of the company,
regarding the handling of business relations. The status levels of the business relation are set up in the
Status form.

Business sectors

The business relation's placement in one or more predefined industry classification codes or business
sectors. Business sectors are set up in the Business sectors form.

See Also

About business sectors

Change the type of a business relation

Change the business relation type

1. Click CRM > Business relations.

2. In the Business relations form, select the business relation.

3. In the Relation type field, select the desired business relation type from the drop-down list.

Note

You cannot change the business relation type to a customer or vendor by selecting the customer or vendor type in the drop-down list
of the Relation type field.
Convert a business relation to a customer or vendor

1. Click CRM >Business relations.

2. In the Business relations form, select the business relation.

3. Click Functions and select the Convert to customer or the Convert to vendor menu item.

Note

When a business relation has been assigned the type Customer or the type Vendor, it is not possible to change its type.
See Also

Business relations procedural flow

Filtering business relations

Filter the business relations in the CRM > Business relations form by entering the desired values in the
filter fields.

• To display all the business relations, select the Show all check box.

• To find all the business relations for which a certain contact person is responsible, select that

person's name from the drop-down list in the Employee filter field.
• To display all the business relations of a certain type (all Customers, for instance), select the type

from the drop-down list in the Type filter field.

The values in the Employee filter field and the Type filter field are combined in the filter.

• To find a specific business relation, enter the exact name of the business relation in the Name field.

• To display the business relations in a tree structure, select the Tree control check box.

Filter Fields

Field Short description

Show all Select this button to display all business relations, regardless of any other values in the filter fields.

Employee Select an employee from the drop-down list to filter the business relations. Only the business relations for which the
employee is the main contact will be displayed.
The employee's name will be automatically entered in this filter field when the Business relations form is opened from
the main menu.
The value in the Employee filter field will be combined with the value in the Type filter field.

Type Select a business relation type from the drop-down list to filter the business relations. Only the business relations with
the same type as the selected type will be displayed.
The value in the Type filter field will be combined with the value in the Employee filter field.

Name Type the name of the business relation to filter the business relations and to display only the business relation with that
specific name.

Tree Select this button to display all the business relations in a tree control instead of displaying them in grid table rows.
control Clear this button to return to the grid display.

Note

If you are using the keyboard to navigate the form, tab to the next field to initiate the filter procedure.

Update financial information for a business relation

1. Click CRM > Business relations.

In the Business relations form, select the relevant business relation.

1. Click Inquiry > Financials.

2. In the Financials form, click Update financials to update the financial data in the form.

The financial information for the active business relation is now displayed in the relevant fields in
the form, including any previously made sales forecasts.

Note

If the active business relation type is not Customer or Vendor, the Update financials button will be deactivated.

Update financial information for multiple business relations

Mass update financial information for more than one business relation:

1. Click CRM > Periodic > Update contacts > Update financial.

2. In the Update financials form, make a selection in the Business relation selection field.

Then choose which business relations will have their financial information updated:

o All - The financial information for all business relations will be updated.
 o Mine only - Only the business relations with whom the present user is registered as the main
contact person for will be updated.

3. In the Last year and This year check boxes, in the Time period field group, you can define

which year the financial information is to be updated from.

4. Click OK.

Note

Mass updating financial information for many business relations can be very time-consuming, and also very demanding of system
resources.
See Also

Update financial information for a business relation

Business relations procedural flow

About business sectors

You can use business sectors to define a set of classification codes that a business relation may be a
member of.

A business relation may operate in more than one business sector, and you can assign more than one
business sector to a business relation.

You can use any type of industry classification code for the business sectors; you can use national or
international classification codes, or create business sector codes that are specific to your company.

Industry classification codes can often be obtained in various text-file formats from national or
international statistics agencies. These can be entirely or partially imported into Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Business sectors are set up in the Business sectors form.

See Also

Import business sector codes

Import business sector codes

1. Click CRM > Setup > Contact management > Business relations > Business sectors.

2. In the Business sectors form, click the Import button.

3. In the File name field, browse to the file to be imported.

4. Select the file to be imported.

5. Click Open to open the file.

6. Click OK to initiate the import.

The application will import the all the business sector codes and descriptions into the Business sectors
form.

See Also

Import selected business sector codes

Business relations procedural flow

Import selected business sector codes

Define and import a section of a file with business sectors and descriptions.

1. Click CRM > Setup > Contact management > Business relations > Business sectors.

2. In the Business sectors form, click Import.

3. In the File name field, browse to and select the file to be imported.

4. Click Open to open the file.

5. Select the Use selection check box.

6. Define the relevant lower and upper values of the business sector codes to be imported.

7. Click OK to initiate the import.

Use selection

If the Use selection check box is selected, the import routine can be filtered by the Business sector
function, where the upper and lower limits of the business codes can be specified in the Upper limit and
Lower limit fields.

This way, you can limit the import to include only the business sectors that lie within the specified range,
including the limits themselves. You can also reduce the amount of the business sectors, especially if the
company does not do business with certain sectors or does business only with certain sectors. Of course,
this requires some familiarity with the business sectors to be imported.

Note

It is possible to import separate parts of an import file by running the import repeatedly and specifying the relevant ranges (upper and
lower limits) for each separate time.
See Also

Business relations procedural flow