Background
Contoso, Ltd. manufactures electronic components for robotic assembly machines. The company specializes in wiring harnesses that are made to customer specifications.
The company’s corporate office and a manufacturing plant are in Detroit. The company also has offices and manufacturing plants in the following countries:
China
Germany
Mexico
United Kingdom (UK)
Current environment
Sales
Customers who have operations in more than one country are managed by the sales team within the country from which a request originated. However, it is difficult to get information about sales for these customers.
Each salesperson manually creates customer quotes using Microsoft Word and Excel templates. This causes pricing inconsistencies, which is affecting profitability.
Customers who have total sales over $1,5M per year receive special Preferred Customer discount pricing on products and services.
Costs, pricing, and product availability vary greatly by country.
Sales teams
Each office has a dedicated sales team. Sales are managed by a global team in countries without a sales office.
Each sales team has a projected revenue target that is tied to the factory capacity in their country, except for the global team. The global team’s projected revenue target is derived using a percentage of their actual sales from the previous year.
Each sales team maintains a spreadsheet in which they record customer requests for quotes (RFQs). The spreadsheets are stored on a network drive.
Sales team revenue targets are set yearly based on manufacturing capacities at each plant.
Individual sales targets are based on product lines by quarter.
Current RFQ process
The company defines the following process for processing RFQs:
Requirements
General setup
Standard functionality must be used when possible.
All open RFQs must be imported into the solution.
All information must be accessible to the entire executive management team.
Country-specific sales information must be accessible only to sales representatives assigned to those teams.
Sales and quote processes must be standardized across all sales divisions.
Sales territories must be set up for each country as well as for a global territory.
The global team will take over the management of RFQs for customers who have operations in more than one region.
Due to regulatory considerations, the solution must be able to limit the kinds of products that can be sold by region.
RFQ management
New RFQs must be entered initially into the system as Leads until they are reviewed.
The default forecast categories must be used.
Standardized quote formats and product pricing must be enforced across all sales offices.
All tasks and follow-up activities with customers to close RFQs must be associated directly with the RFQs.
Credit and reference checks
All new customers must undergo credit and reference checks before estimates are created for any RFQs. This information will be recorded in a new custom field called Credit Check that has a Yes/No value.
The finance manager must be assigned the credit and reference review when an RFQ is ready for review.
If a customer’s credit and reference review is unfavorable, the finance manager must follow up with the customer and the sales representative by phone.
The customer’s credit report must be added to the RFQ as a permanent record and for audit purposes.
The solution must provide both a sample script that the finance manager can use as well as a checklist of how to perform the check.
Reporting
The sales manager dashboard must show the following data:
Projected revenue and profitability per country by month and fiscal year.
Projected and current product sales per country by month and fiscal year.
RFQ Won/Loss revenue comparison by fiscal quarter.
RFQ status by sales representative within their territory.
RFQs that are awaiting management approval and how long they have been waiting.
Sales lost to competitors month over month.
Managers must also be able to track how long an RFQ has been awaiting credit and reference checks, and how many RFQs have had unfavorable results from credit or reference checks.
Issues
PreferredCustomerA, who has factories in Germany, the UK, and Canada, reports that their sales representatives give different pricing and discounts to customers depending on the country in which the RFQ is initiated.
Several RFQs that have passed management review but failed standard credit checks have been issued quotes. To prevent this, credit checks must now be done before the management approval meeting.
Several imported RFQs contain quotes for discontinued products. Updated quotes with current product offers need to be sent to customers.
CompanyB needs pricing for harnesses for their plants in Germany, the UK, and Argentina.
CompanyC received a quote for harnesses for their US home office. They need the products for their Canadian plant.
CompanyD wants sales orders and shipments sent directly to VendorZ, who manufactures several subassemblies for them. VendorZ also builds components for other customers as well as for Contoso, Ltd.
The chief financial officer (CFO) is concerned about the amount of work that the new credit and reference checks will create. Therefore, a time-study needs to be initiated for that work to see whether an additional person needs to be hired.
A.
