The PRM facilities are an extended CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. The advantage of PRM (compared to an external CRM system) is that it is integrated into the basic order and manufacturing processes and includes all types of partners such as suppliers and subcontractors.
There are two main components of the PRM system:
- ‘Activities’ that are recorded against partners or partner personnel
- ‘Contact groups’ that are used for grouping partners into ad-hoc groups (note the difference between these groups and general partner grouping)
There is also a contact group management screen that can be used for contacting selected contact group members and recording the resulting activities.
Activities
Activities are ad-hoc contacts with the specific company and can be, for example, telephone or e-mail contacts, meetings, documents etc. Activities are of a certain type, the types being defined in your ‘Company settings’. The different kinds of activity type are worthy of consideration when setting up the system. Typical values may be ‘Customer called’, ‘Visit to customer’, ‘Design change’ or ‘Installation problem’.
Activities are always linked to a certain partner, but may additionally be linked to a certain document of that partner such as a sales order, purchase order etc.
Activities can be viewed from the partner card regardless of to what else the activity is linked.
Creating a new activity
There are many places through the system where activities can be created. Nearly all screens have an Activity tab. On this click ‘Create new activity’. A new window will open for the activity data.
The Partner card can be opened from any place the partner short name is seen by clicking that link. All activities for a partner can be seen there and new ones created.
Activities can also be created from the Contact Group Management screen in the Partner Relationship dashboard.
Activity data
| Title | A short description. |
| Status | ‘Open’ or ‘Closed’. |
| Date | Created date |
| Company | The company was defined when the activity was created. |
| Contact person | Contact person can be selected from the list of partner contact persons. |
| Type | Selected from a menu. The options in the menu are defined in ‘Company’ settings. |
| Follow-up date | If future action is needed, then this is the target date. |
| Responsible person | Your company person that will take care of the next contact concerning this activity. |
| Order details | Pressing the action button will open the order summary page if this activity is connected to an order. |
| Comments (Hyperlink) | Enter web address where there is more information on the activity (for example, new prospect’s homepage, or a link to a document concerning the issue). When you press the action button, the page will be opened in another window. |
| Only visible to | Limits access to this item to the roles specified |
| Comments | The main text of the activity. Sufficient space is for about one and a half pages of text. |
Buttons in an activity’s window
| Save and close | The data you entered is saved and activity’s window is closed. Note: This does not change the activity’s status. |
| Cancel | Activity’s window will be closed without saving the data. |
| New | Press to create a new activity. Contact company will be the same as in the previous activity. |
| Previous and Next | These buttons are for moving from one activity to another (contact company stays the same). |
| Report | Emails you a report of this activity. The report is suitable for forwarding to the partner as a record of the activity. |
| Delete | Deletes the activity you are editing. |
Follow up
If an activity is open, has a follow up date and a responsible person, the activity will be displayed on the home page of the system when that user logs in. This will only be shown if the Start up wizard is not shown (there is a check box on the Start up wizard itself if it is to be shown).
Contact groups
In this feature companies - and their contact persons - can be placed into ad-hoc groups.
These groups can be such as, ‘Mailing List’, ‘Prospect, Visit’ or ‘Do Not Contact’. This grouping is not related to partner families. Grouping options are created in ‘Company’ data.
You can use this company grouping when working through a telephone contact list or viewing previous activities.
Groups
Available Contact groups are created in ‘Add remove contact groups’ screen accessed from the Partner Relationship dashboard in the Sales menu.
Partners may be members of multiple groups.
There are two ways to add and remove a partner from a group:
- Partner card - Grouping tab - PRM section (See the Partners chapter)
- Contact group management screen (See the following section)
Contact group management screen
The contact group management screen is for handling partners in bulk and for seeing who is in which groups. It is also used for moving partners from group to group, so it supports a pipeline concept for new customers and prospects.
It is possible to filter multiple groups on an ‘include’ or ‘exclude’, for instance find all persons who attended a trade show but have not been called back by the salesman.
The screen shows the telephone number, so can be used for telemarketing. Following a successful contact, an activity can be created and a company moved from one group to another.
Contact groups can be added and removed from the main menu on the dashboard.