Topic: ‘AX – CRM – Sales & Marketing’

Telemarketing can play an important role in businesses that are searching for prospects, conducting surveys, launching new products, or staying in touch with customers.  Given the large scope of some telemarketing call lists it is helpful to have a system such as Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 there to manage the large amounts of information in a way that saves time and money.  Continue reading to see how you can organize thousands of customer contacts and match them up with who from your organization will be calling them.  Also, you will learn how to manage the feedback from the calls and view the progress with graphical statistics.

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Recently received this error in AX 2012 when posting a sales order / return order invoice.

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This functionality is significantly different from AX 2009 to AX 2012.  In AX 2009, a sales order form was used to designate a return order and an RMA could be entered against it, if required.  In AX 2012, there is functionality specific to return orders.

Return orders are accessed through the Sales & Marketing module > Common > Return orders.  Read the rest of this entry »

Changes continue to be made to Lead and Opportunity Management in Dynamics AX.  In AX 2012, accounts receivable (AR) and sales (Sales and Marketing) are split into two unique modules.  Concentrating on sales, the Sales and Marketing module incorporates both the CRM functionality and sales functionality, including the leads, opportunities, quotations and sales orders.  The AR module, even though it contains customers and sales orders, the majority of options and functionality concentrates on AR activities payments, collections, etc.). Read the rest of this entry »

Does your Company have Catalogs? If not, have they been thinking of the possibility of catalogs to get product information out to the market? Are you looking for a basic Catalog solution? Well good news! Advanced Distribution for Dynamics AX introduces new Catalog features. These catalogs feature your products and can be used for different purposes, be it a Main product catalog, a catalog for a campaign, or a web product catalog. Below is a brief introduction of Catalogs with ADAX.

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Dynamics AX 2012 Production encompasses added functionality in scheduling resources. In lieu of work center groups and work centers, 2012 utilizes resource groups, resources, capabilities and worker/employee competencies to schedule resources. I find this to be much more flexible in allocating available resources and take some of the ‘starch’ out of the process.

I hope you find this video helpful and informative!

Dynamics AX provides the ability to quote to prospective business relations or existing customers.  When quoting within Dynamics AX, you can easily create an activity or opportunity during the quotation process.   This functionality feeds back to the CRM module and allows an opportunity to be tracked using standard lead tracking criteria (i.e. anticipated close, probability % of close, etc.). 

Providing visibility to alternate quotations for the same opportunity is standard functionality within Dynamics AX through both CRM and Trade & Logistics quotations.  The basic use of this function is to create the original quotation, tied to the opportunity / lead.  The second quotation, or alternate quote, is then ‘linked’ to the original quotation using the Alternate Quote functionality.  The screen provides a list of existing quotes for the same business prospect or customer to select from.  Once selected, both quotations become very visible from the CRM opportunity. 

 The ability to manage multiple / alternate quotations for the same opportunity (despite the business relation or customer) is necessary to avoid inaccurate results when providing management analysis for open opportunities.  The standard Dynamics AX alternate quotation functionality cleanly provides this data. 

 But, what happens in the case where the alternate quotation can be a quote to a different business prospect or customer but for the same opportunity?  When using the standard functionality of an Alternate Quotation quotes, other than to the original quote business prospect or customer, will not be selectable in the drop down that appears (as stated above).  To work around this limitation, select the original quote, access the Alternate quotation function, and type the quotation number of the alternate quotation in the quotation field.  Two things occur when this process is completed. 

1. The opportunity ID is tied to the alternate quotation and,
2. All quotes, regardless of whether it is tied to the same business prospect or customer, will appear in the list of quotations for the opportunity / lead.  Note:  The original opportunity will carry the original business prospect or customer.

 When completed, regardless of the business relation or customer, multiple quotations for the same opportunity can be linked together to provide accurate management reporting.

There are a few ways to slice and dice your sales personnel in Dynamics AX.  Some are in the CRM module and some are in the AR module.

The Sales Unit: In order to report sales by department, team or individual, you must group sales personnel into sales units.  Units can be defined by an area of responsibility such as geographical area, customer size, and customer type.  From this form you can create a team or unit, staff it and assign managers, and assign activities.  Sales targets are set by Sales units and Sales unit members.
CRM > Setup > Sales management > Sales unit/team

The Sales Group: Also known as the Sales Commission group, this is where you assign employees to the “commission groups” that have employee and commissions set to them.  First you set up the group, then assign employees and their share of commissions.
AR > Setup > Commission > Sales group

On question I get from clients is “Can I assign a sales person to a customer?”.  Well yes and no.  You can assign a Sales group to a customer (NOTE! This is actually the Sales Commission Group).  Since the sales group is tied to employees, then you are in effect tying employees to a customer.  If you need to tie one employee to a customer, then create a one employee team with 100% of the distribution.  It is important to note that both the Sales group and the Sales unit can both be designated on the sales order form.

AX 2009 includes SysImport functionality which can be used to import leads and contacts.  Using this usually requires some development in Microsoft Visual Studio, but Microsoft has made available the files necessary to get this going without development.  The files are available here: CRMImports.zip

Here’s the process:
1.    Basic >Setup > Import > Documents

• In Documents form:  Name, CRMContacts; Description, CRM Contacts Document Class; Document Class, AxdSysImportContactPersons.
• Click “Validate”, close Documents Form

2.    Basic > Setup > Import > Transformations

• In Transformations form: Name, XmlToContacts; Document Class, CRMContacts;
• Click “Load”
• Select file “SysImport.ContactPersons.xsl
• Click “Validate”
• General Tab, verify that type of transformation is “XSLT”

3.    Basic > Setup >Import > Formats

• In Formats form:  Name, XmlFormat; Description, Process Xml Files; Extensions, *.xml; Document Class, CRMContacts; Active (checked)
• Save, then click “Transformations”
• On the Format transformations form:  Transformation:  XmlToContacts, close the form
• On the Formats form, click “Validate”
• The Import form will appear; select the file “Contacts.xml”; click OK

Now you can start and complete the import process.  CRM >Periodic > Import > Leads