In the area of product and pricing policy, questions such as "Which products do I want to sell?", "For which target group are my products intended?", "At what price do I want to sell my products to which target group?", "Which packages do I want to offer?", "Which offers do I want to offer my customers?", "What currency should my prices be in?" and many other questions need to be clarified. As soon as a product and pricing strategy has been defined on the basis of such questions and a product range with corresponding prices has been agreed, this information can be archived in the form of documents with Microsoft Dynamics Price Management. With "sales literature", product and price lists, brochures, marketing campaigns and many other documents can be uploaded and published, providing the sales and marketing team with useful materials with which they can inform customers about new products or prices, for example. Go to Sales à Sales Literature and click on "new" to work with Microsoft Dynamics CRM to create and edit a new document. The "Sales literature" form contains information on the document type, title and author. The "Sales literature" entity can contain several "Sales attachments", i.e. an article can contain brochures, product information and product presentations, for example. Competitors and products can also be added. For example, within the "Sales literature" form, the user can see which competitors offer similar products or which products with which prices are part of a catalog.
Create with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Product catalogues, which contain product, price and offer lists, as well as "unit groups". The latter defines in which units of measure products can be purchased. Furthermore, different currencies can be managed within the product catalogue. This is particularly important for internationally oriented companies. Follow these six steps to create a product catalog:
- Create a discount list (optional).
- Define units of measurement or quantities in which your products are available.
- Create products and assign them to packages and product families.
- Use price lists and price elements to define the price calculation of your products.
- Assign a price list and a price list element to each product.
- Define standard price lists for your products.
Product and price lists can be used to create offers, take orders and issue invoices. This is an extremely useful function, as the information needed to create the documents is taken from the price and product lists, saving employees the tedious task of typing in this data. This works in Microsoft Dynamics as follows: If an opportunity arises to sell products, you can create a so-called "opportunity". Price and product lists can be attached to the "opportunity" form, as well as information on the demand (quantity of products). Simply scroll down to the "Poduct Line Items" area to define products and prices, as well as product quantities. When creating a quotation, order form or invoice based on the "Opportunity", all information contained in the "Opportunity" form, including product and pricing information, will be applied. The prerequisite for this is that the "Opportunity" entity has gone through the validation process and the process in it has ended, that the potential customer wants to receive a quotation or place an order. In this case, the "Opportunity" entity would be marked as "won". Then you have the possibility to convert the "Opportunity" entity to a quotation, an order form or an invoice. The "opportunity" form also contains information about the turnover that could be generated if the customer purchases products or services. When the "system calculated" function is activated, the turnover is automatically calculated based on the attached product and price lists, as well as quantity specifications. You can activate this function within the opportunity form under "Product Line Items".
If you want to add products that have not yet been included in the product catalog or other costs, such as travel expenses, you can do this with "write in products". This function allows the user to add products or costs manually. "Write in products" can be added to the "Opportunity" (sales opportunity). Click on "+" in the "Product Line Items" area. In summary, Microsoft Dynamics CRM allows you to publish and manage important documents on prices and products in a central location, so that sales and marketing staff always have up-to-date product and price information and can use it when creating quotations and invoices, as well as when estimating potential sales. However, product and price management is only one of the many application areas of the CRM system. If you would like to find out more about Microsoft Dynamics click here or browse through our blog.
