Working with Customer Accounts

This chapter provides an overview of customer accounts and discusses how to:

Flatten customer hierarchies.
Manage customer accounts.

Understanding Customer Accounts

PeopleSoft Enterprise Sales has limited functionality that enables you to plan and manage accounts for your customers. Before you can use the account functionality, you must define a company business object.

See Defining Company Business Objects.

You should use PeopleSoft Strategic Account Planning if you need more robust functionality for account management. PeopleSoft Strategic Account Planning is a system that enables you to plan and manage complex accounts for your most important customers, sites, and partners.

Flattening Customer Hierarchies

When you sell products and services to different subsidiaries and different locations of the same company, you might establish a different sales account with different account team members and sales goals for each. In PeopleSoft Customer Relationship Management (PeopleSoft CRM), the each object that represents a different entity of a customer company can have its own account information related to it. The objects are related in a customer hierarchy that is often complex and time-consuming to navigate.

The Flatten Customer Hierarchy process (RB_CUST_FLAT) captures all of the parent and child customer relationships and consolidates the data in a table that is optimized for quick searching from the My Accounts page. The flattener process along with account access profiles and data distribution rules for roles control the data that you can see on the My Accounts page and on the Account page in the Company component.

Page Used to Flatten Customer Hierarchies

Page Name	Object Name	Navigation	Usage
Customer Access Update	RB_CUST_FLAT_RUN	Customers CRM, Flatten Customer Hierarchy	Run the Flatten Customer Hierarchy process to structure account data for ease of access.

Managing Customer Accounts

This section discusses how to:

Access customer accounts.
Assign company representatives to accounts.
Create account plans.

Pages Used to Manage Customer Accounts

Page Name	Object Name	Navigation	Usage
My Accounts	RD_ACCOUNTS	My Accounts	View a list of customer accounts and select an account to view in more detail.
Company - Account Team	RD_ACCOUNT_TEAM	My Accounts, select a company	Assign the account team for a company.

Accessing Customer Accounts

Access the My Accounts page.

Create Plan

Click this link to create a new plan.

View Account Plans

Click this link to view the existing plans.

Show in Results

Select the following check boxes to choose which accounts the system displays when you perform a search.

Note. The check boxes available in the Show in Results section depends on how you set the configurable search options.

See Configuring Search Pages.

Accounts as Plan Owner	Select to display accounts for which you are the plan owner.
Accounts as Manager	Select to display accounts for which you are the manager.
Accounts as an Owner	Select to display accounts for which you are the owner.
Accounts as Plan Team Member	Select to display accounts for which you are a member of the plan team.
Accounts as Team Member	Select to display accounts for which you are a team member.
Customers as Lead Team Member	Select to display customer accounts that are associated with a lead on which you are a team member.
Customers as Oppy Team Member (customers as opportunity team member)	Select to display customer accounts that are associated with an opportunity on which you are a team member.
Partners as Lead Team Member	Select to display partner accounts that are associated with a lead on which you are a team member.
Partners as Oppy Team Member (partners as opportunity team member)	Select to display partner accounts that are associated with an opportunity on which you are a team member.
Sites as Lead Team Member	Select to display site accounts that are associated with a lead on which you are a team member.
Sites as Oppy Team Member (sites as opportunity team member)	Select to display site accounts that are associated with an opportunity on which you are a team member.
Accounts as Temporary Assignee	Select to display accounts on which you are a temporary assignee.
View All Accounts	Select to display all accounts.

Assigning Account Representatives to a Company

Access the Company - Account Team page.

Click Add Team Members to add company representatives to the account team.

Creating Account Plans

Access the Account Plan page.

Plan Name

Enter a name for the plan.

Description

Enter a description for the plan.

Status

Select a status for the plan. Values are Active and Inactive.

Currency

Select a currency for the plan.

Start Date

Enter the start date for the plan.

End Date

Enter the end date for the plan.

Goal Name

Displays a goal name for the plan.

Target Value

Enter the expected value for the goal.

Attainment

Enter the actual value for the goal.

Create Plan	Click this link to create a new plan.
View Account Plans	Click this link to view the existing plans.

Plan Name	Enter a name for the plan.
Description	Enter a description for the plan.
Status	Select a status for the plan. Values are Active and Inactive.
Currency	Select a currency for the plan.
Start Date	Enter the start date for the plan.
End Date	Enter the end date for the plan.
Goal Name	Displays a goal name for the plan.
Target Value	Enter the expected value for the goal.
Attainment	Enter the actual value for the goal.