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 enables you to plan and manage customer accounts. Before you can use the account functionality, you must define a company or consumer business object.

Use PeopleSoft Strategic Account Planning if you need more robust functionality for account management. Strategic Account Planning enables you to plan and manage complex accounts for customers, sites, and partners.

Flattening Customer Hierarchies

When you sell products and services to several subsidiaries or locations of a company, you might establish a different sales account and sales team for each. In PeopleSoft Enterprise Customer Relationship Management (PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM), each object that represents an entity of a customer company can have its own account information. 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 searches on the My Accounts page. The data that you can view on the My Accounts page and on the Account page in the Company component is determined by the flattener process as well as account access profiles and data-distribution rules for roles.

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 and provide easy access.

Managing Accounts

This section discusses how to:

Access accounts. (An Account is not always a customer. An account could be company, consumer, site or Partner.
Assign representatives to accounts.
Create account plans.

Pages Used to Manage Accounts

Page Name	Object Name	Navigation	Usage
My Accounts	RD_ACCOUNTS	My Accounts	View a list of customer accounts, and select accounts to view in detail.
Company - Account Team Person (Individual Consumer) - Account Team	RD_ACCOUNT_TEAM	Select a customer on the My Accounts page.	Assign the account team for a customer.
Account Plan	RSP_PLANNING	My Accounts Select one or more accounts and click the Create Plans for Selected Accounts button. Access the Plans page in the Company, Site, Person (Individual Consumer), or Partner Company components. Click the Create Plan button.	Create an account plan.

See Also

Defining Company Business Objects

Accessing My Accounts Page

Access the My Accounts page.

Basic Filter and Advanced Filter

Click the Basic Filter link to access the account list alphabetically. When you click this link, an index appears on the page, and you can click a letter to jump to the accounts that begin at that index. The default basic index is alphabetic. You can change this at system setup time.

Click the Advanced Filter link to search for accounts using search criteria. When you click this link, the Filter and Show in Results page sections appear for you to specify search criteria. You have the option of naming and saving an advanced search.

The Basic Filter and Advanced Filter links act as toggles; that is, either the basic or advanced filter criteria are accessible, but not both at the same time.

Create Plans for Selected Accounts

Click this button to create plans for the accounts you selected from the account list. When creating plans for multiple account, The selected accounts must have same Role and SetID.

View Accounts

Select a saved search by which to filter the account list.

Show in Results

Select the following check boxes to specify the accounts that the system displays when you perform a search.

Note. The check boxes available in the Show in Results section depend 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 Team to an Account

Access the Account Team page for a company or consumer.

Click Add Team Members to manually add sales representatives to the account team or Auto Assign Team Members to have the system automatically assign the team members using predefined assignment criteria.

You must have one of these roles to maintain account teams:

Account Administrator
Account Manager
UPG_ALLPAGES

See Also

Configuring Assignment Criteria

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.

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.