Opportunity Management - SAP CRM

Lesson Overview

This lesson describes the key Opportunity Management functions of SAP CRM.

Lesson Objectives

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

• Describe the key Opportunity Management functions of SAP CRM

Business Example

Opportunity Management

An opportunity is a recognized possibility for a company, for example, to sell products or services. The opportunity allows you to view sales projects from the very start and track their progress.

An opportunity goes through a sales cycle that is divided into various phases. In each phase, different activities are carried out. The sales process ends with a sales order, contract, or rejection.

With the Opportunity Management functions of SAP CRM, sales employees can easily:

• Plan sales strategies
• Assign and manage critical tasks and activities
• Identify key decision makers, influencers, and relationships
• Monitor competitors
• Promote team selling and sales coaching
• Predict revenue
• Create opportunity hierarchies to link related sales opportunities and projects
• Manage complex sales projects more effectively by seamlessly integrating project and resource management capabilities

Opportunity Management - Sales Methodology

Key elements and functions of sales methodology in SAP CRM include:

• A sales assistant feature, which companies can use to guide sales employees through a structured sales process. This function also supports sales employees in planning their sales activities. With the help of the sales assistant feature, companies can manage and monitor all sales opportunity activities and provide sales representatives with recommended activities and tasks to complete during each phase of the sales process.
• A buying center, where users can enter information on people involved in customers decision-making processes, including endorsers, decision makers, users, assessors, and coaches.
• An opportunity assessment tool, which provides sale representatives with checklists with which they can qualify projects and determine the probability of closing sales.
• An opportunity plan, which provides a complete view into the current status and details of an opportunity.

Pipeline Performance Management

Pipeline Performance Management (PPM) is an interactive application to plan quotas and manage pipeline activity and presents opportunity data in context with pipeline analytics to easily identify gaps and critical opportunities.

Pipeline Performance Management helps sales managers and sales representatives to:

• Analyze their sales pipeline
• Identify gaps and critical opportunities
• Identify and monitor opportunity changes in the pipeline
• Simulate what-if scenarios
• Immediately trigger the right actions to resolve issues and to meet their targets

Pipeline Performance Management provides a great user experience by merging analytics and actions in one application. Four different chart types are offered: Target To Date View, Sales Pipeline View, Closing Date View and Sales Pipeline Change View. For Pipeline Performance Management SAP Business Intelligence (SAP BI) is not required.