Overview of quote management

Quote management involves the management of quotes that are associated with a sales opportunity.

Quote management uses the Quote Fulfillment pipeline in Process Modeling to send a quote through its various stages, such as creation, approval, presentation, acceptance or rejection, and order placement, and track the quote's lifecycle. The lifecycle of quotes associated with an opportunity begins with the creation of one or more quotes by a Field Sales Representative, and ends when either an order is created from one of the associated quotes, or the quotes are abandoned.

A Field Sales Representative can create and present one or more associated quotes to a customer for a single sales opportunity. However, the customer can accept only one quote for that opportunity, thereby abandoning all the other associated quotes. When a quote is accepted by a customer, the quote can be converted into an order any time prior to the quote's expiration date. Subsequently, the quote is moved to the Ordered status, the opportunity is moved to the Won status, and all the remaining associated quotes are abandoned. If the quotes expire, or the customer does not want to negotiate on any of the quotes associated with an opportunity, the quotes are moved to the Abandoned status, and the Field Sales Representative manually moves the opportunity to the Lost status. Quotes are purged when they are moved to either the Ordered status or the Abandoned status in the Quote Fulfillment pipeline.

Note: A sales order associated with a quote can be purged only if the quote associated with the sales order has already been purged.

A Field Sales Representative can add notes to a quote throughout the quote's lifecycle, and associate a note reason for each note added, such as Customer Inquiry, Competitor Price, and Customer Satisfaction.

Note: The codes for the note reasons are configured in the Applications Manager.
Note: Quotes support file attachments, such as doc files and rtf files. For example, a legal document or payment specification that is relevant to a quote can be stored with the quote. The file attachment functionality allows a Field Sales Representative to attach files to quotes, access files attached to quotes, and print files.

A quote flows through the following process:

  1. A Field Sales Representative creates a quote either as a result of a sales opportunity or at the direct request of a customer. If a sales opportunity already exists, the Field Sales Representative creates one or more quotes related to that opportunity. If a customer initiates the creation of a quote, the Field Sales Representative creates an opportunity for that quote, and may also create additional, alternative quotes.
  2. Using the Customer Rating details and Discount Advisor, the Field Sales Representative arrives at an appropriate price for each of the product lines in a quote.
  3. If a customer requests a special feature or function for an item in a quote, the request must be evaluated and worked on by engineering before the quote is submitted for approval.
    Note: Handling of special requests is achieved through the customization of the Quote Fulfillment pipeline.
  4. A quote may require one or more approvals before being presented to the customer. For example, if a Field Sales Representative offers a discount that exceeds the amount the Field Sales Representative is allowed to offer, a supervisor may be required to approve the quote. In a more complex scenario, multiple people and multiple departments may have to approve the quote.

    An approval transaction determines whether the quote has to be submitted for approvals, and if yes, the people who have to approve the quote. If approvals are required, the quote is put on hold, and the appropriate approvers are notified that the quote is waiting for their approval. All the approvers must approve the quote before the quote can be presented to the customer. If approvals are not required, the quote is automatically moved to the Approved status.

  5. The Field Sales Representative presents the quote to the customer after all the items in the quote have been validated using the validateItemForOrdering API.
  6. The customer can either accept or reject the quote.
    • If the customer accepts the quote, an order is created from the quote, either automatically or by the Field Sales Representative. The quote is moved to the Ordered status, all the associated quotes are moved to the Abandoned status, and the opportunity is moved to the Won status.
    • If the customer rejects the quote, the Field Sales Representative may rework the quote and present the reworked quote to the customer, or the quote may expire. When the customer does not want to negotiate on the quote anymore, the customer may request an abandonment of the quote. In such a case, the quote is moved to the Abandoned status in the Quote Fulfillment pipeline.
      Note: If a customer accepts a quote and then requests changes to the quote, the quote must be reworked, and is moved back to the Created status in the Quote Fulfillment pipeline.
  7. The order purge agent purges the quotes that are in the Ordered status and the Abandoned status. A quote is in the Abandoned status under any of the following conditions:
    • The Field Sales Representative decides that the quote is no longer negotiable, and moves the quote to the Abandoned status.
    • An order is created for an associated quote in the sales opportunity.
    • The quote has expired and has been moved to the Abandoned status.

      The opportunity purge agent purges the corresponding opportunity after all the quotes associated with the opportunity have been purged.

After an order is created from a quote, the order gets fulfilled through the Order Fulfillment pipeline.