Capture Customer Enquiries and Turn Them into Sales

In order to accelerate your sales, all of customers enquiries must be captured into the system. This includes inventory items that you can fulfill with your current inventory; upcoming inventory; or even inventory items that are not available in your system. These information are valuable and must be reviewed by Sales Manager to make sure that customers orders are completely fulfilled - turning the enquiries into sales.

The followings demonstrate how a front-end Sales uses EnterpriseSystem to capture customer enquiry.

1. Customer Enquiry Screen

A Sales person will have the Customer Enquiry screen in front of her most of the time. This is to anticipate customers calls, and information can be quickly recorded into the system.

The Customer Enquiry screen is the first step to process the customer orders. When customer confirms the order, the Sales person must submit the orders for processing. The Customer Enquiry View is also provided by the system to list all of the customers enquiry. EnterpriseSystem will determine the information presented in the view based on the login credential. If a Sales Manage logs into the system, the system will display all of the customer enquiry based on the front-end Sales persons. If a Sales person logs into the system, system only shows the customer enquiry recorded by the login Sales person. He / she will not be able to see other Sales person Customer Enquiry.

2. Search Inventory Screen

When the Sales person picks-up a phone, customer information is recorded into the Customer Enquiry form. Customer usually enquire certain inventory items and the Sales person will try to fulfill the enquiry. This is accomplished via the Inventory screen. The Sales person may open the Inventory screen simply by pressing the F8 Key.

The Search Inventory screen is designed to search for the inventory item quickly. Part numbers will be listed in a drop-down list, and the Sales person may select the part number by typing the first character in the drop-down list. Similarly, with the Code and Type, selecting a code will allow the result list to locate the inventory item.

3. View Item Screen

If the inventory item requested by the customer is not sufficient (i.e., quantity not enough) in the inventory list, the Sales person may perform another lookup. By pressing the F10 key, the system will gather all of the information related to the inventory item in a View Item screen.

The View Item screen lists the following related information:

• Inventory Booking. The inventory item may be booked by another sales person. Another sales person has allocated certain quantity of the inventory items to sell to another customer. However, the transaction is not closed yet. The user seeing this, may request to the Sales Manager to release the booking.
• Shipping. The inventory items are coming and is currently shipped to the warehouse. The estimated arrival date is indicated by the system, and user may inform the customers that certain inventory items are coming on certain dates.
• Contract. Some inventory items have been ordered / will be ordered from the suppliers. This information is also visible to the user and the user will make a note to the manager that the items must be ordered to fulfill the customer needs.
• Substitution. In some cases, certain inventory items may be substituted. The system has the capability to record the items requested by the customer, and instead of giving the requested inventory, an alternative is sold. This information is regarded as "substitution", and is displayed by the system.
• Related Items. The system is also capable of finding items bought by customers and the other products, that are considered "related".

4. Capturing "Item Not Available"

At the end, if the customers enquiry can´t be fulfilled by all of the above, the sales person closes the View Item screen to return to the Search Inventory screen. At the bottom of the Search Inventory screen, the Sales person may enter the items requested by the customer that can´t be fulfilled by the current and future inventory.

The Search Inventory screen not only allows you to search for an inventory item, but it is a screen to capture items that can´t be fulfilled by the current inventory based on the customer enquiry. The above shows how a Sales person enter the items into the "Items Not Available" section of the screen.

5. Saves Customer Enquiry

Once all of the customer enquiry has been fulfilled (either by the current, future, or even the "Item not Available"), the Sales person may click the "Select Item(s)" button located in the toolbar to transfer the information into the Customer Enquiry screen.

When the inventory items have been transferred into the Customer Enquiry screen, the Sales person saves the information for future references. The Sales person may choose to follow up on the customer´s enquiry (as indicated by the "Need Follow-up?" selection). This allows the system to display a list of customers to follow up on the Sales person screen.