Combined Sales Area Determination in C4C Sales Transactions

With 1605 (May 2016) release, Cloud for Customer has come up with a new functionality which allows defaulting of combined sales area in a sales transaction. The combined sales area represent combination of Sales Organization, Distribution Channel and Division. This functionality can be scoped in after selecting the respective scoping question available in Sales Order, Leads, Opportunity, Sales Quote and Activities sections. Below screenshot shows the scoping question as available under Sales Order section.

Once this option is scoped in your implementation project, the defaulting of the combined sales area in a sales transaction would happen as per the below sequence:

Combined Sales Area Determination Sequence

1. Intersection of Account Sales Data and Employee Sales Data
   1. Compare match of Sales Organization + Distribution Channel + Division
   2. Compare match of Sales Organization + Distribution Channel
   3. Compare match of Sales Organization
2. Employee Sales Data
3. Intersaction of Account Sales Data and Sales Organization of Employee Assignment
4. Account Sales Data
5. Sales Organization of Employee Assignment

The determination logic will stop at the sequence step in case it finds relevant data. In case it finds more than one entry at any sequence step, the system would pick one from the list.

When this new scoping is in place, the value help on Sales Organization in a sales transaction screen shows restricted values as per the above sequence. A sample screenshot shows the options available in this value help:

The user has options to filter the data shown in this value help. There is a possibility for the system administrator to adapt these queries. In case, the access to Acocunt’s sales data be restricted then the system admin can remove this query from this value help. Note, for flexibility purpose, C4C allows user to change the determined Distribution Channel and Division in a sales transaction screen. In case, change on these fields be restricted, the C4C admin can make these fields read-only.

Apart from determination of sales area, few other sales area dependent fields are also determined accordingly in a sales quote or sales order screens. These fields are Incoterms, Payment Terms, Curreny, Delivery Priority etc. A change in sales area will result in re-determination of the sales area dependent fields . In case, the account sales area does not values for these sales area dependent fields, then no data will initialzed for these field in sales quote and order screens.

Apart from this combined sales area determination, we also need to take a look at the sales unit determination. Combined sales area determination does not default the sales unit of a sales transaction. To default the sales unit on a sales transaction, we need to use Sales Unit determination as available in the maintain Involved Party configuration of that sales transaction. The involved party determination is a part of Cloud for Customer from past many releases.

The various possible steps for the sales unit determination are shown below:

The sales unit determination steps are:

1. Step 1 – Responsibility “Sales Unit of Sales”
2. Step 5 – Account’s Sales Data
3. Step 20 – Functional Organization Unit of Employee Responsible
4. Step 30 – Organizational Unit from Org Model if only one suitable Functional Unit exists

In case you want to use the new combined sales area determination then only the Step 20 of the above list would be sufficient for the sales unit determination.

Step 1 uses the feature that is offered in work center Administrator under General Settings. This is Work Distribution -> Organizational Work Distribution which includes business area Sales Unit for Sales.

Step 5 defaults the sales area from the account’s sales data. This determination step defaults the sales unit in arbitrary fashion if several sales area are maintained at account level. The sales unit determination follows the below sequence:

1. If a sales group is assigned in the account’s sales data then this determination step defaults the sales unit with the sales group.
2. If only a sales office is assigned to the account’s sales data then the sales unit is defaulted with the sales office.
3. If no sales office or sales group is maintained, the sales unit is equal to sales organization.

Step 20 defaults the sales unit from the organizational unit to which the employee responsible (owner) belongs, provided that organization unit has sales function. This step does not take into account the sales data maintained at the employee level.