When dealing with opportunities, status management is an important way to keep track of your deal progress. SAP Cloud for Customer (C4C) offers 2 approaches to handling statuses in opportunities - standard and custom status handling. This blog provides insights into both approaches.
C4C comes with a predefined status schema with fixed status values and transitions. The status values are the following:
These status values are pre-defined and cannot be changed or extended. The following status transitions are possible:
These status transitions are fixed as well and can only be performed via dedicated actions (e.g. "Set as In Process", "Set as Lost" etc.). Please note that the standard status field on the opportunity header cannot be directly edited.
In addition to the status a reason can be maintained as to why a certain status has been set, e.g. "Lost to Competition" for the lost status. These reasons can be maintained via finetuning option "Opportunities-Reasons" and assigned to the respective status via option "Opportunities-Assignment of Reasons". The system comes with various pre-configured reasons and a key user can maintain custom reasons starting with "Z*". As a best practice it is recommended to maintain reasons at least for lost and won opportunities in order to analyze success and failure of deal conversions.
Once an opportunity has been set to won or lost, the fields "Probability", "Weighted Value" and "Close Date" are updated accordingly.
Another option of handling oppy statuses is via a custom status scheme. This is the preferred method in case a customer wants to use tailored deal statuses and transitions. A custom status schema can be defined for a certain document type via finetuning option "Opportunities-Maintain Custom Status". If no custom status schema exists for the selected document type, the system will default to the standard status schema as described above. Each value within a custom status schema needs to start with "Z*" and should be assigned to a corresponding standard lifecycle status. Via this assignment the system derives possible status transitions, assigned reasons and field value updates as mentioned above.
After configuring these options the sales rep can visualize and adjust the custom status via a dedicated field “Custom Status”. Possible Status transitions are honored as this field only shows values which can be reached from the current custom status. It should be emphasized that status transitions are directly maintained within the field “Custom Status” as opposed to executing an action in the standard status handling option. Neither the standard actions for status transitions nor the standard status field on opportunity header are available for a document type with a configured custom status schema.
This summarizes the different options for opportunity status handling in C4C.
Standard Status Handling
C4C comes with a predefined status schema with fixed status values and transitions. The status values are the following:
- Open
- In Process
- Stopped
- Won
- Lost
These status values are pre-defined and cannot be changed or extended. The following status transitions are possible:
- Open -> In Process / Won / Lost
- In Process -> Open / Won / Lost / Stopped
- Won -> In Process
- Lost -> In Process
- Stopped -> In Process / Won / Lost
These status transitions are fixed as well and can only be performed via dedicated actions (e.g. "Set as In Process", "Set as Lost" etc.). Please note that the standard status field on the opportunity header cannot be directly edited.
Standard statuses and transitions in opportunities
In addition to the status a reason can be maintained as to why a certain status has been set, e.g. "Lost to Competition" for the lost status. These reasons can be maintained via finetuning option "Opportunities-Reasons" and assigned to the respective status via option "Opportunities-Assignment of Reasons". The system comes with various pre-configured reasons and a key user can maintain custom reasons starting with "Z*". As a best practice it is recommended to maintain reasons at least for lost and won opportunities in order to analyze success and failure of deal conversions.
Reason why a status has been set
Once an opportunity has been set to won or lost, the fields "Probability", "Weighted Value" and "Close Date" are updated accordingly.
Custom Status Handling
Another option of handling oppy statuses is via a custom status scheme. This is the preferred method in case a customer wants to use tailored deal statuses and transitions. A custom status schema can be defined for a certain document type via finetuning option "Opportunities-Maintain Custom Status". If no custom status schema exists for the selected document type, the system will default to the standard status schema as described above. Each value within a custom status schema needs to start with "Z*" and should be assigned to a corresponding standard lifecycle status. Via this assignment the system derives possible status transitions, assigned reasons and field value updates as mentioned above.
Custom status schema maintenance
After configuring these options the sales rep can visualize and adjust the custom status via a dedicated field “Custom Status”. Possible Status transitions are honored as this field only shows values which can be reached from the current custom status. It should be emphasized that status transitions are directly maintained within the field “Custom Status” as opposed to executing an action in the standard status handling option. Neither the standard actions for status transitions nor the standard status field on opportunity header are available for a document type with a configured custom status schema.
Custom status selection
This summarizes the different options for opportunity status handling in C4C.
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