Opportunity Lifecycle in QAD CRM
The opportunity enters CRM as stage enquiry, and the opportunity passes through a series of qualifying stages such as quotation, moving through to an order and finally being invoiced. Obviously not every opportunity becomes an order, so at each opportunity stage change there is the option to advance to a stage that qualifies out the opportunity. These stages—such as lost or dead—reflect the requirements of the sales cycle within different industries and can be defined as required.
The standard or fixed stages for a QAD CRM opportunity are:
1 Enquiry: This is the starting point for any opportunity and is mandatory.
2 Quote: This stage corresponds to the QAD Enterprise Applications sales quote. It is only required if CRM will generate quotations or if sales quotes are used in QAD Enterprise Applications and visibility of those quotes is required in QAD CRM
3 Order: This stage corresponds to the QAD Enterprise Applications sales order. It is only required if CRM needs to create sales orders in Enterprise Applications or if visibility of sales orders created in QAD Enterprise Applications is required in QAD CRM.
4 Invoiced: This stage corresponds to an order in Enterprise Applications as invoiced. When the sales order corresponding to a CRM opportunity is fully invoiced in Enterprise Applications, the stage of the opportunity is set to Invoiced.
In addition to the fixed stages, QAD CRM enables CRM implementers to define their own stages using the Stage Lookup defined in the Lookup Values function (lookup number: 153).
By defining against each stage a list of possible next stages, a workflow can be built that enables the system to control the way an opportunity progresses through the system.
A good example of such a flow would be to ensure that the Quote stage cannot be selected when changing the stage of an opportunity from the current stage value of Order. In this case the stage lookup value Order would not list the Quote stage as a possible next stage.
The assumption underlying opportunities in QAD CRM is that they are not static and can change over time. The original enquiry and the final order may be different in products and quantities. CRM is designed to capture the details at every stage and to snapshot the details. So when an enquiry advances to a quote, even though the quote itself differs from the original enquiry, the history of the original enquiry is maintained. The stage is the unit at which this snapshot occurs.