WKS 8 - Customer Management

Workshop on 19 May 2025 to cover customer data management.

Participants

Name	Company	Role
Teemu Salonen	Valio	Pricing Analyst
Tomi Toivonen	Valio	Pricing Manager
Alain Becker	Pearson Ham Group	Operation Manager
Christiaan Van Eden	Pearson Ham Group	Consultant
Omar Bendada	Ben Consulting Services	Business Analyst
Sofia Simaria	Ben Consulting Services	Proxy Product Owner
Kaoutar Bennadi	Ben Consulting Services	Developer
Emmi Kaipia	Valio	Head of Business Development

This workshop is to define Customer data structure and business management in the light of an eventual delay of CRM Integration.

Topic

Document

Comment

Standard fields and workflow

CPQ tool demo

Live walkthrough of CPQ screens

Customer Master data

Team will start with Zilliant CPQ CRM and ensure all necessary sales information is captured in the system
Opportunity creation process involves naming, estimating volume, specifying currency, and automatic account linking
Opportunity lifecycle can be tracked through different stages like quote and order stages
Quote is central part of customer management process, linking to accounts and opportunities
Flexibility exists to link quotes directly to accounts or through opportunity hierarchy
Team needs to assess if current CRM structure meets specific customer management requirements
Clarify relationship between account, opportunity, and quote objects in customer management process
Customer level information can be asked at account level and used during sales rep quoting
New account fields will be blank initially and can be set up by sales rep managing the account
Account ownership might involve back office personnel, not just sales reps
Quotes can be linked to opportunities but linking is not mandatory
Sales team to focus on parent account ID, ignoring child accounts unless specifically needed
Sales personnel will have access limited to home account, activities, opportunities, quotes, and agreements

Sales team priority: minimize steps for creating customer proposals and quotes
Discuss minimal required customer information fields needed for quoting process
Payment terms configurable at customer level, with quote-specific modifications and minimal customer data requirements.
Consider including default account discount for customers applicable to all deals
Recommend manually maintained lookup table for payment terms based on customer type, industry, and business size
Sales reps to receive recommended payment terms based on TMA2 and deal size, with ability to change
Language options will include English and Finnish
System will be built in English with translation capabilities for Finnish
Payment types will include direct payment and PO-based options
Sales reps to select correct approver if margin is insufficient, avoiding complex approval rules
Customer creation will rely primarily on manual input, with limited synchronization from price manager
Opportunity management can involve multiple quotes for same deal with varied customer requirements
Opportunity not mandatory for quotes, but recommended to link both

Customers will be created automatically with key information from price manager
Customer master data currently at child level requires aggregation before integration with CPQ system.
Need to decide where data aggregation will occur - Zilliant or CPQ side.
Natalia (Zilliant) has created logic for data aggregation that team might be able to utilize.
Two potential approaches for handling multi-record data sources: pre-processing table or API-level logic.
CPQ flag column proposed for customer master, with data integration solution pending Zilliant team consultation.
Deadline to resolve data integration technical details: First sprint of build phase.

Valio team to draft opportunity and quote lifecycle processes, an discuss in upcoming workshop
BCS team to provide template for Valio team to fill list of values to be displayed in drop-down lists (English and Finnish versions)
Need a technical design decision on how to aggregate the unique parent rows from Customer Master - deadline during Sprint 1

Linking of Quotes to Opportunities is not mandatory (but recommended)
Keep Customer information as simple and lean as possible, only the necessary to enable an efficient quoting process

Customers/ Accounts automatically generated from Customer Master data coming from Price Manager, and aggregated at Parent customer level (where this aggregation is being done, still TBD). Key data fields:
Other standard fields will be manually maintained:
Default Payment Terms should be set at Account/Customer level based on TMA (customer category) and size of the deal. Payment terms can be changed later on at quote level
Payment Type
Currency - always EUR
Language - build in English and then use translation tables for Finnish
Owner - salesperson that owns the account, name comes from Customer Master table
Create objects Account > Opportunity > Quote
Linking of Quote to Opportunity is not mandatory; it can link directly to the Account.
Products of interest to the customer can be assigned at opportunity level