Did you know there is CRM functionality in Business Central? It is called Relationship Management.
Business Central’s Relationship Management standard functionality includes Contact Management, Contact Segmentation, Profile Questionnaires, Opportunity Management, Task Management, Campaign Management, Marketing Segments, Outlook Insights, and Interaction Tracking.
With all this functionality, I am surprised more companies have not taken advantage of the functionality they have paid for. But today, we are only going to look at how Interaction Tracking and Marketing Segments can assist the Accounts Receivables collection efforts.
Many companies using Business Central simply focus on the Customer who owes them money.
Here we see a Customer Card with a Balance of $53,833.52 and a Balance Due of $51,793.67. The Balance represents the total of all outstanding invoices, and the Balance Due represents the total of all past due invoices.
Many companies record a comment on the Customer Card when they make collection calls to the Customer.
To do that, they click on the Customer button and the Comments option.
The problem with making collection comments on the Customer Card is other users, most notably the sales staff also make comments on the Customer Card.
Below is a sample of what I see on the Customer Comments. Buried between sales comments is the Collection comment.
Not only can other users add comments to the Customer Card, but if a user can add a comment, they can probably edit the comment and delete the comment.
How can you easily follow up on collections calls if you are only using Comments? There is a much better way.
Contacts
First, we must create Contacts for each Customer. While Customers represent the companies we sell to, Contacts are the individuals within each of those companies with whom we interact. Typically, our sales staff have people who place orders with us and people who receive the goods when those orders are shipped. Our Accounts Receivable Department needs a contact who is responsible for receiving our invoices and paying those invoices.
To see the Contacts for a Customer, click on the Home button and select the Contact option.
This will show you the list of Contacts for that Customer.
Now we can create Interactions with Meagan Bond, the Accounts Payable Manager, without impacting Interactions our Sales Staff have with their buyer.
Interactions
Interactions are all types of communications between your company and your contacts. When you create these interactions, they are logged for review and follow up.
Interactions are recorded on the Contact with whom the Interaction has transpired.
Below you see Collection Calls recorded on 3/7/2023 and 4/10/2023. You can also see there are comments associated with those Interactions.
But notice there is also a different type of Interaction that was recorded on 1/1/2022.
Interaction Templates
Before you use Interactions, you must create an Interaction Template that identifies what type of interaction you are creating. You can create an unlimited number of Interaction Templates. They can be used when purchase documents are emailed to vendors, they be used when sales documents are emailed to customers and they can be used to record meetings, phone calls and events.
Below is a sample of the Interaction Templates:
I highlighted the COLLECTION Template because that is what we want to use to differentiate Interactions recorded by our Accounts Receivable Department from Interactions recorded by our Marketing, Sales, and Purchasing Departments.
Evaluations
Not only can you record an Interaction, but you can evaluate that Interaction. And how does that help the collection process? Let’s look at the evaluations.
Returning to the Contact Card where the Interactions are recorded, I have used the Personalize tool to add the Evaluation field.
These Interactions were given a very negative evaluation.
By clicking on the Yes in the Comment column, we can view the Comment on the Interaction.
So now we have differentiated our Collection Call Interactions from all our other Interactions. But if we are recording Interactions for all our Collection Calls, how do we easily identify which Collection Calls need further attention?
Segments
While there is a lot more functionality in Segments, I am only going to focus on bringing in those Contacts associated with negative evaluations on Collection Call Interactions.
From the Segment Card, click the Add Contacts button.
This brings up the Add Contacts page.
Scrolling down to the Interaction Log Entry options you can filter the Interactions for the date range of interactions you want to focus on.
Then you can filter on “Very Negative” Evaluations and finally filter on COLLECTION Interaction Template Codes.
When you click the OK button, the Segment Lines will only show those Contacts whose Interactions need additional attention simplifying the follow up on Collection Calls.
While we had two very negative Interactions for Meagan during the date range selected, her Contact will only show up once on the Segment Lines avoiding unnecessary duplicate calls.
At the beginning of this post, I listed a lot of great CRM features within Business Central’s Relationship Management granule. This post only covers the tip of that huge iceberg.
If you do not know how to start your implementation of Relationship Management in Business Central or you just want to utilize more functionality with your Contacts, send me an email.
The post How CRM Functionality in Business Central Simplifies Accounts Receivable Collection Efforts appeared first on Dynamics Communities.