Deal management in a customer relationship management environment

Abstract

The present invention provides a method, system and computer-readable storage medium storing instructions for facilitating consistent application of price polices on every sales transaction supported through a customer relationship management system, in order to identify price exceptions in violation of stated corporate pricing objectives. Having such capabilities coupled with a customer relationship management system enables embodiments of the present invention to reduce the time to identify and evaluate price exceptions that impact revenue and margin. Agents responsible for sales interaction with customers can immediately identify violations of price policies. Those responsible for authorizing exceptions can easily determine the effect of those exceptions upon impacted markets.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application claims the benefit under 35 U.S.C. §119 (e) of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61 / 456,462 filed Feb. 27, 2009, entitled “Deal Management in a Customer Relationship Management Environment,” and naming Tarak Ishwarbhai Patel, Arun Abichandani, William Thomas Turchin, Deepak Hazarika, David Andrew Fraser, Paul Lars Helgeson, Anamitra Debnath, Neha Dubey, Kalyanpur Satish Baliga, Arvind Dangeti, Stanley Edward Quinn, Laurel Ann Turner, Rachel Alexander Scales, and David Wayne Trice as inventors. The above-referenced application is hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety as if completely and fully set forth herein.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The present invention relates to deal management in a customer relationship management environment, and, more particularly, providing decision support tools integrated into a deal negotiation process to aid in achievement of profit and revenue objectives.BACKGROUND OF THE ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0006]The present invention facilitates consistent application of price polices on every sales transaction supported through a customer relationship management system, in order to identify price exceptions in violation of stated corporate pricing objectives. Having such capabilities coupled with a customer relationship management system enables embodiments of the present invention to reduce the time to identify and evaluate price exceptions that impact revenue and margin. Agents responsible for sales interaction with customers can immediately identify violations of price policies. Those responsible for authorizing exceptions can easily determine the effect of those exceptions upon impacted markets.

Problems solved by technology

But there is a limit to the effectiveness of cost cutting initiatives to improve corporate revenues.

Typical deal management solutions are not integrated and therefore fail to provide real-time feedback at the quote stage.

Instead, such typical systems require separate data stores and involve asynchronous updating of those separate data stores, along with additional management overhead such as security and database management.

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