Partner Networks Blog - Joint Opportunity Management

• Spring 09 spotlight: Sharing Opportunity Products with Connections

  Adi Kuruganti Feb 27, 2009

  

  As you are probably aware, Salesforce to Salesforce now supports sharing Product Catalog and Opportunity Products with connections. Additionally, customers can automate this process using the API feature and share the same product with multiple connections (e.g. reseller and distributor) using the 1:Many feature. Sharing opportunity products is a little more involved compared to other objects. Below is a checklist that you should be aware of to successfully share Products on opportunities:

  1) Parent Opportunity must be shared with the connections
  2) Product Catalog must be shared with the connections (use the Products list view feature on the Products tab to select Products Catalogs to share)
  3) Product Catalog must be active and also be in the price book of the target opportunity
  4) Source's Opportunity currency and target's Opportunity currency should match and the product in the target's opportunity price list must also have the currency available and active
  5) If the target product has schedules then Quantity and Sales Price are only inserted but never updated
  6) Opportunity Product can be shared when sharing the opportunity or using the 'Manage Connections' link on the Sent Connection Name column on the Products related list on the Opportunity

  If you have any questions, reach out to product management at: s2s@salesforce.com

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• Dreamforce '08 sessions around Salesforce to Salesforce

  Adi Kuruganti Nov 19, 2008

  Customers who attended Dreamforce '08 heard about some of the great momentum around Salesforce to Salesforce. You heard George Hu at the Applications keynote on Nov 4^th mention that we've seen a 350% increase in the number of companies using the service and records shared in just the last three months. Based on feedback from customers we've also made the product available free of charge to ALL customers (including Group Edition) with the Winter ’09 release. So all customers can send and accept invitations and share data with other companies using Salesforce CRM at no charge.

  Some of you might have attended the sessions in the Channel track. If you did you learnt first-hand from customers who are using the product to drive greater lead conversion rates. You learnt how salesforce is using the product to run joint marketing campaigns with its partners and how global Networks are forming between vendors and partners with the ultimate goal of collaborating real-time on the force.com platform. One session that received rave reviews was around Joint Selling - how Secure Computing and Fishnet Security are driving higher levels of collaboration and closing deals faster since they've started using Salesforce to Salesforce. This was a great session for any customer looking to run a pilot with their top partners. Take a listen and as always if you need any help from the product management team to kick-start a pilot, don’t hesitate to contact us (s2s@salesforce.com)

  Sessions of interest:

  -       Joint Selling with Partners using Salesforce CRM

  -       Best Practices in Lead Distribution

  -       Bringing Web 2.0 to the Channel

  -       How to Build your own Salesforce CRM Partner Network

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• New in Summer 08 - Account, Contact and Activity Sharing

  Amy Regan Morehouse Jun 16, 2008

  Share Data and Processes for Sales and Customer Collaboration with Companies Using Salesforce

   

  :: Instantly connect with other companies (business partners, suppliers, and customers) via Salesforce

  :: Easily opt in and out of cross-company data sharing

  :: Share leads, opportunities, accounts, contacts, activities or any custom object

  
  

   

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  You may be wondering: How can you securely and easily share data with another company that is also using Salesforce? Or, how can you coordinate with other companies you do business with on revenue and customer-sensitive business processes? It’s all possible with Salesforce to Salesforce in Summer ’08. Salesforce to Salesforce is a powerful service that enables companies to efficiently connect and exchange data with their partners within the Salesforce application. Salesforce to Salesforce provides secure, customizable, and efficient data sharing through point-and-click connections. Integrating and collaborating with your extended partner network has never been easier.

   

   
  

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• Closed loop lead management webinar and best practices launched

  Elay Cohen Aug 5, 2007

  Did you know that only 18% of vendors are satisfied with how leads are provisioned and only 14% are satisfied with how leads are followed up..." (Rod Baptie, CEO, Baptie & Co - channelfocus).

  Have you ever wondered what works and what doesn't work in closed loop lead management? Have you ever wondered what to do and what not to do? Well, we've looked across a set of successful customers and come up with a methodology that converts best practices in actionable strategies.

  Learn how you can apply this methodology using Salesforce PRM. Here is a link to the pre-recorded webinar and the powerpoint presentation.

  http://www.salesforce.com/form/event/prm_lead_dist_webinar.jsp?d=70130000000DEHr

  Download Channel_Leads_Processes_Best_Practices.ppt

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• Opportunity products feature released

  Will Moxley Apr 17, 2007

  The PRM development team released a new feature on April 12th.  Partner users can now add and edit opportunity product line items from the partner portal.  This capability improves the accuracy of opportunity data and increases collaboration with your partners.

  The feature is disabled by default.  To enable it:

  1. Go to the portal administration view (Setup > App Setup > Exchange > Installed App > CLICK CONFIGURE LINK ON PRM PACKAGE)
  2. Drill into the appropriate portal
  3. Edit the Opportunities Tab
  4. Click the checkbox labeled "Make Opportunity Products Editable".
  5. Save your changes

  Please refer to the online help for more information on how to leverage this exciting new feature.

  

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• Copying contact data onto an opportunity

  Will Moxley Feb 12, 2007

  Andrew O'Driscoll at Apprivo came up with a great new approach to copying the contact details from a lead onto an opportunity when the lead is converted by a channel manager.  This approach does not require any additional steps.  I recommend you take a look, it's a great alternative to the approach we previously posted.

  http://apprivo.typepad.com/apprivo_blog/2007/01/update_opportun.html

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• Mapping street field on lead to opportunity during lead conversion

  Adi Kuruganti Feb 2, 2007

  We've received a number of questions regarding mapping of the standard lead address field, specifically Street, to custom opportunity fields during the automatic lead conversion process triggered by partners from the portal. Currently the portal, via portal setup, supports the mapping of Standard Lead fields to custom opportunity fields. Customers often use this feature to reflect contact information on an opportunity that is then worked by the partner. The main reason for this is that Contacts are currently not visible in the portal.

  However, while most of the standard lead fields are supported, the Street field (part of address), is not available as an option for mapping on the portal. The product management team is aware of this and is working to include this feature in subsequent releases. In the interim, below is the workaround that will allow customers to map the lead street field to a custom opportunity field and make this available to their partners.

  1) create a custom formula lead field (Setup->Customize->Leads->Fields->New Custom Field).

  2) Select Type as text

  3) Use simple formula and insert the Street field on the lead (using the insert merge field drop down with leads selected in the select field type drop down)

  4) Make this field available to the necessary profiles

  5) Do not put this field on the lead page layout - or atleast the page layout used by partner users. As long as the partner profile has read/write access to this field - that's all you want. No need for the partner to actually see this field on the lead (might confuse the partner user)

  6) Create a custom opportunity field of similar size as the custom formula text field

  7) In Setup->Customize->Leads->Fields->Map Fields  map the custom formula field you've created on the lead to the custom opportunity field created in step 6

  8) Make sure automatic lead conversion and the other standard lead fields to custom opportunity field mappings are enabled in portal setup.

  With the above, the mapping should work fine and partners should be able to see the lead address information on the opportunity. Good luck!

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