Opportunity Classes: General Information

In MYOB Advanced, you can group opportunities into classes based on specific characteristics. The use of opportunity classes may help you quickly and effectively manage your sales processes, including conversion of leads to opportunities, estimation of probabilities of closing a deal, and preparation of financial reports.

This topic provides information about opportunity classes.

Learning Objectives

In this chapter, you will learn how to do the following:

• Create an opportunity class
• Use opportunity classes and attributes
• Select the opportunity class that the system will use by default for each new opportunity
• Define opportunity stages

Applicable Scenarios

You may want to learn how to create opportunity classes in scenarios where you need to give users the following abilities:

• Group opportunities that contain either products or services
• Group direct sales opportunities and partner sales opportunities
• Group standard opportunities and opportunities that contain special offers and discounts
• Group primary and renewal opportunities
• Estimate the probabilities of closing a deal by using opportunity stages

Opportunity Classes

In MYOB Advanced, you can group opportunities into classes and gather different sets of additional information about these opportunities. You create opportunity classes on the Opportunity Classes (CR209000) form.

An opportunity class is a grouping entity for opportunities that share at least one common characteristic. Opportunity classes are used for reporting purposes and for providing default values during data entry of individual opportunities. When a user creates an opportunity, the user can first select the applicable opportunity class, which causes the system to use the values of the class as default values for the opportunity. The system also loads any attributes—UI elements that you can configure, specifying their names, control types (check box, text box, or combo box), and possible values (for boxes with predefined options)—that you have defined for the class, so that the user can enter these values for the opportunity.

Opportunity classes also make the creation of opportunities faster and more accurate. When a user is creating an opportunity on the Opportunities (CR304000) form and selects an opportunity class in the Summary area (Class ID box), the system fills in the values specified for the class; these default values can be overridden.

For each opportunity class, you can define a set of attributes that allow users to specify additional information about opportunities within the class. An attribute is a characteristic or quality—such as industry, product characteristic, or type of partner commission—that is important to your company but is not already tracked on the Opportunities form. When a user selects an opportunity class for a new opportunity, the attributes of this class appear on the Attributes tab of the Opportunities form as additional elements for which the user selects the appropriate values. For more information about the use of attributes in MYOB Advanced, see Attributes.

On the General tab of the Customer Management Preferences (CR101000) form (Data Entry Settings section), you can specify the default opportunity class that the system will insert for each opportunity that you create in the system. Specifying this default class may be useful if a particular opportunity class is used far more than the others. If you select a default opportunity class, when a user creates an opportunity by using the Opportunities form, the system inserts this class into the Class ID box of the Summary area, and inserts the default settings associated with the opportunity class. If the user changes the default opportunity class, the system inserts the default settings specified for the newly selected class.

Opportunity Stages

An opportunity, when processed by a salesperson, progresses through various stages. At any particular stage, there is a certain probability that the deal can be successfully closed. By using probabilities and stages, sales teams can estimate future sales revenue in the system at any time. The accuracy of revenue estimation heavily depends on the correct identification of the opportunity stage and on the accuracy of the related probability.

You use the Stages tab of the Opportunity Classes (CR209000) form to define opportunity stages and their probabilities. The full list of opportunity stages is available for use in all opportunity classes. When you create a particular opportunity class, you select the Active check box for the opportunity stages that need to be included in this class and clear this check box for the opportunity stages that are not included for this class. If the check box is cleared for a stage that has been used in any opportunity of the class, this stage becomes excluded from the list of available stages for opportunities of the class (but it still will be shown in reports). For each opportunity class, at least one stage should be active.

The system offers the following predefined opportunity stages (any of these stages may be skipped as needed or new stages can be created, depending on the company's business processes that support sales):

• Prospect: The contact or business account associated with the opportunity is a known prospect, but it is not clear whether this prospect is interested in the offered products or services.
• Nurture: A salesperson is collecting information about the prospect or customer's interest in products and services; the salesperson may also be negotiating with the prospect or customer. This stage may be useful if your company decides not to use leads.
• Qualification: A salesperson is determining the prospect or customer's interest in purchasing particular products or services.
• Development: A salesperson is clarifying the prospect or customer's requirements for products or services, as well as the budget, delivery schedule, and project scope (if applicable).
• Solution: A salesperson is negotiating with the prospect or customer about the content of the solution (proposal) and the set of products or services that the prospect or customer wants to buy. The salesperson is creating product demonstrations or other evaluation tools, and the prospect or customer is evaluating the products or services.
• Proof: A salesperson has developed a solution (that is, a proposal), and the prospect or customer is evaluating the solution. The salesperson may select a primary sales quote at this stage.
• Negotiation: A salesperson and the prospect or customer are negotiating the prices, discounts, and terms of the proposed deal.
• Won: The prospect or customer has accepted the proposal and is ready to sign the contract or place an order (or has already done this). Some companies prefer to advance the opportunity to this stage only after the invoice has been issued, or even after a payment has been received.

To comply with the company's business processes that support sales, you can modify this list by adding new stages or by removing unnecessary ones, which will affect all existing opportunity classes. For each new stage, you should specify the identifier, name, probability percentage, and sort order.

If you add a new stage to one of the existing opportunity classes, then for the other opportunity classes, this stage will also appear on the Stages tab of the Opportunity Classes form with the Active check box cleared. If you want to delete a stage from the list of stages in an existing opportunity class, you should be sure that the Active check box is not selected for the stage in any of the opportunity classes. You can delete a stage only if it is inactive for all the existing opportunity classes.

Example of Opportunity Classes and Attributes

Consider the following example of the use of opportunity classes and attributes.

Suppose that you sell two products, one for resale by retailers and the other for direct corporate use. You handle many opportunities and would like to divide them into groups based on whether they are related to a retail store or to another type of corporation. You can create two classes for these opportunities:

• The Retail class, for opportunities associated with retail stores of various sizes: This class might contain an attribute called Size with the values Small, Midsize, and Big corresponding to the store size, as well as other attributes to give you additional information about these stores.
• The Corporate class, for opportunities associated with organizations that are final consumers: Because the organizations may be different types, you might define an attribute called Company Type and it might have such values as Hospital, University, School, and Other.

With these classes and their attributes configured in the system, when a user creates a new opportunity on the Opportunities (CR304000) form and selects an opportunity class in the Class ID box of the Summary area, the attributes of the class appear on the Attributes tab. The user can enter the needed attribute values for this opportunity.