want to add all 110,000 Address Book prospects to F0301 customer master

Eric Lehti

VIP Member
How quickly do you convert a JDE Address Book prospect to a Customer in F0301?
A sales manager here wants me to add 110,000 Address Book prospects (from F0101) to the F0301 customer master. I think this is a bad idea and will cause more problems than it will solve. I bet that 99% of these 110000 prospects will never become a customer, so why pre-populate the F0301 until we are ready to create a sales order in F4201/F4211?

The sales manager says that our sales team is slowed down if they have to wait for our Accts Receivable manager to add a new customer to the F0301 customer master.

Up till now we have not allowed our sales team to add a Customer Master. P4211 DREAM writer processing option 23 is set to N. Some do not want our sales team modify/adding records to F0301 or the Address Book.

A new customer (former prospect) would be added to F0301 with these attributes:
- A5TRAR field payment terms set to PREpay
- A5ACL field credit limit is set to $1.
BILLING INSTRUCTIONS:
- A5BADT field set to X (Bill To and Ship To)
- A5ASN field set to ASFTUL (because we are on Advanced pricing)
- a bunch of other fields in F0301 would have to be filled with the appropriate default values as our business rules allow.
Eric Lehti 918-879-6036
 
I am going to recommend that we allow our sales people to ADD a new customer (P4211 processing option 23 set to 1).

Do you allow your sales team to add customers to F0301?
Eric Lehti 918-879-6036
 
Does your sales team feel constrained if they have to wait until the Accounts Receivable department adds the JDE prospect to F0301 customer master?
Eric lehti 918-879-6036
 
You need to know that new versions of JD Edwards use the CRM module and
create the prospect in the customer master anyways. The important aspect
to consider is to have the credit limit set at 1$ so a sales order can be
created quickly but put immediatly on hold pending additional research
into the customer credit rating. As to your current process, I would lean
towards creating the record in the customer master immediatly.

Guy Robert
Syntax.Net
 
Eric, we add customers to the F0301 when we get a PO from the customer. Due to our distribution channels, that may also be the same time we create the customer in F0101. Before we add the customer to F0301 we do a credit check. We actually alert Accounting hourly as to whether there are new customers to create (I think we use a World Writer scheduled every hour). But I suspect our business process differs from yours. We need to get the order to a new customer in 5 days or less, with up to 3 days required for manufacturing. Seem that you, your sales manager and the others involved need to review your business process and identify the true efficiencies. I will agree that adding 10s of thousands of never to be customers makes no sense. We actually filter our leads, no one even gets into the address book as a prospect until they are ready to at least test our products, we use a CRM entry only for the leads.
 
It's best to limit the number of users who have access to create and update address book / customer master information. Once you lose control over this data, it's hard to reel it back in. I agree that it is better to review your process outside JD Edwards to see if there is a more efficient way of handling prospects that turn into customers.
 
Special thanks to Marc Gerritt, Laurie Smoot, and Guy Robert for your
suggestions, as your comments will help us make a good decision.

I recommend that I write an RPG program that a sales person could submit
to create/add one record to F0301 customer master, which would give the
new customer a $1 credit limit and set the customer to PREpay status.
The sales person could immediately create a sales order. The A/R
supervisor could later review new customer(s) credit limits as desired.



Here are notes from Oracle Tech support.



Question 1: Pros and Cons of Adding Customer Master for 110,000
Prospects? The sales manager would like to have Customer Master F0301
records created en masse for approximately 110,000 addressees that are
currently set up as prospects in the address book. The reason is that
the Credit Department takes too long, when one of these actually places
an order, to get the customer master in place so the order can be
processed. What are the pros and cons of doing this?



Answer 1: Credit limit control and file size vs. convenience and speed


Details: The arguments for having the customer master in place are
all about the immediacy of entering an order when a prospect calls and
wants to buy. Also, all the settings in the fields of the customer
master can pretty well be checked ahead of time. The arguments against
seem to outweigh the benefits, however. The credit department needs to
have control over establishing a customer account, doing a credit check,
etc. before orders are processed. Also, the addition of over 100,000
records to F0301 will no doubt have a negative impact on performance of
jobs processing this file. It is also a file maintenance issue, to
clear out the majority of those records after some period of time, since
the great majority of prospects will never become active customers.



Perhaps the best solution is to use P4211 processing option 23=3D1, to
allow adding a customer master on the fly. The only caveat is that the
credit limit field is not automatically populated, and if the business
practice is for this to be $1 (cash with order) until a credit check is
done, then there is no control here by the credit manager. If a version
of the called program to create the customer master were customized to
automatically populate credit limit with a 1, and protect the field,
then this problem is eliminated. Then the credit manager can, in good
time, establish a credit limit and also review the settings of other
fields in the customer master/customer billing instructions revisions
screens for accuracy.



Question 2: Do more recent JDE World releases automatically add a
customer master?

Details: Do new versions of JDEdwards World (with CRM) create a
customer master record immediately when an address book record is added?
Does that happen in World A9.1, or is that in Enterprise One?





Answer 2: Customer Master is not mandatory with Address Book add in
World

Details: In World release A9.1 when an address book record is
created, if the field Receivables=3DY then it will pop up the Customer
Master video to add that record. If not, the customer master won't
appear. A prospect can be put in the address book with both
Receivables=3DN and Payables=3DN, so there is neither vendor master nor
customer master built.



















Eric Lehti, Sr. programmer analyst
(918) 879-6036 direct; (918) 292-9142 mobile
Ameristar Fence Products
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