Table of Contents

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Reference Documents

Definitions

An Opportunity is any potential business able to generate sales revenues with existing customers or prospects.
All the GBUs are following a common opportunity management process, which means that, from now, all the GBUs are creating new opportunities through a single layout, managing the opportunities by following the same rules and the same process.

The opportunities can be qualified/categorized into 3 types:

• Growth - Business Development (no innovation)  – to be used whenever the product is known to, approved by and possibly being used by the customer. Typically used for market penetration.
• Growth - Product, Process or Application Innovation – to be used whenever product testing (laboratory and/or industrial) and approval is needed before closing the deal. Typically used in innovation projects.
• Replacement (new terminology for Cannibalization)) - we don't expect significant growth in sales.

There's a checkbox called "R&I support needed" which is automatically checked if the opportunity type is "Growth - Product, Process or Application Innovation".

For the "Replacement" type, check this box if you believe your opportunity will require the support of the R&I team.

Record indirect opportunities

There are two optional fields in the opportunity layout (lookup fields to accounts) that allow tracking indirect opportunities:

• Specifier / TIER1 - The Specifier or Tier 1 proposes materials to the end-user to get specifications
• End-User / OEM - Please indicate from this list the end user for the application. If the information on the OEM is not available, please indicate the opportunity's account.

Two concrete examples of indirect opportunities:

1 -  The Key Account Manager of L'Oreal sells a product through a distributor (Brenntag) that ends up at L'Oreal1

• Account = Brenntag (the buyer)
• OEM2 / End-User = L'Oreal (the company that manufactures the end product going to the customer)

2 - The Key Account Manager of Bosch creates an opportunity for Bosch that ends up at VW but the buyer is not Bosch but someone called X. 

• Account = X (the buyer)
• OEM2 / End-User = VW (the company that manufactures the end product going to the customer)
• TIER 1/Specifier = Bosch (the company that proposes products to end-user/OEM to get specifications)

Use cases

• Recording all business-related information and make it visible (if it’s not in CRM it doesn’t exist).
• Involving people from your GBU and get collaboration (opportunity team) by leveraging expertise, and identifying a lead for other colleagues from other GBUs (cross-collaboration).
• Getting recognized for your achievements, for the closed deals and the steps you went through, the difficulties, the success factors, the reasons for lost deals, etc.
• Logging or discovering information on competitors.
• Enhancing your team’s opportunities insights – focus on the opportunities that matter the most.
• Optimizing opportunities pipeline workflow – standardize your sales process and keep your opportunities moving forward and see how time is spent throughout the process.
• Supporting pipeline management: giving visibility to all opportunities opened in SFDC and how can we move them efficiently to close the deals and how to use these cases to put in place for a similar customer.

What is an opportunity and what is not an opportunity?

Functional Process 

Business Goals

Opportunity management is a process that allows us to follow revenue forecasts and revenue recognition.

Why do we need to track forecasts?

• Visibility as to where we are in our Sales Process and how long we have been there.
• Documented insight as to what we can expect to close in the next five years or more and what are the chances of getting that business.

How do you track revenue recognition?
• Scorecards and reports that give you insights on the performance of your pipeline.

 Finally, Opportunity Management is a common and simple Sales Process, allowing sales reps & managers:

• To understand what’s in their pipeline
• To understand where are the sales reps getting stuck in their opportunities and identify improvement areas in your sales process or business context. 

On July 20th 2021, a new opportunity management process was delivered in production to pursue the following goals:

• define one common way of defining opportunities across all GBUs
• define one common process to record and maintain opportunities in both CRMs (CORE and iCARe)
• define one common approach that creates transparency on opportunities and provides a harmonized view on the group's growth ambitions

Why do we need an opportunity pipeline supported by a well-rounded common process for all GBUs?

• To grow and ensure we are allocating the appropriate level of resources (e.g.: capex, people, R&I) to the right customers
• To facilitate the discussions on opportunities between commercial managers and their teams (the CRM should be the only source for opportunities management)
• To facilitate the implementation of the new Sales Incentive Plan (SIP), which features the growth of the opportunity pipeline as KPI

Product Rules

During the opportunity management process, there are certain rules to add products, depending on the GBU and the next desired opportunity stage.

The products visible in opportunity list are level 4 or 5, but depending on the stage, there are rules to block the sales manager to proceed and he must update the products to level 5 products.

Below is an example of the error message that could appear when the rules below are violated.

Rules for Silica and Special Chem

Rules for the Other GBUs

Novecare, Aroma Performance, Technology Solutions, Oil & Gas (they kept neutral following the decision of Aroma, TS and Novecare), Peroxides, Soda Ash and Coatis & Fibras

Sample Products Visibility in Opportunities ( , )

About Sample products, there are also rules implemented to display or hide sample products from Opportunities. Depending on the GBU, the system identifies the products with keyword "sample" in the product description. For Silica and Special Chem, the sample products should be available in opportunities. For the other GBUs, they are removed from the product search..

The system behavior for each possible scenario is summarized in the table below:

The technical solution to hide or display the sample products in the Opportunities relies on the pricebook entries.

If the sample product belongs to Special Chem or Silica, the pricebook entries exist linked to the product.

If the sample product belongs to other GBU, the pricebook entry is not active.

When a sample product becomes a non-sample product (meaning, the keyword sample is removed from product name), the system will create or re-activate the pricebook entries.

The logic to manage the pricebook entries in the batch class SLV_BatchInsertPriceBookEntry

Process Flow

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Use Cases

Data Model

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3. Opportunity custom buttons & features

Opportunity buttons

"Add Products"  button

This button triggers the same flow as during opportunity creation. It allows to add a new opportunity product in the same opportunity.

"Clone" button

The cloning functionality  allows the opportunity owner and the opportunity team member(s) to clone the opportunity as-it-is, with same product information and opportunity team members. Note that the source opportunity ID is displayed in the field "cloned from".

"Postpone 6 months" button

• Automatic add 6 months to the Close Date and Targeted First Delivery Date
• Automatic increase the forecast years (when we add 6 months, they can remain in the same year or skip to the next year)
  When clicking on this new button, there should be a message asking the user to confirm their choice, with a Continue or Cancel button.
• Fields concerned by the 6-month shift:
  • In Details tab - Close Date +Targeted First Delivery Date
  • In Forecasts tab - Update “Year” field if Targeted First Delivery Date shifts to the next year

"Qualification" button

The opportunity qualification refers to the discovery of the product that fits the customer need, get to know the priority, industry and fill-in the details about market share, opportunity type, the budget and potentially the project related.

In this step, there are no rules restricting the products that could be added. Active products level 4 and 5 are accepted.

The qualification involves two stages, "Lab testing in progress (10%)" and "Lab test approved and Industrial testing in progress (40%)" with the corresponding probabilities, that indicates the evolution of the opportunity.

If the opportunity enters in the testing phase, it cannot be moved forward without finishing this phase.

It's always possible to move back to the "Opportunity identification (0%)" stage, and then move forward to the desired next stage.

"Negotiation" button

The opportunity Negotiation includes the decision-making with the customer about the price and clarifications about our proposal/solution for his needs.

The qualification involves two stages, "Negotiation - low proba (60%)" and "Negotiation - high proba (80%)", with the corresponding probabilities.

It's possible to move back from these two stages to the initial stage "Opportunity identification (0%)" and is not possible to move to any of the testing stages.

In this step, there are rules that block the sales manager on proceeding to the last stages:

• For Silica and Special Chem GBUs

• • When an Opportunity is changed to a stage with probability 80% or less, product level 4 or 5 is acceptable

  • When an Opportunity is changed to a stage with probability equals to 100%, only level 5 products are acceptable

• For other GBUs, including all Syensqo GBUs

• • When an Opportunity is changed to a stage with probability 40% or less, product level 4 or 5 is acceptable

    • Level 5 product is not needed when the stage is 0%, 10% or 40%

  • When an Opportunity is changed to a stage with probability above 40% (meaning 60% or higher), only level 5 products are acceptable

• For all the GBUs
  • when an opportunity is moved to one of the stages "Closed - Abandoned (0%)" or "Closed - Lost (0%)",  the system doesn't check if the products are level 4 or 5 and the opportunity could be saved and closed.

When the opportunity stage is moved to Negotiation - low proba (60%)"" or higher, the error below is shown to the sales manager because there is, at least, one product that is not level 5:

"Closure" button

The opportunity Closure is the final step and the options to close an opportunity are:

• "Closed - Abandoned (0%)" or "Closed - Lost (0%)"
• "Closed - Won (100%)" or "Closed - Move to Distribution (100%)"

The system is not checking the products when the opportunity is moved to"Closed - Abandoned (0%)" or "Closed - Lost (0%)".

The system checks for all the GBUs, if all the products are level 5, when the opportunity is closed as "Closed - Won (100%)" or "Closed - Move to Distribution (100%)". If there is any product that is not level 5, the system triggers the message below:

Opportunity Realized Sales

Realized Sales refers to the invoiced amounts for goods shipped to the customer for the won opportunity.

Reminder: criteria to close-won an opportunity: 1st commercial sales took place and we are truly expecting to realize the sales that have been forecasted.

The update cycle of the Realized Sales for closed projects is 2 years (for the year of closure CY and the next one CY+1). They're added manually and they're not a mandatory field.

The "Growth" businesses must update the Realized Sales of closed projects on a quarterly basis. The target is to enter the data in the CRM 10 working days after closure.

Realized Sales creation and tracking

• Realized Sales are placed under Forecast & Realized Sales tab, in a specific component named "Realized Sales (Only for closed opportunities)". This component enables Opp owners to enter the sales effectively done during the time frame specified before in the Forecast.
• Forecasts are entered per year but Realized Sales are entered per quarter.
• In the picklist field from the top right, users can select one of the current or past years, to then enter the sales per quarter for that year. Users cannot select a future year.
• It is possible to enter Realized Sales information for Closed Won opportunities only, however, the Realized Sales records are automatically created at the same time as the Product Forecasts (in the background), basing itself on the information specified in the forecast.
• They become visible and editable only once the opportunity is closed won. This means that before an Opportunity is closed, the forecast and realized sales numbers should be exactly the same (in reports for example)