1. Functional Process

Process Overview

The workstream Competitive Insight is part of ‘Sales Strategy’.  A Competitive Insight summarizes the market intelligence gathered from business interactions with the accounts. It helps building the business context in order to better define value propositions to the market.

The purpose of the workstream Competitive Insight inside the CRM is to improve the process by allowing all stakeholders to enter and review data inside a single tool. This avoids multiple Excel files shared across teams.

Sub processes

• Competitive intelligence non customer related: the aim of the this process is to collect the maximum of information on competitors, competitors products hierarchies, and their capacities.
• Competitive intelligence customer related: the aim is to collect market competitors information for a combination Customer/Product.

2. Detailed Process: Competitive intelligence non customer related

2.1 Data Model & security

Salesforce object model

All objects are custom objects:

• Competitor

This object is dedicated to build a competitors hierarchy as we have for accounts. The hierarchy has two levels: parent competitor/competitor site (as we have corporate group/account). Each type has its own record type. The competitors are shared among GBUs, as we do for accounts.

• Competitor Product

This object is dedicated to build a competitor product hierarchy as we have for Solvay product. The hierarchy will have 4 levels:

• 1. Competitor Product Level 1: GBU
  2. Competitor Product Level 2: Solvay product level 2
  3. Competitor Product Level 3: Solvay product level 3
  4. Competitor Product Level 4: Solvay product level 4 or Competitor product (depending on GBUs)

Competitor Products levels 1 to 3 are not linked to competitors. Competitor Products level 4 are linked to a parent competitor. 

• Capacity

This object makes the link between a competitor site and a competitor product to store competitive information on Marketable capacity, capacity variation, etc.

Data Model

Competitor Visibility and Rights

Competitor Product Visibility and Rights

Capacity Visibility and Rights

2.3. Specific rules & automation

Validation Process 

Competitor and competitor product creation can be done by any user. De-duplication rules are set on the name and on the city, and will notify the users in case of any duplicates found but do not block the competitor creation. 

Once the competitor/competitor product is created, it is sent for approval to the Data Steward of the GBU:

A picklist “Status” is available on the Competitor page in order to define the status of the Competitor. Following values are available:

• Requested for approval
• Approved
• Rejected

Once validated, the record is locked, and only GBU data steward or system admin can update.

Competitor Email trigger

Saving a new Competitor record after creation triggers a validation workflow and a request email sent to the GBU Data Steward (Queue defined based on the field “GBU”). The email will contain the following text, and will be sent in the formal Solvay template:

3. Detailed Process: Competitive intelligence customer related 

3.1 Data Model & security

Salesforce object model

Note: Competitive Insight Header is the same object as Commercial Roadmap Header

We will have 2 different objects for Competitive Insight: one Header which stores all common data (for example product and ship to information, Potential), one Detail which stores all detailed data per competitors

Competitive Insight header, this object will store these main data:

• Competitive Insight Year
• Ship to account
• Sold to account
• Product
• Sales Previous year data
• Total Potential volume of the customer
• UOM
• Ship to KA
  
  

Competitive Insight detail, one line by competitor/product:

• Competitor
• Competitor product
• Estimated Volume
• Estimated Price
• UOM
• Comments
• Created date (workshop)
• Source of information (workshop) mandatory field
• Currency

Competitive Insight Header & Detail Visibility and Rights

A sales representative can see and edit only his own combinations (customer/product) corresponding to his sales and his own combinations corresponding to his opportunities (he is the owner). The Commercial Insight data is GBU restricted.

3.1 Bottom-up exercise on the fly 

Some GBUs collect competitive insights during a bottom-up review. All sales managers have to complete an Excel sheet, comparing the Solvay Sales with the competitor sales at customer/product level. Competitive insight object allow to perform this in the CRM:

• Recurrent Business:

1) Headers corresponding to recurrent business are generated using the sales of the previous year, with an extraction of Analytics. Each combination Ship To / Product will correspond to one header.

2) For each Header the Total Potential (total volume of the product witch could be sold to the customer)  can be filled.

3) For each Header, the user can create one or more line of competitive insight detail.

• Growth Business:

1) At the opportunity creation, a header is generated with the combination Sold To / Product. There is no information on Sales because it's a growth business. If the opportunity product is updated, the header will also be updated. 

2) The total potential can  be set as for recurrent business.

3) For each Header, the user can create one or more line of competitive insight detail.

On the fly process

The user goes directly to competitive insight tab. There is a filter section to filter competitive insights headers. In edit mode, the user can add or remove competitive insight detail lines, using the dedicated buttons.

Note: Recurrent business headers are displayed in green while growth business are displayed in blue. 

From a Visit Report 

When the user is creating or editing a visit report, he can easily go to his competitive insight by clicking on the button Update Competitive Insight. This will open a new window displaying all competitive insights pre-filtered on the account of the visit report, and with the user as owner.

Note: Recurrent business headers are displayed in green while growth business are displayed in blue. 

From an Opportunity Product

When the user is creating or editing an opportunity product, he can easily go to his competitive insight by clicking on the button Update Competitive Insight. This will open a new window displaying all competitive insights pre-filtered on the combination account of the opportunity / opportunity product, and with the user as owner.

Note: Recurrent business headers are displayed in green while growth business are displayed in blue. 

From an Quote Line Item

When the user is creating or editing a quote line item, he can easily go to his competitive insights by clicking on the button Update Competitive Insight. This will open a new window displaying all competitive insights pre-filtered on the combination account of the quote/ quote line tiem, and with the user as owner.

Note: Recurrent business headers are displayed in green while growth business are displayed in blue. 

4. History

Previously we had an object Competitive Insight designed to store competitive data with mainly text field. We will kill this object as soon as the existing data will be transferred to the new object.

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