Imagine that you have planned a visit to a customer. Before you go, you would like to know who else has been in touch recently with that customer. You can call up a customer fact sheet (CFS) and view the last 20 sales activities for the customer. Moreover, you can see the open opportunities and view relevant marketing attributes for the customer as you prepare for your visit.

CFS is a versatile tool that you can configure in mySAP CRM to provide a central point of summarized business partner data that is essential for the users while performing their tasks. Without it, you would need to open and execute several transactions in different systems to gather all the necessary information to perform an action in the CRM system. CFS is available with mySAP CRM 3.0 and above.

This tool saves you time while preventing errors because all the information is available in just one transaction. Links permit users to access detailed information for each document displayed in it, whether the information comes from mySAP CRM or from R/3 (Release 4.0 and later) and BW (Release 3.0 and later) integrated systems.

Authorization profiles display the R/3 and BW information in CFS. The authorizations depend on the kind of Remote Function Call (RFC) connection you assign to CFS. You can have a general user information RFC with more authorizations or an RFC that uses the user’s login and authorizations on the other system.

Groups of infoblocks compose a CFS view. Infoblocks are groups of a specific kind of information, such as credit information, marketing attributes, and sales documents. You can define different CFS views, depending on the information you need.

This configuration can significantly impact the system’s ability to load this data in the application. For example, if you request a large amount of information in the CFS, it can slow performance. You should maintain different CFS views, each with the necessary information for each kind of user. You may have to create several CFS views, but because each one has less information than if you created only one CFS view for everyone, the information in each one loads faster.

Business Partner Cockpit

CFS is a component of the business partner cockpit, an application where you list your favorite business partners. You could display the business partner information in a CFS view. At the same time, using configured buttons, you could perform functions for that business partner, such as maintaining business partner master data or creating business transactions with the business partner.

You access the business partner cockpit in mySAP CRM with transaction code CRMD_ORDER_BP (Figure 1). You could also access this tool from the business activity locator screen or from the business partner maintenance screen.

Figure 1

Standard CFS displayed in the Business Partner Cockpit

CFS Views and Infoblocks

Each view within the CFS configuration is composed of several kinds of information, known as infoblocks. Table 1 provides some examples of infoblocks. You can choose the infoblocks you want to display in a view and determine the sequence in which they appear (Figure 2). In the IMG, follow menu path Customer Relationship Management> Master Data>Business Partner - Cockpit and Fact Sheet>Define Info Blocks and Views.

Figure 2

Assign infoblocks to a CFS view

Figures 3 and 4 show the details of two different CRM infoblocks. Figure 3 represents a CRM infoblock that accesses R/3 information (R/3 CFS). Figure 4 represents a CRM infoblock that accesses BW information, where it is necessary to add information about the BW server and service, the BW query template ID, and the BW query field that represents the business partner.

Figure 3

100 represents the R/3 CFS view you customized in R/3

Figure 4

CRM infoblock settings using BW information

To show R/3 information in mySAP CRM, you need to create a CRM infoblock pointing to an R/3 CFS view, as shown in Figure 3. You define this in R/3 by following the IMG path Sales and Distribution>Sales Support (CAS)> Sales Summary>Define Reporting Views and Assign Information Blocks To A View. In R/3 transaction VC/2, you can display the configured R/3 CFS views.

You must fulfill certain conditions to display R/3 infoblocks in CRM. You must create the business partner in both systems and select a sales area that exists in both systems. If you are in the Interaction Center (IC), however, you may display R/3 information only if you have a business activity workspace with organizational data determination. Finally, the data must exist for the combination of business partner and sales organization.

To use BW infoblocks in CRM, you must enter a BW server, the respective BW query (in HTML format) you want to use, and other relevant fields such as the BW characteristic that holds the business partner number in the Parameter Name for Custs: field, as shown in Figure 4.

Besides using standard infoblocks, companies can create their own infoblocks with their specific business data using ABAP development. You can perform this development either in R/3 (and later called in mySAP CRM by an R/3 CFS view) or directly in mySAP CRM.

Performance Issues

Grouping the essential information by user roles is extremely important in terms of performance gains. Developing specialized CFS views improves the system’s efficiency when loading the information for the users because everything is grouped together.

For instance, if a service technician is going to perform a service in a customer-installed base, it would be useful for him to have information related to the last service orders created for that customer or its open service contracts. A telesales agent, however, would be more interested in the customer’s sales contracts, last sales orders status, backorders, and credit information. Likewise, a sales manager probably would prefer to have customer statistics or current campaigns assigned to the customer.

If you use infoblocks from different sources in the same CFS view, you can also realize performance gains if you place the infoblocks from each source system grouped together, one after the other. In the IMG, follow menu path Customer Relationship Management>Master Data>Business Partner - Cockpit and Fact Sheet>Define Info Blocks and Views. The It… (item) column (Figure 2) controls the sequence in which the system displays mySAP CRM CFS view infoblocks. For better performance, your sequence should gather infoblocks of same kind together. For instance, it should first gather the R/3 infoblocks, then the BW infoblocks, and, at the end, mySAP CRM infoblocks.

Standard CFS View by User Role

After you configure the CFS views in your system, you can define the standard CFS view that the system should display by user role and application. For example, you can display the CFS view in business activity maintenance, in business partner maintenance, or in IC. Thus, employees can see the information that is most important to the tasks they perform within the organization. You set the CFS view in the IMG activity Customer Relationship Management>Master Data>Business Partner - Cockpit and Fact Sheet>Assign Standard Views to the Roles (Figure 5).

Figure 5

Default CFS view assigned to a user role

Besides this configuration, you can personalize your CFS views by choosing the view that should always appear first when you call the CFS. You can also choose the views you want to have in your list of available views. You can set this personalization directly in the business partner cockpit or in the CFS display in IC.

Susana Messias

Susana Messias has an administration academic background and has been a CRM business consultant since 2002. She has participated in several CRM projects implementing interaction center solutions with sales, service, and marketing functionalities, and she is certified in these solutions.

You may contact the author at Susana.messias@gmail.com.

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