Quote to Cash (Q2C) is the most important business process covering the end to end process in sales lifecycle. Transportation of Q2C for digitalization is the best way to keep this lifecycle fast, real-time and accurate. When it comes to your sales cycle, speed is of the essence. Being able to act and respond quickly is a crucial part to closing deals faster. The important steps in digitalizing SaaS applications in to enable interactions between all departments and to have all the information about the customer available real-time.  Having a 360 Degree view of the Customer and their dealings with the company helps to sell Smarter, Faster and more Efficient.

The Q2C cycle includes involvement of people and processes from Marketing, Sales, Finance and Operations and in most cases Order Management and involves IT Applications like Salesforce (SFDC), Oracle EBS Finance, Oracle e-Business Suite (EBS) and Oracle EBS Order Management. Digitalizing the Information flow Real-time between these applications and people changes how business is done across all geography, domains, languages and devices.

In this article I am going to write about the integration of Q2C phases in an organization from Salesforce with Oracle EBS or SAP for that matter.

On a day to day basis all the people, processes and applications mentioned above are involved in any given business transaction.  This involves co-ordination between all the entities at the right time, in a particular sequence for the transaction to do what it is intended to do. This process is called as a ‘Workflow’ in salesforce. Today I am writing about the sequence of actions and transactions for one complete Q2C Cycle and its integration to the backend.

Picture: Flow between SF and EBS>

The first step in Q2C in Salesforce is ‘Lead’. When a marketing person identifies a lead of a potential customer a ‘Lead’ is entered into Salesforce. This will have the information like the Customer name, address, contact numbers, website, email id etc. The sales team picks this information and contacts the potential customer for a meeting to explain the product line and services.

When the Lead or the Potential Customer is interested in doing business the Lead is then converted in Salesforce. When converted it creates Accounts and Contacts. Accounts will have more detailed information of the account and Contacts will hold the details of the people in-charge or in-connect with that particular account.

The Accounts and Contacts created in Salesforce would flow into the Oracle EBS through API Calls or Web Services using SOAP, REST, or JASON.

There on every possible business transaction is created as Opportunity in Salesforce. This is again communicated and saved into EBS. These Opportunities help the Order Management Team to prepare Forecasts and be ready accordingly.

Once the Opportunity is created the Quote is calculated and generated in the EBS keeping the pre-set parameters (calculated by the Finance and Higher Management Team) into account. This Quote is then communicated into Salesforce and here it can be saved as a PDF and sent to the Customer. In most cases Salesforce would be configured to email the PDF Quotes to the Contact’s Email Id.

Once the Quote is negotiated and a final decision is arrived upon this opportunity becomes an Order. This Order is again communicated to the Oracle EBS so that the work on the Order begins and for Order Management.

Once the Order is fulfilled an Invoice is raised for the customer in the EBS and the same is communicated to Salesforce. Invoice information helps the Sales Personnel in transacting further with the customer with a clearer picture on the finance end.

Advantages of Digitalizing Q2C

With so many various channels available to access the interphase having Omni-channel experience becomes the basis of being real-time.

Being agile in sales tasks keeps the company in the market with a leading edge.

Digitalizing Q2C helps the process to transform and drive helps place the business on revenue and growth basis.

Well, that is the most basic and fundamental data flow between Salesforce and Oracle e-Business suite. This flow has a lot more phases and steps varying from company to company depending on the requirement and existing processes.