Catalina Technology: Extending Dynamics SL with Ecommerce, Web Services, and Mobile Applications

Sales Central™ is a web based application for sales order management, customer maintenance, and order status.

Streamlined interface puts complete management into a single screen — Sales Central™ provides sales and customer service professionals the ability to create sales orders, maintain and create customer information, and provide customer service such as order status and information, with direct and seamless integration into Microsoft® Dynamics SL® Supply Chain Management system.

It also allows your sales and customer service staff to search for customers based on multiple search criteria, look up product information through a simple yet robust search engine and inquire into the complete order history for any customer… all on a single web based screen!

This single screen architecture reduces order management overhead and increases efficiency. Sales Central™ can give your sales and customer service staff the ability to manage orders and customers from a single web based screen that is customized to your specific organization’s workflow and process.

Tight Dynamics SL® Integration — As you can see from the sample screen shown, Sales Central™ integrates with multiple areas of the Microsoft® Dynamics SL® Supply Chain Management system.

These areas include the customer database (with multiple shipping options), order and transaction database, event history logs, product catalogs, and payment information.

Having all of these areas available on a single screen will significantly increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your sales and customer service staff.

Additionally, remotely based sales and customer service professionals can use Sales Central™ to process orders, work with customer information, place and track orders simply by connecting via your VPN and using Microsoft Internet Explorer. Using Sales Central® remotely in this fashion does not affect any of the functionality provided by Sales Central™, the user experience will be exactly the same as a user that is connected locally.

Sales Central™ is built with and utilizes the latest Microsoft .NET framework and technologies, including:

1. Microsoft .NET Framework
2. ASP.NET
3. .NET XML Web Services
4. Microsoft SQL Server

Customize your Sales Central™ — Sales Central™ is highly customizable; we have created many instances of Sales Central® that have features and specifications which were designed to meet specific customer requirements. Some examples of such customizations include:

1. Custom product attributes: We have added "bolt-on" tables where a user can modify product attributes for a line item
2. Customized freight calculation: Use your own shipping and handling formulas in addition to the UPS calculation
3. Customized data lists for customer and product listings: We can give you the ability to customize the data that your sales and customer service staff see and have access to, allowing a much faster search and retrieve capability without having to page through extraneous data.
4. User definable fields: The fields seen by your staff are definable and customizable. Additionally, we can limit or add access to fields based on your criteria.
5. Limit dropdown list boxes to just what you need. The main purpose of Sales Central is to allow sales reps to create Sales Orders quickly. Much of the information in dropdown list boxes (Order types, ship via's, sales rep ID's, etc) may not be needed on the sales central screen. By limiting the listing to just what your sales people need, it gets them to the information quicker.

As you can see, Sales Central™ is highly customizable. We look forward to working with you to determine exactly what your requirements would be.

Quick Order Entry — In addition to the standard single screen order entry feature, Sales Central® offers the ability for users to execute a "Quick Order Entry" via a special screen. Many times, experienced sales and customer service professionals will know the inventory ID or part numbers of frequently ordered items, and will not need to go through the standard product look up process. In these cases, Sales Central™ allows a user to enter these items in a single "Quick Order Entry" form which will automatically add the items to the Sales Central® and Dynamics SL Sales Order when the items are saved. An example of this "Quick Order Entry" form is displayed.

Credit Card Verification — Sales Central™ also allows for a credit card number to be captured and verified at time of the order creation. The credit card number is then validated and stored at the Order Header level. If needed, there are customizations which will allow a business step to be added to Dynamics SL which will then release funds, from the card validation, as shipments are made on the order. Payments will then be created in Dynamics SL for that order.

Key Features and Benefits — Sales Central™ combines a streamlined workflow and interface without sacrificing on functionality. Below is a high level summary of the features and benefits of Sales Central™:

1. Active Directory Roles User permission is based on Microsoft Active Directory Roles. An administrator can set a user to have certain roles for: creating orders, adding new customers, modifying existing customers, and modifying existing sales orders. The system can also be configured to allow users to only access their customers. The default is that a user can perform tasks on all customers and orders.
2. Instant Customer Creation Your sales and customer service staff does not have to go through multiple Dynamics SL screens to create a customer while creating a new order. This is ideal for CSR's who capture sales via telemarketing methods.
3. Multiple Customer Search Criteria A sales rep can search for a customer by: Customer ID, Customer Name, Address, city, state, zip, country and phone number
4. Customer Status and Order History View customer status such as credit limits. Edit and maintain existing customer's contact information and shipping addresses for any customer. Search for Existing orders by order number or customer PO number.
5. Review Existing Orders and Order Status Complete Order status (including payments, shipments, etc..). Displays and access the Order header, line items, miscellaneous charges, notes, and other order header information. Access to any Dynamics SL shippers created against the order. View the Dynamics SL Event History Log (review of the order steps and history which have occurred against the order).
6. Create, Copy and Edit Sales Orders and Sales Quotes Users are able to create new sales orders on a single screen. If the customer requires any changes thereafter, these orders can then easily be edited by the user in the future. Additionally, a user can easily "copy" frequent orders or use this functionality to create sales quotes.
7. UPS Shipping Estimation and Status The UPS freight calculator is integrated into Sales Central. Sales Central will pass weight and dimension information, along with the ship to and ship from data, to UPS and then automatically enter the results in Premium Freight. Additionally, if a tracking number exists on a shipper, UPS Shipping status is automatically displayed next to the shipper information in Sales Central. The user doesn't have to pull up the UPS website to get shipping status. It is completely integrated with Sales Central.