Hi everyone,

I got the following scenario: We are a consultancy, that is working
with companies which are partly sold to investors. For this, we engage
in projects were we advise our clients and after shaping the client's
strategy, we are talking to several investors whether they would like
to invest in this company or not. To do so, we profile our investors
and their investment managers on what they are looking for in
companies. The projects usually run for about 6 months and we track
general data such as investment size, activities and which investor we
have talked to when with what result.

Now, we would like to introduce CRM 4.0 to our company with the aim to
centralize project tracking and gather information about investors and
their investment managers. To do so, we would like to track general
project information as described above and see, what companies have
been offered to what investment funds and their managers. For the
project tracking part, I have been thinking about using the
opportunities function in CRM as we have different stages for the
projects (or should I use a new entity?). For the part of the
investors, I would like to introduce a new entity investors which is
connected to companys and contacts, so I only store investor
information in this entity. Then, I would like to create a new entity
investments, where I track the investments of investors (external ones
as well as our projects, which I would link again).

Do you think this is the right way or do you have any suggestions?
Should I use the opportunities or create a new entity projects?
Thanks

Hi Jannis,

For your scenario I would prefer to use following structure:

Investors = Accounts extended with all the neccesary informations as new
attributes, as there is no need to create a new entity

Projects = new custom entity, than you have later the possibility to use
opportunities the right way (e.g. as sales opportunities)

I don't understand the need of the entity "investment" as it seems to be
something like additional information which you can manage in the projects
entity, but if it's something different you may implement it as a second
custom entity

Everything other can be managed using the activity management functionality
of the MS CRM system.

HTH

Robert



"jannis.friedag@eventurecat.com" wrote:

On 25 Apr., 13:44, Robert Rybaric
<RobertRyba...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
Thanks for your suggestions. Well investments could also be companies
that the investors have invested in which have not been consulted by
our companies but by rivals. I would also like to separate our
accounts from investors as those are totally different customer groups
(any disadvantage?). I have modeled the following scenario now:

Account------Contact--------------Projects
I I
I I
I I
Investor-----------------------------Investments

Now after we have finished our project successfully, I want to
transfer them from project to investment. Is that going to be a
problem? If the project is not successful, I would like to move to to
an inactive status.

If the "investment" is also a kind of company, you can consider using the
account entity for investor and investment too and using some kind of
account-category and the business relations to map the different types of
companies and relationships among them.

You can also make the "project" entity your central depository for
information and create more then 1 relation of type 1:n to the account entity:
-Investors
-Investments
-Consultings
-Competitors
and the same using the contact entity:
-Investor contacts
-Investement contacts
etc.

Regards,

Robert


"jannis.friedag@eventurecat.com" wrote:

On 25 Apr., 15:03, Robert Rybaric
<RobertRyba...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
Hi Robert,
when I use project as a custom entity, can I automatically track my
activities there (emails, calls and faxes to contacts)? Is there
another limitation when using custom entities? What is the
disadvantage of my solution which seems plausible to me but I guess
you are more experienced than I am. I will just store all general data
(address data) in the account field and then associate special data
(project data in the project entity and investor data in the investor
entity) in each custom entity. thanks for your help

1. You get the full activity management support for every custom entity you
create at no cost

2. There is no limitation, custom entities are not of lower value then
system entities - they have of course no special features as some system
entities have

3. The CRM data model heavily depends on your needs so it's difficult to
give you more than a general advice. But it gives more sense to reuse the
system entities for similiar purposes, example: if an investor is a company,
it should be implemented using the account entity. The project is a special
entity having no direct counterpart in the standard MS CRM, so you should
consider creating a custom entity for it etc. It's really very similiar to
the database modeling - if you are familiar with it, you will see, that your
CRM data model is a kind of special database model.

Regards,

Robert


"jannis@friedag.com" wrote:

I agree with Robert - trying to reuse OOB entities unless you have a specific
business reason of not to do so. Also, it is better to 'save' opportunity for
something down the road and use a custom entity for project. I have created
project entity in an engagement and it works fine.

"Robert Rybaric" wrote: