In this video, we introduce the Lead to Quote Process Flow and what its various parts are. This sets the user up to be able to understand the Order to Cash Process Flow which is one of the most important in NetSuite.
Welcome back. In the last video, we touched on the order to cash process flow. And that's the activity in which a company sell something to a customer and the customer pays the company for it.
But the precursor to the order to cash process is actually called lead to quote, and that's basically an activity where we're taking a potential customer over to the point where they've actually received a quote for purchasing either a product or service and are interested in buying that thing. So we're going to be going through that lead to, quote, activity in this video. So let's take a look at this.
Okay. So here we have a lead. And a lead is basically any individual or company who is a potential customer, just blanketly anyone who could be a customer at some point. Now, from lead, we go over to a prospect. And a prospect is any individual or company who has an active sales cycle. So something's been started with them. They're now an active sales cycle. We register them as a prospect and then they move on to being a customer, which is any individual or company who is bought goods or services from the company that is a customer.
Now, that last one customer, that's actually the beginning of the order to cash process flow. So you'll see that once we've reached the point where they purchased something, we're now into that order to cash process flow. So those are the entities related to lead to quote.
But let's take a look at the transaction side of things. So if we come down here, we have opportunity, which is a record of a potential deal or interaction. So, for example, if you create a lead, you can now create an opportunity record and associate it with that lead so you can store all the information about that lead. What you know about, you know, maybe how you want to sell to them or anything related to that sales transaction you associate to that lead. So these records will be connected.
Then you send the person a quote. So that is a document that outlines conditions of a proposed sale. Now, the point that you send them, the quote, that person actually becomes goes from being a lead to becoming a prospect. It immediately converts that record from lead to prospect. And from there, the quote goes on to a sales order, which is a record of a commitment to buy goods or services. So a customer has now committed that they want to buy some goods or services. And again, you'll see that once a sales order is made, it automatically takes a prospect and converts that record to being a customer. Because a customer is someone who has bought something from the organization.
So you'll see these three parallel with each other on both sides. The quote forces a prospect, the sales order forces a customer. And again, just like a customer is the beginning of the order to cash cycle. The sales order is also, as you'll see in the next video, sales order is the beginning of that order to cash cycle. So these things kind of run in tandem.
Now, what's a real life example of how this could work? So in this fictional example of the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company, let's say the company finds out that a nearby large office building is looking to get a different paper supplier. So we now have a lead. Okay, we know this other company. Let's say it's ABC Company. They're looking for a different paper supplier. So they are lead. We haven't had any interaction with them yet, but we know that it's a potential customer. So we can register that as a lead and we can put an opportunity record with all the information. You know why we think that they're looking for a new paper supplier, all that can go into the opportunity record.
Then we can have a sales rep, drop a quote and send it to ABC Company. So the quote goes to ABC Company. Maybe they take a look at it and decide, yes, this is exactly what we need. So they send a communication back saying, Good, we do want to buy it. Maybe they had a brochure and they fill it out and say, Great, this is exactly what we need in terms of paper. We at Dunder Mifflin receive that back and we can now drop a sales order. So we now have a sales order. And that prospect of ABC company now converts to being an actual customer. So that's that whole line of lead to quote in this example.
So that's it for lead to quote. In the next video, I'm going to be going over the order to cash process flow. So I'll see you there.
