Many companies use a CRM tool like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics to keep track of opportunities and campaigns, and SAP to keep track of operational projects and business financial data. This cost estimating application forms a bridge between both SAP and your CRM application by linking each proposal to an opportunity in your CRM as well as to an operative project in SAP, when the proposal is won. SAP also provides data on existing contracts and both SAP and your CRM application can be used to provide information on pre-existing customers.

The following information is transmitted between CRM, iPE and SAP when it comes to opportunity/proposal/project data.

• Selecting a CRM opportunity in iPE pulls the opportunity, customer (prospect) and contact information from your CRM into iPE
• When the proposal has been fully priced out you can send the total proposal value back to your CRM to update the opportunity value
• When the proposal has been won (or is close enough to warrant resource planning in SAP or another resource planning application) you can send the project baseline to SAP
• The opportunity probability and won/lost indicators in the iPE ADVANCED tab are not interfaced with CRM because they are intended only to be used when you do not track opportunities in a separate CRM database (as a basic opportunity tracking mechanism)

Depending on your company policy, you should work with your implementation consultant to specify whether this type of proposal requires a CRM opportunity or not, and to connect iPE to your Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics application.

The image below shows the CLIENT tab of your proposal, where you maintain opportunity, customer and client contact information.

1. If this proposal is for an existing Salesforce or MS-Dynamics opportunity then select from the drop-down list which appears, typing in any part of the opportunity description or customer to narrow down the search
   • Selecting an opportunity automatically brings the company interested (item #5) below, giving you a popup to select if the Salesforce customer (or "account" in Salesforce) does not yet exist but there are several "closely matched" customers
   • The system will automatically create a new customer record with the Salesforce account information in it if required
   • Customer records are created from Salesforce not from SAP.  It is your responsibility to make customer names etc. consistent between Salesforce and SAP
2. If there is an SAP quotation or contract (change order) to reference click the appropriate option and select the SAP document number from the field which appears below these options
3. Select what kind of contract this is, typically based on what is in the RFP. You can edit the contract type by line item later on
4. If you selected a Salesforce opportunity the customer or "company interested in this proposal" will be automatically set, otherwise you need to select whether this is an existing client (e.g. change order proposal, second bid etc.) or a new prospect
   • If you select "new prospect" you need to enter the customer's name, address, phone and email in the popup
5. If you selected an existing then select or enter part of the name of the existing customer to narrow down the search. The customer currency will default based on the chosen customer if it has a currency
   • Select the customer's currency if you want to change it and click the Edit Exchange Rates link to manage exchange rates
   • The group or company currency, as used by your leading delivery organization in the SETUP tab, is also displayed
6. Select YES or NO to indicate if there is a small business requirement in the proposal documents. You can upload your small business administration (SBA) plan using the button
7. Select the contact at the customer or prospect who is responsible for this request for proposal, or click "add new contact" and fill out their details in the popup to create a contact for this proposal and customer
8. If other outside people are involved click YES and enter or select other people involved in the table which appears below. You can:
   • Create a new contact and assign it via the blue link button + popup, or
   • Input new contact information (name, job, phone, email) directly into the table, or
   • Assign an existing contact to this opportunity and customer
9. Select what type of contact this is or the role they are playing, for example in a sale you can divide contacts into sponsors, buyers, delivery team, supplier quality etc. Work with your system administrator and/or implementation consultant to customize the drop-down list of contact types
   • Workflow messages can be automatically routed to contact names (email) for a specific contact type, if required.