Create or use pre define Sales and User Entities

[Holguinmora2]

Hi to all!!!

I´m trying to create and up load price lists (no less than 5) + product structure (sku, product description, product family, brand, etc...) + sales team structure (sales person, sales manager, sales director, etc...)  to be able to create a purchase order app in Powerapps

Is it possible to create this business structure using the pre define entities? If so whis should I need to use? Or do I need to work with Dynamics 365 in order to create this structure?

Any help more than apreciate!!! Probably the question may seams very basic but I´m working with Powerapps in Spanish and the translation is not very clear or razonable...

[EricRegnier]

Hi @Holguinmora2,

It is definitely possible to create that structure in CDS with custom entities. However product catalogue and price list management does come out-of-the-box with the Dynamics 365 Sales, which is an app that installs on top of CDS. It will also come with other bells and whistles to manage your sales lifecycles. It could be a good option for you look further into this instead of reinventing the wheel?

More info about D365 Sales: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/sales-enterprise/overview#:~:text=Dynamics%20365%20Sale...

Hope this helps!

[jlindstrom]

I would do a comparison of your sales model with d365 for sales. I agree with @EricRegnier  that you should evaluate d365 sales--could you build that capability without it? yes, but d365 sales has thousands of users and rich processes around quotes, opportunities, sales forecasts, and sales teams that would take a lot of work to duplicate. On the other hand, you may not need the complexity and a more simple model may work, as @nickdoelman  said in his most recent post. https://readyxrm.blog/2020/06/05/you-likely-dont-need-dynamics-crm-you-need-a-power-app/

Just be careful that you don't paint yourself into a corner today if your needs will be changing and needing full product catalog, discount lists, opportunities, and forecasting in the future.

[Holguinmora2]

Thank you for your comments.

The Dynamics 365 with no doud is an excelent option but when you compare the price strategy from D365 vs salesforce / Replsy / InsituSales in Latin America makes hard to sell / buy the D365 License... 

If I will like to join or create a relation between 2 different entities: CLIENTS that has 1,000 clients and PRODUCT list that has 750 sku / codes and have the sales person as a comun field, what or how should I do it? 

Any ideas or comments more than apreciated!!!

Regards

[EricRegnier · Accepted solution]

Hi @Holguinmora2,

1. For clients, you can use the out-of-the-box entities Contacts for individual customers/clients, and/or if need be accounts for the organisations related to your individual clients.
2. For products, you can create a custom entity with your required fields such as SKUs.
3. For salepersons, are these CDS users that will be accessing the system or just a list of salespersons for reference purposes? If they are CDS users, they will be already in the system in the User entity (systemuser). You can add the additional fields to User entity to identify correctly salespersons (e.g. Role, Territory, etc). Otherwise if salesperson is just some kind of list, you can create a custom entity for it.
4. Once you've identified the entities to represent Product and Salesperson, it's just a matter of creating the right relationships between them. Products will probably be a many-to-many between clients and products since clients can purchase many products. Will you have some kind of Order entity to link between Product and Client?

For D365 licenses, suggest to get in touch with your local Microsoft representative for pricing. I'm sure they can come up with a competitive pricing.

Hope this helps...

[jlindstrom]

100% you should never recreate the account or contact entities. Here's why https://crmtipoftheday.com/1302/should-i-recreate-the-account-entity/