Capturing profile data

Access to competitor data

In the standard version, access to competitor data is not limited. All users have write access to the profile data. The competitor management can be accessed via the Sales/Con­tacts main menu.

Note: It is recommended to become familiar with capturing the various pieces of informa­tion before using the profile data tabs.

In forms and lists, data is generally captured manually. If not explicitly requested, no external contacts or marketing actions are assigned.

You can of course allocate CRM objects from the database, e.g. external contacts or marketing actions (publications, events), if those objects are maintained in the CRM. This makes bet­ter analyses possible (e.g., "Which of our suppliers also supplies competitors?"). The corresponding buttons for opening the selection dialogs are provided above the list.

  • An assigned contact automatically becomes a contact relation (Additional data) of the competitor, and receives a list-specific contact role.
  • In an allocated event or publication, the competitor is added to the Organizational contacts list and receives the Competitor project role.
  • In the allocation process, corresponding list boxes are automatically provided with object data. It is possible to subsequently overwrite this data in the competitor form, which does not automatically cause the object data to be changed as well.  
  • If required, you can access the record of the allocated objects via the hyperlink in the last field of a list.

A rule for group assignment

Only contacts that are definitely competitors for your product should be put into the Competitors group.

§ GDPR: You should not capture or categorize any persons as competitors, otherwise, according to the GDPR and data protection, you must always obtain the consent of the person and comply with the informa­tion obligation (Art. 13 or 14 GDPR). See GDPR-compliant registration of persons, Note on recording compet­itors.

If external contacts that are related to competitors are maintained in the CRM, the main group they receive is always one from the user view, e.g., Supplier or Press-PR-marketing. "Competitor" is always an additional group allocation in this case.

Document assignment in profile lists

In the profile lists (e.g., News), a document can be associated with every data record (e.g., the scan of a job ad). For this purpose, a button is provided above the list to open the document selection. The button is only active if a record is selected (marked).

After a document has been assigned, its icon and name are displayed in the list. The doc­ument can now be accessed directly via a hyperlink (icon) from the list in the linked application.

Documents assigned this way are automatically stored in the competitor's Documents tab. Here, they are given a document role whose name matches the profile category (see Documents in a competitor’s master data).

If the list record refers to an external contact or a marketing action, the document selection is auto­matically preset with the documents stored in the particular contact or marketing action.