Customer Concepts

One of the important elements in planning the customer database is organizing similar customers in groups for reporting purposes. Several boxes in the Customer database can be used for sorting reports and limiting on reports: Category 1/2/3/4 box, SIC box, TM2 box, Status box, Region box and Type box. See the following examples:

 

Grouping Types of Accounts to your Industry

Grouping Accounts by Sales Volume

Grouping Accounts by Location

Grouping Account by Charging Privileges

Active vs Non Active Accounts

Grouping Accounts That Have Budgets Set

Grouping Accounts That Have Multiple Shiptos or Multiple Departments

Grouping Accounts for Payment Terms

Grouping Accounts for Various Pricing Strategies

Grouping Accounts for Target Market

Analyzing Your Customers From a Marketing Standpoint

 

Outline on paper the groupings for your customer database. Then define which boxes to use for this purpose. Think of the various marketing strategies you have now and want to accomplish in the future. As mentioned earlier, the thought and effort put into planning the database now can pay dividends in the future.

 

There is not a set of parameters that you use to define some of these boxes. For example, if all your customers are charge accounts and you use the status code for grouping what kind of industry they are in, there is no parameter you can use to define what these mean. (Except for customer usage reports & monthly usage reports, defined by the status code in the (LA) parameters.) ECi recommends keeping a word processing file called Grouping the Customer Database and define what each code means. You can print this out when adding customers and then the word processing file is on your computer to bring up later.