Keeping managers and senior positions in the C4C loop!

In most CRM implementation projects the demand for data, reports and other analytic functionalities by top-level managers and senior positions is great. These top-level managers want to see the daily, weekly or monthly statuses of their marketing, sales or service operations in the blink of an eye. However to retrieve this information themselves is too much work, time is limited for them or they don’t want / have the ability to access the system to get the insight they want. A common experience, independently of the type of CRM-project, is that the organization’s top-level management slowly but certainly become less and less involved and therefore they also lose track in the use and acceptance of the product.

Stay tuned about your operations

The broadcast functionality in SAP C4C enables customers to send specific reports or certain dashboards on a regular interval to the desired people within their organization. An ideal solution where without human interference managers and senior positions can be updated about the organization’s operations.

It is easy to think of a lot of dashboards or reports that top level managers or product owners want to receive on a frequent basis. Think of all the lead, opportunity and pipeline reports over a certain period of time. Let alone all the complaint handling reports based on solution time, successful closing rate and ticket categorizations.

Monitor C4C Usage

Another common heard dashboard is not specially meant for top-level managers but is a requirement that we hear a lot in our projects. After the Go-Live users will start using and adapting C4C, but the most standard reports in C4C will not provide full insight in who is using the system the most, which workcenters are used and more… while this is always a question of the project manager or the product owner! Therefore a C4C admin dashboard will be very useful in each project! Some of the reports that can be put on this dashboard are:

• Top 10 most active users / Top 10 less active users
• Screen adaption workcenters (which workcenters are used the most)
• Screen adaption views (which vies are used the most)
• Screen usage trend year by date
• Activities being created per week
• Time spent in the system
• Response time by day / week
• Users with locked passwords
• Last logon date of users
• Unassociated e-mails in the system

Example of Admin Dashboard received via Broadcasting

Of course Acorel can easily define and create this reports which allows them to be distributed periodically to specific users to keep them updated on the C4C usage.

Let’s dive into the technique

The prerequisite for using the broadcast functionality is that the report or dashboard you want to share is defined and ready to be broadcasted.
1. Navigate to Business Analytics workcenter in HTML5 (also possible in Silverlight) and open the Broadcast facet. This facet shows all the broadcasts that are created before, so existing ones can also be edited.
2. Click here on the “New” button to create a new broadcast.

3. Hereafter you need to select if you want to broadcast a report or a dashboard by choosing the “Object Type”. At the object name you can search and selected the wished report or broadcast. Also provide a name for the broadcast.
4. Fill in the details at the channel section by providing a subject and the message the recipients get when they receive the broadcast.

5. One of the most crucial steps is the step where you define the recipients. By clicking on add e-mail addresses can be added to the recipient list.
6. Define the correct format and content for the broadcast. For dashboards there are 2 options for sending the broadcast; as a URL link or as HTML. For reports there are multiple options listed as visible below. When sending reports via the broadcasting functionality it is important to select the correct view and selection of the report. The broadcasts can also be send as a zip-file.

7. The last step before saving the broadcast is to define the scheduling.
Select “Periodically” if you want to execute the broadcast periodically based on a certain frequency, start/end-date and day of the week. The “No Schedule” option can be used when reports or dashboards need to be send only once.

8. The button Save and close will lead you back to the broadcast overview screen where the newly created broadcast will be visible. When selecting the broadcast all kind of details will be shown.
Nice to know is that by clicking the button “Start Now” the dashboard can be send immediately, what is quite handy for testing purposes. By clicking on “View Logs” all details of the execution of the broadcast will appear.

9. The selected recipients will receive an e-mail with the broadcast dashboard or report in the selected format. This dashboard can be opened without having to access Cloud for Customer which enables top-level managers to have a quick look at their weekly operations at sales, service or marketing areas.

In the example above the attachment can be unzipped where after the dashboard can be opened directly from their laptop or mobile device. When hoovering on the charts and graphs more information becomes visible regarding that graph, as visible on the broadcast dashboard regarding opportunities below.

Example of Opportunities Dashboard received via Broadcasting

As conclusion regarding broadcasting it is safe to state that this is a perfect way of keeping managers posted and updated about their operations the C4C usage or any kind of report that is desired by them. The automated process of broadcasting removes the barrier of retrieving information, because top-level managers no longer need to get and retrieve this information themselves by logging into C4C but will find their dashboards and reports on a periodically bases in their e-mail!