I hope I can get some opinions about how other companies handle this.
I would like to explore ideas about how to consolidate communications from outside Epicor and reference it inside Epicor.
Example: we get communicated with via email, phone, fax, etc regarding orders. Inside the ERP, we create the Quote or sales order and go from there. We don’t really use the call logs as it’s kind of tedious for the volume of communication we do (although I know this is a natural place to start). If one rep is covering for another, they don’t have much to go off of with regard to previous communication and documents, etc.
How might we begin to consolidate all communications and documents related to an order from disparate sources with allowing flexibility in the way that information is referenced?
We use call logs and attachments, but we have customisations which allow both to be done from drag-and-drop, so call logs often simply replicate existing emails. If a particular email is relevant for more than one member of a team, they can drag it to Epicor and it gets replicated as a call log if it recognises the incoming or outgoing address as belonging to a contact.
It isn’t ideal because of the potential volume if people don’t use their judgement, but it’s been surprisingly robust so far.
We created a separate UD field on the Order Release table called “Internal Release Comments.” Then we added that field to an updateable dashboard that pretty much everyone has access to. Account managers document any phone communication with customers, and production supervisors can follow up with related comments regarding status, delays, press availability, etc. Any relevant emails get attached to the order as well (manually). The comments in our UD field can be viewed right from within the Order (we added a separate tab), and we have also added this field to multiple dashboards. This system has been working well for us.
