Create or edit a competitor

Can I do this task?

Tracking competitors Companies or organizations that might compete for sales opportunities with your business unit. Competitor records can be linked to opportunity, product, and sales literature records so that they are available when you are competing for a sale. and their strengths and weaknesses can help you win sales.

1. In the Navigation Pane, click Sales, and then click Competitors.
2. In the Records group, click New, or open the record that you want to edit.
3. In the General section, enter or edit information or observe any noted restrictions or requirements as needed:
   • Name

     Type a name between 1 and 100 characters. You can use accent marks, in a customer's name or elsewhere, without affecting your ability to sort and find information.

   • Ticker Symbol

     If you enter a ticker symbol An identification code used to identify a publicly traded corporation on a particular stock market. for a market outside the United States, you must prefix it with the country code, for example US:MSFT (country code:ticker symbol). This information is available only for markets that are currently listed on the MSN Money Web site. In addition to the United States (US), MSN Money also provides information for markets in Australia (AU), Belgium (BE), Canada (CA), France (FR), Germany (DE), Italy (IT), Japan (JP), Netherlands (NL), Spain (ES), Sweden (SE), and the United Kingdom (UK). For more information, go to the MSN Money Web site.

   • Key Product

     Enter the competitor's product that you most frequently compete with for sales.

   • Web Site

     Web site addresses must be valid. For example, http://www.adventure-works.com.

   • Reported Revenue

     You must enter numbers between 0.00 and 1,000,000,000.00.

     You can use commas and a decimal point. You cannot use a currency symbol, such as the dollar ($), euro (€), or yen (¥).

   • Address

     Enter all the address information that you have for this competitor. Note this restriction:

     ZIP/Postal Code

     Enter 20 characters or fewer.

4. In the Analysis section, enter everything that you know about the competitor.
5. In the Notes section, click Add a new note, and add the information that applies to your record.
6. Click Save or Save and Close.

   Resolve potential duplicate records.

   When you publish a duplicate-detection rule A rule that specifies criteria for identifying a record as a duplicate., a matchcode A code that is created for every record that a duplicate-detection rule might apply to, used as part of the process of detecting duplicates. is created for every record in the matching record type for that rule. Publishing occurs in the background as a system job.

   1. To open a record to make sure it is a potential duplicate, in the Potential duplicate records list, double-click the record.
      • If the duplicate-detection rule A rule that specifies criteria for identifying a record as a duplicate. identified potential duplicate records in other record types, review records from each record type listed.
   2. If your new or updated record is not a duplicate, to create the new record, click Save Record.

      - OR -

      If your new or updated record is a duplicate, to cancel your changes, click Cancel.

   Note

   Duplicate detection can take place only if duplicate detection is enabled in Duplicate Detection Settings and if at least one duplicate-detection rule A rule that specifies criteria for identifying a record as a duplicate. exists for the record type.More information: Avoiding Duplicate Records

   Note

   To associate a competitor with an opportunity, product, or sales literature, open the competitor record, and under Sales, click the type of record you want. In the Records group, click the button to add the type of record you want, look up the records and select them, click OK, and click Save or Save and Close.