Business Units
You have the option to track opportunities by business unit in Deltek CRM and to associate employees with business units.
To do that, first set up your business unit structure in the General area of the Configuration workspace. Then, each time you add an opportunity on the Opportunity tab, you can associate it with one of your business units, and each time you set up an employee in the Users area of the Configuration workspace, you associate that person with a business unit.
Definition: Business Unit
A business unit is a specific component of your organization's operational structure.
Set Up Business Units
You set up your business units in the General area of the Configuration workspace. If you do not want to track opportunities by business unit or assign employees to business units, do not set up a business unit structure.
- Specify the number of levels in your business unit structure. You can have from one to five levels in that structure.
- Give each level a name (for example, Location for the first level and Department for the second).
- Specify the actual elements for each level. For example, if the first level of the structure is Location, the elements for that level might be Boston, New York, Denver, and Phoenix.
- If your business unit structure has more than one level, define each of the business units by combining one element from each of the levels (Boston Architecture, Boston Engineering, New York Architecture, New York Engineering, and so on).
Example: Business Units
A firm with offices in two cities provides architectural, civil engineering, and environmental engineering services. When configuring Deltek CRM, that firm specifies a two-level business unit structure, with Location as the top level and Department as the second. The elements at the Location level are Boston and Denver, and those at the Department level are Architecture, Civil Engineering, and Environmental Engineering.
- Boston Arch
- Boston Civil
- Boston Env
- Denver Arch
- Denver Civil
- Denver Env
Use Business Units
If you implement business units, you have the option to assign each opportunity to a business unit, but that is not required. Employees, however, must be assigned to a business unit if you set up business units.
If you use business units, you can set up security roles that restrict an employee's access either to those opportunities that are assigned to his or her business unit only or to opportunities associated with a selected group of business units.
Change the Status of a Business Unit
In the General area of the Configuration workspace, you can change the status of a business unit, though restrictions may apply.
If you change the status of a business unit from Active to Inactive or Dormant, the business unit no longer appears in lookup lists, and you can no longer associate opportunities or employees with that business unit.
A business unit to which opportunities and active employees are currently assigned can be changed to Inactive, but if it has assigned employees, Deltek CRM displays a message asking you to confirm that you want to inactivate it.
The Dormant status is intended only for business units that you are in the process of phasing out. Though you can change a business unit to Dormant if existing opportunities are currently assigned to it, you cannot change it to Dormant if any active employees are still assigned to it.
Delete a Business Unit
You can delete a business unit in the General area of the Configuration workspace but only if it is not associated with any other records in the database, including opportunities.
Change the Number of Levels in the Business Unit Structure
Deltek strongly recommends that you carefully plan the business unit structure you want before you set it up in Deltek CRM. Once you have set up your business units and, in particular, once you have assigned opportunities to those business units, it is difficult and time consuming to change the number of levels.
Important: Changing the business unit structure affects many areas of Deltek CRM, and it can take some time for the update process to finish. If you decide to change the number of levels, Deltek strongly recommends that you do so when no one else is using Deltek CRM.
If you add a new level, it is added automatically to all existing business units as the lowest level of the structure. The value of that level for all business units is set to <Conversion>. All existing opportunities and employees are assigned to business units with <Conversion> at the lowest level. At that point, you can add other more meaningful values for the new level and create new business units that use those values. However, if you want to assign existing opportunities to those new business units, you must display each opportunity and change its assigned business unit.
If you reduce the number of levels, Deltek CRM removes the lowest level. If that results in duplicate business units, all but one of those business units are removed, and all records associated with those duplicate business units are assigned to the one remaining business unit.
If you set up business units and later want to remove the business unit structure altogether, select None in BUSINESS UNIT STRUCTURE. This might occur, for example, if you try out different business unit structures during the implementation of Deltek CRM.
If you set up security roles that base access opportunities based on custom lists of business units, the business units referenced in those lists are not updated for the changes that occur when you change the number of levels. As a result, employees assigned those security roles will no longer have access to opportunities. To restore their access, use the Security area of the Configuration workspace to select new lists of business units from the new structure.