Sales Cycle & Siebel Sales Application

Introduction to Sales Cycle
Sales Cycle plays a critical role in Customer Relationship Management. It is critical in a way because it is the initial point of contact for any customer. For any CRM application it is important to understand the Sales Cycle. The Sales Cycle starts from Prospecting and ends when a deal is closed and the revenue is realized.
There are various steps involved in an end-to-end Sales Cycle.

1. Prospecting:It involves creating the target database.
2. Lead Generation: A lead is an expressed interest shown by the prospects. It is used by a sales agent to determine whether there is a potential for some sales opportunity.
3. Opportunity Creation: nce a lead is qualified, an opportunity is created.
4. Quote Generation: Sales agent prepare quotes to communicate prices, discounts and special offers that are associated with a product/service which is part of a sale.
5. Order Creation:Once the quote is accepted it is converted into an order.
6. Closure:The deal is closed once the order is created.

The Sales Cycle may differ to some extent depending upon the type of business. But a typical sales cycle would follow the above mentioned steps.
Mapping the Sales Cycle with SIEBEL Sales Application
Following are the important business entities involved in Siebel Sales Application:

1. Accounts
2. Contacts
3. Opportunities
4. Quotes

The lead that is generated through various sources is captured in Accounts screen. It captures the details like – Account Name, Address, Status of the Account (i.e. whether the Account is active/inactive, Qualified, contract pending etc), Account Type (i.e. whether the Account holder is an existing customer, Business, Competitor or Vendor etc.) within the Account Screen.
The Accounts Screen is then linked to Opportunities, Contacts and Quotes.
The Opportunities Screen will have the details such as opportunity name, account name to which it is associated, revenue that could be generated from the opportunity, sales stage (prospecting, qualification, closing, lost), name of sales team, lead quality(excellent, very high, high, fair, poor) etc.
The Contacts Screen will have details such as name of the person, phone number, job title, name of the account, address etc. The Quotes Screen will have details related to the quotes that have been generated for a particular order.
The quotes may undergo some iteration if there is any negotiation between the two parties. A Quote Screen will typically have the Quote name & number, Revision, date of creation, name of the account to which it is associated, name of sales rep, Status (whether the quote is approved, accepted, in-progress, active etc.)

Advantages of Siebel Sales Application
Following are the advantages of Siebel Sales Application:

1. Siebel Sales simplifies and optimizes the task of planning and managing the sales process by providing complete visibility into the sales cycle, helping companies to plan and manage effective selling activities.
2. By bringing business activity information closer to the user, displayed in one place, sales people can find what they need to work on and then quickly navigate to that object within the application.
3. Each organization may use slightly or sometimes greatly different terminology. Often applications will use industry standard terminology that is not necessarily applicable to a particular organization. Customization allows each customer to use their own chosen terminology. This way it cuts down on time that is required to train users on what each field is for and thus allowing for a more seamless transition to a new application.

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BI Publisher Highlighted

I want a single application to print my reports, invoices, checks, labels etc. and also want the same application to send these to different destinations like printer, fax and e-mail. These reports should contain:

• Graphs
• Tables in highly formatted fashion like table headers should be repeated on each page
• Section totals
• Page totals
• Should have headers and footers
• Should have conditional formatting
• Cross Tab Support
• Easy to create templates

These are my requirements for reporting. All of these can be fulfilled very easily in Analytics dashboards, but, when it comes to printing, dashboard is not a very good choice. For these reports BI Publisher is a perfect solution. Oracle BI Publisher is a Standalone and Platform Independent reporting tool which creates highly formatted printable reports. Oracle BI Publisher uses Template for formatting purpose .Templates can be created in MSWORD, ACROBAT, EXCEL and many other Formatting Tools.
It takes the data from the source, formats it suitably using Template and prints it in different formats such as PDF, EXCEL and HTML.

The Formatted Reports can be published over Printer, Fax or Internet.Oracle BI Publisher overcomes the shortcomings of Siebel Analytics when it comes to Printing of a Report. It provides a unified solution to the above mentioned requirements, hence reduces cost, complexity and manpower.

It can use data from any source which provides JDBC connection like HTTP XML feeds, web services, file data sources. It is pre integrated with OBIEE Suit. You can also use requests developed in OBIEE as the sources of data for BI Publisher.

Data sources for BI Publisher.
BI Publisher can have many sources like OBIEE, Oracle Database, SQL Server, XML and various other data sources are supported by BI Publisher.

• SQL Query: A connection to a database has to be specified for SQL Query. Then a query to retrieve the required data is fired on the database. Bi Publisher also provides a feature called Query Builder.
• BI Answers: It uses Dashboard requests as the data source.
• Web service: It uses a web service which returns data as its data source.

Creating report templates in BI Publisher
Report templates can be created in RTF Format as well as PDF format. To create templates in RTF format you need to have any text editor with RTF support like MS Word, for PDF template, you need to have any tool which gives facility of PDF creation like Adobe Acrobat Professional.On installation, the BI Publisher Template Builder integrates itself with MS Word.

To create a simple RTF template, load the XML containing your sample data by clicking Data->Load XML Data on Template builder toolbar. Once the data is loaded, you can put the data fields in the template. You can provide groupings, conditional formatting and conditional regions. We can also use the wizard to create tables, crosstabs, and charts. Preview of the report is possible with sample data available in PDF, RTF, PPT, HTML and Excel formats. After creating these templates, these templates have to be uploaded to the server to be used by the report. The output format of reports can also be restricted; we can tell the BI Publisher to output report as only PDF and no other format.

Other features of BI Publisher

• Provides a facility of LOV (List of Values) so that data in a report can be filtered according the value selected in LOV.
• Different layouts for same report are supported.
• Bursting, split a report based on a key in the report data and deliver a report based on the second key in the report data.

– Inputs from Anand M

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Oracle Fusion Middleware

Applications can be integrated using either of the following integration solutions:

• P2P (Point To Point) – It involves creating a direct connection between each pair of application to be integrated.
• Hub-and-Spoke – It involves connecting each application to a central integration server running middleware.

In comparison to P2P integration strategy, Hub-and-Spoke methodology is preferred. Adding an additional application requires only one new data transport to and from the integration server. The numbers of data transports are reduced from n² to n.

Oracle provides a strong Integration Server architecture known as Oracle Fusion Middleware Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) suite. This architecture comprises of Oracle Application server, Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), Business Process Execution Language Process Manager (BPEL PM) and other components for security, BI, administration, monitoring etc.

1. Oracle Application Server provides a J2EE container for other applications and third party applications.
2. ESB is an engine which routes and transforms the data. It can have multiple data entry points.
   Example – The source and target systems are having different schemas. Data transformation can be done using Siebel data mapper and can be transported using the Business Service. The same requirement can also be solved using ESB service. Apart from this, ESB service can be initiated from Siebel CRM after importing the “wsdl” of the Outbound Web Service.
3. BPEL PM automates the business processes across multiple applications. It uses a visual coupled with programmatic constructs.
   Example – Combined information from Siebel CRM, Credit Card Company and a shipping company to generate final form of order. BPEL PM can be used to orchestrate and automate these multiple applications using a single entry point.

SOA suite resides on the Integration Server (IS). Siebel CRM lies on one side of the IS and third party applications reside on other side of the IS. Siebel can thus behave as a Sender or Receiver.

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Ask the Expert

Do you have a question on Siebel Upgrades, Implementation or just about the best Siebel business practices in general? No hassles! Submit your question in the comments section below.

Experts from our Siebel practice will answers your questions twice a week and the answers will be published in the Ask the Expert Section

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Task Based UI and its Usage

In all the Applications a particular task requires performing several steps to complete it which leads to common issues. Some issues are as follows:

• Users may not be familiar with the sequence of steps

• Users may inadvertently skip a step

• Users often require additional training to complete the task.

Many clients prefer implementing a user interaction style that assists end users in completing such tasks.
The latest version Siebel 8.0 provides a feature called as Task Based UI, which enables us to use wizard-like interface( in this we can Use a wizard- like interface) to guide users through steps in a task. This helps in completing the tasks in (leads to complete some steps of a task in) a prescribed order. It supports forward and backward navigation through a sequence of views. In addition to this we can use the pause facility.
In TBUI one can implement the Branching conditions based on the users input. This can be achieved with the use of Transient BC (TBC). The mechanism behind TBC is that-data is collected and used during the execution of a task but not saved afterwards i.e. Transient data disappears when the task ends.
I worked upon a scenario i.e. Quote Generation which processes the Quotation, Opportunity and Account Information for each and every Quote. Following is the description
Requirement
The Process starts with the enquiry raised by the customer to the Customer Service Representative (CSR) for the same he/she will

• Create an Opportunity by adding a Customer Account.
• Create the Product for the same Opportunity from Administration – Products.
• Create an Quote for the Opportunity.
• Add the Price list for the Quote; this price should be available for the Line Items (product).
• Generate the Quote information along with the Opportunity and Account.

Finally that will be delivered to the customer (Account Holder) through mail.
Development

Task, Task Group & Task Pane View: I created a new “Task Group” & a “Task”. Then added that “Task” to the “Task Group”. Later added the “Task Group” to the “View Task Group” named “Task Pane View”.

Views & Applets

I used vanilla Applets such as – Opportunity Entry Applet, Product Form Applet, Quote List Applet, Recipient List Applet etc. Made new Objects by copying the above mentioned applets and then used them on the corresponding Task Views. Also I inactivated the fields in the applet which was not supposed to be displayed.

Configuring TBC & Auto Quote functionality:
There is no change in the BC’s. I used Siebel provided “Auto Quote” functionality for the Quote creation. Due to the requirement of giving a choice to add multiple recipients for the Correspondence I created a Transient Business Component.

Adhoc functionality: All the Adhoc functionality which I used here was vanilla provided.

Pulling Data from Quote to Recipient:The biggest challenge was to pull Quote fields in Recipient BC through indirect Joins. First I created Link between Quote and Correspondence then with the help of Link Specification I pulled the Quote Row Id in the Correspondence then to the Recipient BC. Now by configuring a join in Recipient BC and Quote BC using the pulled Quote Row Id, I pulled all the desired fields of Quote BC.The Below Diagram will help you to understand it more clearly,

The Final Version of Task flow was looking like the below figure:

Finally, everything shaped up well and I delivered my first Task Based UI successfully on time. Please put your comments / suggestions.

Inputs from Abhinav A.

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Missing script for OBIEE Upgrade (7.8.5 to 10.1.3.3.1)

I did OBIEE upgrade with the help of the document Oracle® Business Intelligence Applications Upgrade Guide Version 7.9 February 2007 b31980.pdf
It was configured successfully but I encountered an error in the process of the final testing by running the provided out of box workflow through informatica. The workflows failed showing an ‘INVALID IDENTIFIER’ error indicating that some of the columns in the warehouse tables were missing. Hence I referred the document again.

As per the document the, warehouse Schema has been upgraded with the following mentioned scripts:-
UPGRADE.ctl script.
790_UPGRADE_PRE_CTL_SCRIPT.sql script.
DW.ctl script.
790_UPGRADE_PRE_DIMENSION_SCRIPT.sql script.
Though the above mentioned scripts were successfully executed, the workflows failed with the same error ‘INVALID IDENTIFIER’
Hence I figured out that one more script is required to resolve the above problem.
So after running the script placed at OracleBI\DAC\conf\sqlgen\ctl-file\ oracle_bi_dw.ctl
(DDLimp utility) the issue was resolved.
This script contained all the missing columns.
To run the Script use the following command:-

Here DDLimp is the utility provided by Siebel to run this Script.
Execute the following Command in the CMD Prompt:
—-DDLimp /U USER /P PASSWORD /C <Connect string i.e. system DSN> /G SSE_ROLE /I N /R Y
F <Path for the oracle_bi_dw.ctl Script>/L (location where you want to store log file)

Where,
U is Database Table owner name.
P is Database Table owner Password.
C is System DSN.
For G, I and R use the Default as given.
F indicates the path of the Script.
L indicates the path were the log file is to be stored.
Finally to my relief the upgrade completed by running the above mentioned script!

Inputs from Alok Chowdhary

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