Siebel Consumer Goods Guide > Managing Accounts >

About Accounts

Because accounts are critical to your business efforts, maintaining complete, accurate data on your accounts is a primary task. Administrators can perform bulk loading of data on accounts, but administrators and end users can also create and modify accounts manually as needed. For accounts with multiple departments and divisions, end users can enter independent information on those subaccounts.

For more information about bulk loading account information, such as account demographic information, hierarchy, and general account attributes, see the Siebel Enterprise Integration Manager Administration Guide.

About Account Hierarchies

You can manage and administer different hierarchies for different customers. For example, for a large chain of drugstores, you can establish a four-level hierarchy with the corporate headquarters office at the top level, its regional offices in the second level, its distribution centers at the third level, and its retail stores at the fourth level. For a distributor you might establish a two-level hierarchy with the distributor at the top level and the retail outlets it serves at the second level. If a company uses a third-party distributor for its products, you can associate this indirect account as well.

For detailed information on structuring organizations, see the Applications Administration Guide.

About Account Classification

Accounts can be classified in many ways. Several of these standard classifications can drive specific application functionality:

• Account type. Classifying an account by type, such as Retailer or Distributor, can drive a dynamic profile attribute form. This determines the profile information that will be stored and displayed for the account.
• Distribution code. Distribution codes can be applied to accounts and products to automatically create authorized distribution lists.
• Market segment. Classifying an account's market segment determines the types of products that will appear in that account's product catalog when creating assortment plans. You classify your customer accounts' market segment by assigning the personalization attributes Account Channel and Product Differentiator to accounts, and products or product categories or both.

For details on methods available for controlling authorized product distribution based on distribution codes or account market segment, see Product Distribution.