Applications Administration Guide > Activities, Activity Plans, and Assessments >

Business Scenarios


This scenario provides an example of a process flows performed by the administrator and the end users in a sales situation. Your company may follow a different process flow according to its business requirements.

Business Scenario for Sales

A sales organization has adopted a new sales methodology in order to improve the effectiveness of its sales people. The business analyst has provided the administrator with a detailed document describing the sales method, the stages of the method, and the activities that each salesperson should perform at each stage of the deal. The outline of the document looks like this:

Our New Sales Method

> Stage 1, Prospecting, the lead discovery phase. (Status = Open)

> Stage 2, Qualification of the lead and working up the deal. (Status = Open)

 Stage 3, Closing the deal and entering the order. (Status = Won)

> Activity 1, Prepare the quote within 2 days

> Activity 2, Email the quote to manager for approval within 3 days

> Activity 3, Create the contract within 1 week

> Stage 4, Lost deal. (Status = Lost)

The administrator creates a new sales method record (New Sales Method) and four associated sales stage records (Prospecting, Qualification, Closing, and Lost).

Next, she creates four new activity templates, one for each stage. The activity template describes the activities and milestones that the sales people should perform at that stage.

Because the sales people enter their own opportunities, the administrator sets up the activity template details so that the salesperson who enters the opportunity will be automatically assigned ownership of the activities.

By setting up lead times in the activity template details, the due dates for the activities will be calculated automatically from the date that the opportunity enters the sales stage.

Sometimes sales people have too many opportunities to deal with at once. To help them prioritize, the business analyst has created a standardized assessment document that he recommends all sales people use to rank their opportunities. The outline of assessment document looks like this:

Assessing a Lead at the Qualification Stage

> Attribute 1: Adaptability to New Technology, weight = 5

Attribute 2: Number of potential users, weight = 7

 0 to 50, score = 0, Too small

 51 to 100, score = 1, Route to telesales

 101 to 500, score = 2, Route to middle market

 more than 500, score = 6, Pursue aggressively

Attribute 3: Sponsor's stance, weight = 10

 Adversarial, score = -5, Strongly against us

 Weak, score = 0, Neutral or slight favor another vendor

 Moderate, score = 5, Willing to recommend our product

 Strong, score = 10, Believes we are the best choice

> Attribute 4: Lead's purchase profile and history, weight = 5

The administrator uses the information in this document to create an assessment template associated with the qualification stage. When a salesperson reaches the qualification stage of the deal, the Assessments view for that opportunity is automatically populated with the questions that need to be answered in order to assess and prioritize the opportunity.

Other Business Scenarios

Activities, activity templates, and assessment templates are used in many ways throughout Siebel applications. For examples of other scenarios, see:


 Applications Administration Guide
 Published: 09 September 2004