Bookshelf v7.5: Defining a Brick

Siebel Life Sciences Guide > Managing Contacts > Administrator Procedures >

Defining a Brick

A brick is a collection of accounts and contacts, normally in a common geographic area. The primary purpose of a brick is to allow a company to publish RSA (retail sales analysis) data while making sure that specific sales cannot be tracked to a particular contact or account.

IMS Health publishes retail sales data and determines the definition of bricks. Brick definitions are reviewed every six months and adjusted to make sure that the brick is as small as possible while providing the required level of anonymity.

Because brick data is a key measure of return on a pharmaceutical company's investment in sales promotion, outside the United States most pharmaceutical companies build sales territories based on brick data available for that country. This provides a meaningful way to measure performance over time.

How Bricks Work in Siebel ePharma

In Siebel Life Sciences, administrator can associate a contact or an account address with a brick. A contact can be associated with multiple bricks and an account with multiple addresses can have one brick for each address.

This implementation of Siebel ePharma also supports "mini-bricks." A mini-brick data is a subset of brick data that narrows the number of contacts and accounts in a geographic area. Mini-bricks provide a more detailed view of an area, without identifying the individuals in the unit.

It is the Siebel administrator's responsibility to set up and maintain brick definitions as well as associate bricks with account addresses and contacts. For more information on associating a brick with a specific contact, see Associating a Contact with a Brick. For more information on associating a brick with an account address, see Generating Account Hierarchies.

To define a brick

From the application-level menu, choose View > Site Map > Data Administration > Brick Details.

The Bricks view appears.

In the Bricks list, add a record and complete the necessary fields.

Some of the fields in a Brick record are described in the following table.

Field

Comments

Name

The name for the brick being defined.

Parent Brick

The Pick Brick dialog box lists all the bricks in the database. If the new brick is a mini-brick, click the parent brick in the Pick Brick dialog box.

Active

If checked, the brick is active. Only active bricks are listed in the Pick Brick dialog box.

Position

Defines positions associated with the brick and controls visibility on the Analysis screen > Brick views.

Note: For users to see the Bricks for which they are responsible, the administrator must associate their position with those Bricks in the Data Administration screen > Brick Details.

NOTE: On initial data load, you can use EIM to load brick data into the base table S_REGION. For more information on using EIM, see Siebel Enterprise Integration Manager Administration Guide.

Field	Comments
Name	The name for the brick being defined.
Parent Brick	The Pick Brick dialog box lists all the bricks in the database. If the new brick is a mini-brick, click the parent brick in the Pick Brick dialog box.
Active	If checked, the brick is active. Only active bricks are listed in the Pick Brick dialog box.
Position	Defines positions associated with the brick and controls visibility on the Analysis screen > Brick views. Note: For users to see the Bricks for which they are responsible, the administrator must associate their position with those Bricks in the Data Administration screen > Brick Details.

Siebel Life Sciences Guide
Published: 18 April 2003