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Quote and Order Concepts in Asset-Based Ordering

This topic describes quote and order concepts that are specific to asset-based ordering.

Account and Contact Based Ordering

You can base a new order on the assets owned by either an account or a contact.

Orders that are based on accounts are created in the Accounts screen, Account Summary view.

Orders that are based on contacts are created in the Contacts screen, Contact Summary view.

New Quotes and Orders

A new quote or order identifies products and services that are first-time acquisitions for a customer or that are repeat orders such as additional software licenses.

After being processed and fulfilled, new orders result in new assets that become part of a customer's profile. A line item from an order becomes an installed asset if it is marked as a trackable asset in the product record.

Multiple Open Orders

Multiple orders may be in progress for a particular customer or even a particular installed asset at any given time.

Siebel asset-based ordering supports order stacking. Order stacking occurs when order lines are future-dated or lines take a long time to fulfill. If an order to change an asset has not yet been fulfilled and the customer calls to place another order to change the same asset, then the version of the asset changed during the second order includes the changes from the earlier order. It is vital to include changes from the earlier order so the application can ensure that the second change does not break the validation rules for the overall service and to ensure that the customer receives accurate pricing. If a customer has multiple pending orders for a single asset (for example, for the telephone service to a large office complex), then the application supports inserting a new order between the due dates of the two pending orders.

After an order has been placed, the end user can change it in the following ways:

• Create a modify order.
• Create a supplemental order.
• Create a follow-on order.

This feature is handled by two processes, Modify Order and Supplemental Order. Creating a supplemental order does not actually create an additional order; it revises an existing order.

Modify Quotes and Modify Orders

A modify quote or order is created when the customer asks to make a change to an existing product or service.

For example, the local telephone company provides local phone service to a residential customer. After the service has been installed, customers may want to make additions and changes to the services they receive, such as adding call waiting or changing the number to call when forwarding a call.

Each of these changes is a modification to the current asset. When the customer inquires about these changes, the sales representative issues a modify quote for the change. After the customer accepts the modify quote, it becomes a modify order.

When a modify order is placed, it does not modify the asset listed in the customer's profile, because it has not been fulfilled yet. The customer profile is only changed when the order is fulfilled.

Supplemental Order

A supplemental order is created by revising an open order. A supplemental order overrides an order that has already been sent to the fulfillment application, but is still in process and has not yet been fulfilled. Supplemental orders are useful when a customer wants to make further changes to an order while it is in transit—that is, before its status is Complete in the fulfillment application.

The following is an example of using a supplemental order.

A customer currently subscribes to a wireless plan and now wants to change the call-forwarding number associated with the plan. In the Account Summary view, Installed Assets list, the call center representative selects the plan, clicks Modify, and creates a quote for the change. With the customer's approval, the sales representative then converts the quote to an order and submits it. The order is then sent to a fulfillment application. There is now an open order for this item.

An hour later, the customer calls again and wants to back out the change. The call center representative again goes to the Account Summary. In the Orders list, the call center representative drills down into the open order and revises the order. The representative selects the appropriate line item, makes a change during the configuration session that returns the call-forwarding number to the previous number, and clicks Done to add the change. The representative then submits the supplemental order. The supplemental order replaces the original order in the fulfillment application.

The order number of a supplemental order remains the same as the number of the original order, with a different version. Where supplemental orders exist for an original order, a user will see records of multiple order instances with the same order number. The most recent order instance is displayed at the top of the order list.

The relationships between original and supplemental orders are as follows:

• A revised order refers to the original order by its Order Number, which is the same as that of the original order.
• All that changes in the original order is the value in the Active field, which is set to N. This change makes the order and its child records read-only.
• Each line item of a revised order refers to the corresponding original order line item by its Revised Line Item Id.
• In the first order line item of a product's order revision history, Id = Revised Line Item Id.
• In each subsequent revision, the Revised Line Item Id is copied to the new version of the order line item.

NOTE:  Some fulfillment applications do not support supplemental orders. Others only support a limited set of allowed changes. To support the widest possible set of fulfillment applications, your Siebel Business Application supports these types of changes to an order: Add, Delete, Update, and No Change.

Follow-On Order

A follow-on order is a future-dated change to an asset before the asset is fulfilled. It can be created at any time.

Follow-on orders allow you to make a change after an order has reached the point of no return, so it is not possible to create a supplemental order. You can create a follow-on order for a customer, which allows the customer to place a new order for the same service using the original order as a starting point.

NOTE:  Contact-based ABO does not support Follow-On Orders.

Action Codes

The following action codes for line items on quotes and orders help to keep track of changes made through modify orders and supplemental orders:

• Add. Instruction to add a new product to the customer assets.
• Update. Instruction to update either an attribute value or delta field value for an existing product (either asset or ordered)
• Delete. Instruction to delete or deactivate or disconnect an existing product (either asset or ordered).
• - . Do not change an existing product.
• Suspend. Instruction to update the status of an asset to Suspended.
• Resume. Instruction to update the status of an asset from Suspended to Active.

These action codes appear next to the line items on quotes and orders to show which items are affected, and which will not.

Action codes are extensible using the SIS OM PMT user properties.

Auto Asset Button

You might see an Auto Asset button on the Orders screen. This button is used for demonstration purposes, to show how order line items can be converted into assets that display in the Installed Assets view of the customer's service profile.

In actual deployments, a workflow is used to create assets automatically from completed order line items, so this button is not used.

Ungrouping or Exploding Quote Line Items

When a quote is converted to an order, line items with a quantity greater than one can be ungrouped to become multiple items, each with a quantity of one. This automatic ungrouping is referred to as exploding the items. Each line item becomes an individual asset when the order is fulfilled.

When this feature is turned on, you can automate the ungrouping of multiple quantities of products that will become assets, so that each can be given a unique integration ID.

NOTE:  Ungrouping or exploding items is only required when the items will become trackable assets, and therefore require integration IDs. Items that will not become assets may remain as an order for a multiple quantity, without being ungrouped.

The Ungroup feature can simplify the process of creating bulk orders, as shown in the following example:

• The customer wants to order ten local lines, with similar configurations: five will have voice mail, five will have call waiting. The customer wants each of the ten lines to have the same four additional features.
• An employee end user can start by creating one line item—with the four features that are desired on all of them—and the quantity two. Then, the end user ungroups that item, so that there are two items.
• Next, the end user takes one of those two items, adds voice mail to it, and changes the quantity to five. Then, the user takes the second line item, adds call waiting to it, and changes the quantity of it to five. Finally, the user ungroups both line items, so that there are ten individual line items.
• Now each line item has an integration ID and a field for Service ID. Depending on the implementation of the Siebel Business Applications with the back end applications, the end user might click a button to populate the field with phone numbers from the asset management application, or a phone number might be assigned as part of the provisioning process.