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Scenario for a Partner or Distributor Creating a Design Program

In this scenario, a technology company is selling its products through an indirect sales network that consists of partners or distributors around the world.

A licensed partner of this technology company specializes in reselling the latter's memory chips, video cards, transistors, capacitors, and so on to several OEMs in the high-tech industry. A sales representative at the partner company has developed a good working relationship with several OEM contacts. He gets information that one of the OEMs that the partner company supplies to is designing a high-end server. He gathers that the design is still at an early stage, and the OEM is actively sourcing suitable components to include in the final design. He realizes that some of the components manufactured by a technology company are good candidates for inclusion in the new server product.

The sales representative logs in to Siebel Partner Portal, and creates a new design program. He indicates that he is working with an established design firm with an in-depth knowledge of a technology company's products, during the design phase.

After creating the design program, he identifies the technology company products that might be considered for inclusion in the new server product. Because several technology company products are likely to be evaluated by the OEM for inclusion in its server, he logically groups them by some criteria, such as function, win probability, and so on. For each logical product group, he creates a design opportunity. The design program now consists of one or more design opportunities, with each opportunity encapsulating a set of a technology company products.

After creating the design opportunities, the sales representative registers them with the technology company. Registering the design opportunity formally establishes that it belongs to the partner company, thus preventing poaching by other partners or even by the direct sales force of the technology company. A formal establishment of ownership is also crucial to earn expected financial incentives, such as commissions, bonuses, discounts, and so on.

The design registration administrator at the technology company logs in to Siebel Partner Manager and navigates to the Design Registrations List view and drills down to the specific registration. The drill-down presents the administrator with a single-page view of the design registration, which includes details about the registration, the parent design opportunity, the grandparent design program and any potential duplicate registrations. This information enables her to make an informed decision on whether to approve, reject or return the design registration.

The design registration administrator is satisfied that the design registration provides a legitimate option to expand the company's business, and gives her approval.

The technology company's approval indicates that the technology company has accepted the partner company's claim of ownership of the specific design opportunity, and is a crucial pre-requisite for subsequent financial compensation if the initiative eventually succeeds.

As the design progresses, the partner company sales representative adds notes, records activities, and uploads attachments to both the design program as well as the appropriate design opportunities. He also captures any changes that might be pertinent to the design program, such as the number of servers estimated to be sold annually by the OEM.

Once the partner company sales representative and the OEM team finalize the configuration of the server, the sales representative logs back in to Siebel Partner Portal, and requests concurrence from the technology company to upgrade the status of the design opportunity to Design Win. The technology company has configured their Siebel Business Application in such a manner that requests for upgrading to Design Win have to be approved by a design registration administrator. Therefore, the administrator is notified that a design opportunity must be approved. She logs in to Siebel Partner Manager, checks the details specified on the design opportunity, and approves it. The status of the design opportunity is updated to Design Win.

Around the same time, the OEM finalizes the design for its server and decides to move it into production. This represents the beginning of a constant revenue inflow for the technology company because its components are present in the new server product. Therefore, from the technology company's perspective, this is a business event of substantial significance. To reflect this fact, a sales representative updates the phase of the design program to Production. This update triggers two processes - creation of a revenue template and creation of a forecast series. The revenue template contains a line item for every product on every design opportunity that brings in revenue. Simultaneously, a forecast series is also created for the design program. The period on the forecast series is set to be the same as that of the design program by default, and the search specification is set to include only the revenue directly associated with the design program.

As the OEM begins to ramp up the manufacture of its new high-end server, it has a need for the technology company's components. Therefore, the OEM gets in touch with the partner company and requests to buy the technology company's components that are included in the server. The partner company's sales representative requests a Special Pricing Authorization from the technology company, so that he can get a higher margin when reselling to the OEM. For more information about Special Pricing Authorization, see Working with Special Pricing Authorization.