20 Common CRM Configuration: Define Extensible Objects for CRM

This chapter contains the following:

Define Extensible Objects for CRM

FAQs for Define Extensible Objects for CRM

Define Extensible Objects for CRM

Oracle Fusion Mobile Sales: Overview

The Oracle Fusion Mobile Sales application serves a critical need for mobile sales force personnel as a means to receive time-critical updates regarding the sales activities in the enterprise. For the deploying organization, one of the greatest benefits of the mobile application is increased sales representative productivity.

The main functionality and features of the application are:

Application home page: The application home page provides sales representatives with access to critical information when they are out in the field making sales calls and decisions. All functional areas of the application are arranged in grid fashion on the home page, using icons for functional areas, with labels corresponding to those areas. Users touch an icon to navigate to the corresponding object.
Sales account management: With access to customer records while on the road, the sales representative can access reference information (for example, customer location on a map) as well as current events about the customer (for example, news headlines via RSS feeds). This information creates a sales representative who is more knowledgeable and responsive to the customer.
Opportunity management: From the mobile opportunity management page, the sales representative can access current and critical information about each opportunity and quickly share opportunity updates with the sales team. From the organization standpoint, the benefits are increased accuracy of the pipeline and forecast, since sales representatives can more readily provide updated information about opportunities even while on the road.
Lead management: With access to leads while on the road, the sales representative can more quickly act upon the leads and reduce the sales cycle time. From the organization standpoint, the benefits are increased accuracy of the pipeline, since sales representatives can more readily provide updated information about leads even while on the road.
Calendar and tasks: Use of the mobile calendar and tasks allows the sales representative to manage appointments on the road.
Contacts: On the Apple iPhone, the application displays the list of contacts from the native device. On the Blackberry, the application displays the list of contacts from the Oracle Fusion server.
Sales analytics: Sales representatives can access business intelligence reports (current period performance and opportunity pipeline) from the home page. Analytics also are embedded contextually for each account a sales representative is viewing on the mobile application, thus providing him with useful contextual insights into his accounts. The contextual reports include data on sales account revenue trends, sales account win/loss trends, and sales account win/loss reasons.
Alerts: Alerts are automatically sent out for new leads assigned to the sales representative, as well as updates to opportunities of interest.

Implement Oracle Fusion Mobile Sales: Explained

Oracle Fusion Mobile Sales provides sales representatives with access to critical sales data and functionality using smart phones. Mobile Sales gives the field sales representative instant access to sales objects such as sales accounts, contacts, opportunities, leads, tasks, calendar, notes, and interactions. Sales representatives can access the data via the native applications on the Apple iPhone or Blackberry smartphone.

For the administrator, Oracle Fusion Mobile Sales allows complete control over what content to show on the mobile application. Administrators can choose existing or custom objects, including fields, to be displayed on the mobile phones.

Implementation Overview

After the prerequisite of implementing Oracle Fusion Sales, Mobile Sales requires very minimal setup. Mobile Sales is built using the same technical stack as the Oracle Fusion Sales application, and therefore re-uses much of the setup from that application.

Mobile Sales is integrated with the following other Oracle Fusion products or modules:

Oracle Fusion Sales
Oracle Fusion Marketing
Oracle Fusion CRM Common Components, including calendar, notes, and interactions

Mobile Sales leverages the setup from each of these components, and therefore does not need any explicit setup, except for the following areas:

Security and authentication
News feed sources

Implementation Tasks

Implementing Mobile Sales involves setting profile options and, optionally, customizing the fields and objects that users can view on their mobile devices.

Set the following profile options:

Password Save on Phone Enabled: Specifies whether users are allowed to store their login password on their mobile devices. Allowing users to save passwords makes it easy for users to log in to the mobile application without the need to enter a password each time they access the application.
RSS Feed Source profile options: Administrators can set up to five RSS feed sources. These sources are used to display news feeds when viewing account details on the mobile application. If using the RSS Feed profile options, also set the Number of RSS Feed URLs Configured profile option.

For customization purposes, Mobile Sales is integrated with the same tool used for customizing the Sales application, Oracle Fusion CRM Application Composer. A simple five-step process guides administrators through the process of configuring specific fields and objects that users can manage on their mobile devices. To customize Mobile Sales, log in to CRM Application Composer and configure Mobile Sales pages.

Mobile Sales Extensibility: Explained

Oracle Fusion CRM Application Composer lets implementors customize the Oracle Fusion Mobile Sales iPhone and Blackberry applications. Using Application Composer, implementors can manage which objects and fields are visible on Mobile Sales without having to do specific customizations for any particular device.

Implementors can manage the following for the mobile application:

Enable for the mobile device standard Oracle Fusion Sales objects that are not enabled by default
Enable for the mobile device custom Sales objects
Change the fields (including custom fields) visible on Mobile Sales for mobile-enabled Sales objects (standard or custom objects)
Change the fields (including custom fields) visible on Mobile Sales for contacts

Note

To customize the sales contact object model, select the Trading Community Org Contact object under the Common application in Application Composer. To expose those sales contact object model changes on Mobile Sales pages, you must select the Mobile Contact object under the Sales application in Application Composer, then select the Pages node on the object's navigation tree.

To customize Mobile Sales for a given object, select the application you want to customize within Application Composer, and then select the parent object to manage. Select the Pages node in the navigation tree, then select the Mobile Pages tab to see the mobile configuration options for the parent and its child objects. For details on Application Composer, refer to the Oracle Fusion Applications CRM Extensibility Guide.

FAQs for Define Extensible Objects for CRM

What are the supported platforms for Oracle Fusion Mobile Sales?

The Oracle Fusion Mobile Sales client is supported on the following Apple and Blackberry platforms and devices:

The Apple mobile operating system, iOS 4.3 and above
The following Apple mobile devices: iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch
The Blackberry mobile operating systems, 5.0 and 6.0
The following Blackberry models: 9800, 9300, 8900, 8500, 9000, 9650, 9700, 9530, 9550