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Oracle® Fusion Applications Customer Data Management Implementation Guide
11g Release 1 (11.1.1.5.0)
Part Number E20433-01
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14 Common Customer Data Management Configuration: Set Up Customer Center

This chapter contains the following:

Set Up Customer Center

FAQs for Set Up Customer Center

Manage Customer Center Task Templates

FAQs for Manage Customer Center Task Templates

Manage Customer Center Note Type Mapping

Manage Customer Center Assessment Templates

FAQs for Manage Customer Center Assessment Templates

Set Up Customer Center

Customer Center: Explained

Oracle Fusion Customer Center enables the comprehensive management of customer information. Customer Center collects data from various systems and presents them for management in one location.

Following are some of the capabilities of Customer Center:

When working with Customer Center, be aware of the following terminology used through out the application:

Sales Prospect

A sales prospect is a prospective sell-to entity, or person, at an existing or potential customer used to define Leads. A prospect is the lowest level representation of a business entity that your company's marketing processes will track and act upon. The sales prospect does not have a sell-to address. You can create a sales prospect from a party that does not have a sell-to address when you create the first lead for that party. You can also create sales prospects in Customer Center and by importing them in bulk.

You can create leads against sales prospects, but a sales prospect must be qualified and converted to a sales account before you can create opportunities for it. To qualify and convert a sales prospect, a set of business criteria or rules must be satisfied. For example, the prospect may be required to meet the criteria for account assignment.

Sales Account

A sales account is a specific sell-to entity within a given customer. You can create leads and opportunities against sales accounts. A single customer might have a collection of sales accounts. To avoid confusion when assigning territories to the account, each sales account has only one sell-to address. Typically, a sales team manages a sales account. The sales team is comprised of resources assigned to the territories associated with the sales account. Additionally, a profile option determines whether a sales account is a named sales account, an existing sales account, and the account owner. Named sales accounts are typically strategic accounts assigned to dedicated territories. An existing sales account is one where there is an existing financial relationship or had previous installs. You can create sales accounts in Customer Center and by importing them in bulk.

Customer

Within Customer Relations Management (CRM), sales accounts and sales prospects are collectively referred to as Customers. Additionally, a Customer also can have representations as a legal entity and a billing account that are expressed as root nodes in a hierarchy to the respective sales accounts for that customer.

View the Customer Hierarchy: A customer's hierarchy represents a holistic view of the customer's structure, showing you the customer type, the parent for the customer, the subsidiaries of the customer, as well as rolled up revenue analysis data.

Consumer

A consumer is a person who is a qualified paying individual. A consumer can have one or more sales accounts or sales prospects. A consumer is not an organization sales account or sales prospect. A consumer is by definition also a legal entity.

Legal Entity

A legal entity is a party that can enter into legal contracts or a business relationship, and be sued if it fails to meet contractual obligations. There are two types of legal entities: internal and external. A customer with a party usage of Legal Entity is considered an internal legal entity and is used for interdivisional selling within your own company. A customer with a party usage of External Legal Entity is any external customer who fits the definition of legal entity. Legal entities may also be used to group multiple sales accounts, sales prospects and other classes of entities or parties.

Billing Account

A billing account is a party that represents the financial account transactional entity for a given Customer.

Customer Center Trees: Explained

There are five types of Oracle Fusion Customer Center trees. Each tree displays slightly different nodes, and the information that you are able to view and edit on each node depends upon your security privileges and your membership status on the sales account team

The five types of Customer Center trees are:

Customer Tree

The customer tree displays nodes for business-to-business entities such as sales account and sales prospect. If you are a member of the sales account team with at least Edit level access or you have the Sales Party Administration duty, you can update information on the following nodes: contacts, organization chart, classifications, assessments, discussion forums, classifications, assessments, notes and, account assessments. Only those users with Sales Party Administration duty or Full level access on the sales account team and profile nodes can update the members of the sales account team

Consumer Tree

The consumer tree displays nodes for business-to-consumer entities such as sales accounts and sales prospects. All nodes on the consumer tree are visible to all users. Since consumers are individuals rather than organizations, there are fewer nodes displayed in the consumer tree than in the customer tree. For example, you will not see nodes for organization chart, contacts, assessments, or others that are pertinent to organizations.

Contact Tree

The contact tree displays nodes for contacts with the contact profile and other related information such as the customer (the organization) to whom the contact belongs, interactions with the contact, notes, and so on. All nodes on the contract tree are visible to all users.

Legal Entity Tree

The legal entity tree displays nodes for business-to-business entities that are marked with a party usage of Legal Entity. Because legal entities are typically a parent or root node in a customer hierarchy, legal entity tree has a subsidiaries node. All nodes on the legal entity tree are visible to all users.

Account Plan Tree

An account plan is a plan to sell to a certain set of accounts in a coordinated way. There is a specific set of assigned resources. This tree shows associated contacts, assets, Opportunities and member accounts of the plan.

Manage Customer Center Trees: Explained

Customer center tree is a navigation paradigm which enables quick and easy access to various related information in one central place. Seen on the regional area of the page, the tree is made up of object nodes such as Profile or Contacts. These object nodes can be categorized into logical categories. Categories enable you to organize those object nodes to fit your needs, for example, the Sales category or Service category. Each implementation can customize the Customer Center tree by showing or hiding the various nodes as required, and configuring node names and other parameters. When saved, the personalizations for this view of the tree are kept for all users of the application. Individual users will have capability to further personalize the tree as desired.

Managing Customer Center Trees

Set these attributes for each node in the Customer Center Tree:

Sales Account Team Member Access Level: Explained

There are three types of sales account team memberships known as access levels.

These access levels control the team member's privileges for the sales account:

When a resource is initially added to the sales account team, a profile option setting determines the member's default access level. If that member is removed from the sales account resource team, she no longer has access to the sales account, unless she is still a member of a territory that is assigned to the sales account. Resources in the management hierarchy of a newly added team member inherit the same access level of the subordinates.

View Only

View Only is the minimum level assigned to a sales account team member. This access level enables the team member to view the contents of the sales account child attributes such as sales account team, snapshot, assessments, discussion forums, notes, interactions, appointments, and tasks. This assumes, however, that the team member also has functional access to view that child attribute. If the team member's resource role does not provide functional access to view a particular child attribute of a sales account, that member cannot view the attribute, regardless of her sales account team access level. A team member with View Only access level for a sales account can view only the opportunities, leads, and revenue lines to which she has relevant data privileges.

Edit

Sales account team members with the Edit access level can view and edit all customer-related objects. They can view and edit only the opportunities, leads, and revenue lines to which they have the relevant data privileges. The Edit access level provides a sales account team member with the ability to run the territory reassignment process, but she cannot change the composition of the sales account resource team.

Full

The Full access level allows team members to do everything that the Edit access level allows, with the addition of being able to change the composition of the sales account resource team. A team member with Full access can manually add and remove team members, change a member's access level, and mark the lock assignment setting for team members. When a sales account is created, only the sales account owner and sales administrators are granted the Full access level, but they can grant Full access to other team members.

Third-Party Integrations in Customer Center: Explained

Third-Party Integrations in Customer Center

Oracle Fusion Customer Center is a central location to access a comprehensive and multifaceted view of customer information. It unifies Fusion applications data as well as relevant third-party content. OneSource and Siebel Service are two third-party integrations readily configured in Customer Center. This topic explains how third-party customer content is mapped to Fusion customer.

Note

Customer Center does not include licenses for OneSource and Siebel applications. Third-party application licenses may be acquired separately. If you want to enable OneSource and you have a web proxy for external HTTP(S) traffic, you must select Enable Web Proxy on the Web Proxy Configuration screen and specify your web proxy configuration.

See Also: "Web Proxy Configuration" in the chapter "Creating a New Provisioning Plan" of the Oracle Fusion Applications Installation Guide

Customizing Oracle Fusion Customer Center Pages Using Oracle Composer: Explained

In Oracle Fusion Customer Center, you can customize the Sales Account region on the customer profile page using Oracle Composer. To access Oracle Composer, navigate to the customer profile page and select to customize the page from the Administration menu in the global area. You can also access Oracle Composer by selecting Customization Manager from the Administration menu.

Available Customization Options

When you select to customize a page from the Administration menu in the global area, you launch Oracle Composer.

The customizations that you make to the customer profile are applied based on your layer selection:

Oracle Composer provides two views for working with page content: Design View and Source View. Design View provides a WYSIWYG rendering of the page and its content, where controls are directly selectable on each component. Source View provides a combined WYSIWYG and hierarchical rendering of page components, where controls are available on the header of the hierarchical list. Source View provides access to page layout components that are otherwise not exposed on the page, and therefore not available in Design View.

This table lists the types of customizations available for the customer profile page. You can perform most of the basic customizations in either Design View or Source View. Some customizations, however, must be completed only in Source View.


Oracle Fusion Customer Center Page

Customization Task

Customer profile

Show and hide components on a page:

  • Show and hide fields within the Sales Account region by selecting the Show Component check box on the Display Options tab in the Component Properties dialog for a component.

  • Show and hide the Sales Account region itself by selecting the Show Component check box on the Display Options tab in the Component Properties dialog for the container.

Tip

You might have to scroll down to see the Show Component check box.

Customer profile

Move components on a page:

  • Move components within the Sales Account region (only) by cutting and pasting them in Source View, or by rearranging them on the Child Components tab in the Component Properties dialog for the container.

    Note

    The components available for updating include any custom fields that were added to the Sales Account object using the CRM Application Composer.

Customer profile

Make an updateable field read only by selecting the Read Only check box on the Display Options tab in the Component Properties dialog.

Customer profile

Make a field required by selecting the Show Required check box on the Display Options tab in the Component Properties dialog.

Customization Privileges Required

The customizations that you can make using the Oracle Composer Source View are available to you only if your assigned job role includes the Page Composer Source View Access Duty duty role. Contact your security administrator for details.

Note

Your assigned job role must also include the Administration Link View Duty duty role to access Oracle Composer at all, even if only the Design View. This duty role exposes the Administration menu in the global area.

FAQs for Set Up Customer Center

When do territories get assigned to sales accounts?

Internal territories get assigned to sales accounts in the following scenarios.

Note

The following profile options determine whether territory assignment and reassignment is automatic for sales accounts. The default setting for both is YES.

Automatic assignments are always enabled following an import, party merge and territory realignment.

During initial implementation and migration, it is possible to create sales accounts before territories have been set up in the system. These sales accounts will not receive any territory assignment because there are no territories. These accounts need to be explicitly assigned when territories are configured and activated in the system. This is one exception which does not have immediate/automatic assignment. The recommendation is to run a batch assignment to assign these sales accounts created at the beginning of the implementation using the view criteria SalesAccountsUpdatedSinceVC.

Partner territories get assigned to sales accounts in the following scenarios.

Note

Territory Management must be implemented to utilize this feature.

How can I make merge requests?

A merge request is made when duplicate records that point to the same customer are found, and you want to consolidate those records into one. When a merge request is approved, there is one survivor record. All other duplicate records are considered victims, and they are marked with the status of Merged. In customer center, you can mark two or more customer records for merge request from customer list in the Customer home page or in the customer search result. Merge requests will be processed by the customer data hub. The customer data hub must be implemented and the profile option Merge Request Enabled set to YES for this feature to be available.

How can I personalize the customer center tree?

Personalizing the Oracle Fusion Customer Center tree enables you to have a more intuitive navigation experience. The tree, located in the regional area of the page, is made up of object nodes such as Profile or Contacts. To personalize the tree, use the Action menu located directly above the tree or right click on any tree node, and click Manage Customer Tree in the menu popup. The Manage Customer Tree window will pop up. Select the node you wish to modify. You can change the name, whether the node is visible or not and if it should the default node that will display upon opening the tree. When you save, the customization will be associated to your user name.

Manage Customer Center Task Templates

Turning a Business Process into a Task Template: Example

This example illustrates how to create a task template that represents a business process.

Scenario

A sales manager wants to create a task template for her department's client product demonstration process.

Client Product Demonstration Activities

The client product demonstration process occurs regularly. The sales manager does not want to manually create tasks for this process every time it occurs, so she decides to create a task template that includes the business process activities. Each time she repeats the business process, she can use the task template to automatically generate the appropriate tasks that need to be performed.

Analysis

The business process consists of the following activities:

Resulting Task Template

Based on the analysis of the business process, the following task template is created:

Task Template Name: Client Product Demonstration


Task

Category

Lead Days

Duration Days

Book conference room

Preparation

1

1

Create agenda

Preparation

1

1

Confirm date and time with client

Call

5

1

Schedule presenters

Preparation

5

2

Deliver demonstration

Demonstration

7

1

Follow up with client

Call

10

1

Scenario

Analysis

Defining Tasks: Points to Consider

A task is a unit of work to be completed by one or more people by a specific completion date. When using tasks in your application, you should consider the following points:

Tasks

A task is defined with a description, due date and category. Each task has an owner, who oversees or is responsible for the task, and one or more assignees who perform the work. The task can be related to a business object, such as an Opportunity, a customer or, one or more external contacts. Tasks may also have Notes for general information, Attachments for tracking e-mail or project documents and Interactions which record customer communications.

Task Templates

Often a set of Tasks are performed repeatedly for a particular process and to support this administrators can define Task Templates, which represent a group of tasks. These task templates can be invoked by users working on a particular business object, for example a lead, campaign, or an opportunity. The user selects the appropriate task template for the goal they want to achieve and this creates the tasks and associates them with the business object being worked on. This saves the user from creating multiple tasks when an Opportunity reaches a particular sales stage, or the same set of tasks each time a marketing campaign is created.

Note

Extensibility features are available on the Task object. For more details refer to the article Extending CRM Applications : How It Works

FAQs for Manage Customer Center Task Templates

How can I create a task template that is available to associate with assessment templates?

Create the task template with a subtype of Assessment.

Manage Customer Center Note Type Mapping

Defining Notes: Points to Consider

A note is a record attached to a business object that is used to capture nonstandard information received while conducting business. When setting up notes for your application, you should consider the following points:

Note Types

Note types are assigned to notes at creation to categorize them for future reference. During setup you can add new note types, and you can restrict them by business object type through the process of note type mapping.

Note Type Mappings

After note types are added, you must map them to the business objects applicable to your product area. Select a business object other than Default Note Types. You will see the note types only applicable to that object. If the list is empty, note type mapping doesn't exist for that object, and default note types will be used. Select Default Note Types to view the default note types in the system. Modifying default note types will affect all business objects without a note type mapping. For example, you have decided to add a new note type of Analysis for your product area of Sales-Opportunity Management. Use the note type mapping functionality to map Analysis to the Opportunity business object. This will result in the Analysis note type being an available option when you are creating or editing a note for an opportunity. When deciding which note types to map to the business objects in your area, consider the same issues you considered when deciding to add new note types. Decide how you would like users to be able to search for, filter, and report on those notes.

Note

Extensibility features are available on the Note object. For more information refer to the article Extending CRM Applications: how it works.

Manage Customer Center Assessment Templates

Assessment Templates: Points to Consider

Assessment templates let you analyze the health of a business object, such as a lead or an opportunity, and suggest appropriate next steps based on its diagnosis. To best plan and create assessment templates, you should consider the following points:

Ratings

A rating is a textual qualification such as Excellent. There are three delivered ratings in the assessment template: Excellent, Average, and Poor. Ratings provide a metric other than a numerical score for qualifying the outcome of an assessment. Ratings are created at the beginning of the assessment template creation process. They are later applied to possible responses to questions in the template, which associates each rating with a score. An appropriate feedback will be displayed to you based on the completed assessment score once you submit an assessment. When setting up ratings and applying them to possible responses, it is important to remember that they and their associated feedback text will eventually display as part of the overall assessed health of a business object.

Questions, Question Groups, and Question Weights

Questions are the main components of an assessment template. They are written such that they aid in systematically determining the health of a business object, and they are grouped into logical collections called Question Groups. Each question in the template is assigned a question weight, expressed as a percentage, which is the relative importance of the question within the template. When an assessment template is used to perform an assessment, a question's weight is multiplied by the normalized response score given for the question to produce a weighted score for that question. When setting up questions, question groups, and question weights, it is important to carefully analyze which factors determine the health of a particular business object (like a lead or an opportunity) in your organization. Use those factors to create your question groups; and then, for example, write three to five questions per group that are weighted according to your analysis. There is no limit to the number of questions that can be in a question group, but each question group must have at least one question.

Responses and Scores

Responses are attached to questions in the template. Each question should have at least two responses, unless it's a free-form only question. More than one response can be tied to the same rating but, between all of its responses, each question should accommodate at least two ratings, unless it's a free-form only question. For example, if your ratings are Excellent, Average, or Poor you may, for each question, include two responses that correspond to at least one of those ratings, such as average. There must be enough responses to cover at least two of the ratings such as Excellent and Average. You assign a score to each response for a question, and the application normalizes the score based on a standard scoring scale. When an assessment template is used to perform an assessment, a question's weight is multiplied by the normalized score of the response given for the question to produce a weighted score for that response. When adding responses to questions, ensure that the scores and ratings you assign to each response correlate. In other words, the higher the score you assign to the response, the higher the rating should be so that you have a strong quantitative relationship between the two. Also note that you can allow free-form responses for one or more questions in the template, but free-form responses are never scored.

Associated Task Templates

A task template is an instruction to generate a group of related activities. You can associate task templates with an assessment template in order to recommend tasks that should be performed after an assessment has been done for a business object. When you associate task templates with an assessment template, you can indicate a score range for each task template, and based on the total score of any assessment that uses your template, one or more task templates will be recommended as follow-up activities. In order for a task template to be available to associate with an assessment template, it must be assigned to the same business object type as that assigned to the assessment template, and it must have a subtype of Assessment. Ensure that you have set up task templates correctly before attempting to associate them to assessment templates.

Assessment Template Status Codes: Explained

Throughout the life of an assessment template, it can be assigned several different status codes.

These status codes control the actions you are allowed to make against an assessment template.

In Progress

This is the initial status of an assessment template. When an assessment template is at this status, you can edit any part of it. This is the only status at which you can delete a template. If the template is not deleted, it moves to the Active status next.

Active

This is the status assigned when the assessment template has been deployed for general usage. When an assessment template is at this status, you can make only minor textual edits to it, including, but not limited to, template description, question text correction, question sequencing change, response description, and score range feedback. From this status, you can move the template to Retired; you cannot delete it.

Retired

When an assessment template is at this status, it is no longer available for general usage. You cannot edit any part of it, and you cannot move it to any other status; however, it can still be copied. Active templates that are deleted revert to this status.

Assessment Template Score Range: How It's Calculated

The application calculates the score range for an assessment template using the question weights and the ratings and scores assigned to the possible responses for all the questions in the template. This topic explains when the score range is calculated and the components that are used in the calculation, so that you can make the best decision regarding the feedback text to apply to each score range. In addition to the automatic score range calculation, a manual method for adjusting score range is also available on the administration UI.

Settings That Affect Score Range

In order for the application to calculate the assessment template score range, you must:

How Score Range Is Calculated

The score ranges for each rating in an assessment template are determined using the lowest and the highest weighted response scores for each question. So for each rating score range, the lower end of the range starts where the previous rating range ended, and the higher end of the range is the sum of the highest weighted scores that can be attained for that rating.

This table displays a simple example of the components used in the score range calculation.


Question (Weight)

Response (Normalized Score)

Weighted Score

Rating

What is the customer win? (20%)

Lower Operating Cost (100)

20

Excellent

 

Higher Revenues (80)

16

Average

 

Other (53)

11

Average

 

Don't Know (27)

5

Poor

What is our win? (80%)

Reference (60)

48

Average

 

Resale (50)

40

Poor

 

Partnership (100)

80

Excellent

This table displays the score range calculation based on the components from the first table.


Rating

Score Range

Excellent

65 - 100

 

Average

46 - 64

 

Poor

0 - 45

 

Note

If a template administrator does not use a particular rating while assigning ratings to possible responses, this could result in improper score range calculations. To counteract this problem, the score range calculation uses a built-in correction algorithm to ensure proper score ranges. The correction algorithm works like this: For a question where a particular rating is skipped, the low score for the skipped rating is calculated to be equal to the high score of the next lower ranked rating. The high score for the skipped rating is calculated to be equal to the low score of the next higher ranked rating.

Using the ratings displayed in the tables above, if the rating Average is not used for a question's possible responses, the score range calculation assigns a low score to Average for that question that is equal to the high score of Poor for that question. It also assigns a high score to Average for that question that is equal to the low score of Excellent for that question. This ensures that the overall template score range for Average is calculated to fall between the score ranges for Poor and Excellent.

Assessment Template Components: How They Fit Together

The question weight, response score, and response rating are the assessment template components that fit together to calculate and display the overall assessment score, rating, and feedback text.

A question weight is multiplied by a response score to achieve a weighted score for an assessment template response. The weighted scores for all responses are added together to determine the total assessment score. This score will fall within a precalculated score range that is associated with a response rating and feedback text. Therefore, the score range within which the total assessment score falls determines the rating and feedback text to display for a completed assessment.

Assessment template components flow
chart

Question Weight

The question weight is the relative importance of a question within an assessment template, and it is expressed as a percentage. All of the question weights within a template must total to exactly 100. When an assessment template is used to perform an assessment, a question's weight is multiplied by the score of the response given for the question to produce a weighted score for that response.

Response Score

A response score is the score assigned to a possible response to a question in the template. The template administrator sets response scores with no upper or lower bounds, and each score is normalized in order to accurately score an assessment that uses the template. The response scores are normalized by assigning a score of 100 to the highest response score, and then all other responses are assigned a normalized score relative to that highest score.

When an assessment template is used to perform an assessment, the normalized score of the response given for the question is multiplied by the question's weight to produce a weighted score for that response.

Response Rating

A response rating is the rating assigned to a possible response to a question in the template. A rating is a textual qualification like Excellent or Poor that provides a metric other than a numerical score for qualifying the outcome of an assessment. A response rating is directly related to a response score, and this relationship should ensure that a higher score will translate to a higher rating.

Early in the template creation process, the administrator configures ratings to assign to responses. The administrator then assigns scores and ratings to responses, and the system calculates score ranges based on those entries. Each rating is assigned to a score range, and the administrator is given the opportunity to apply feedback text to the rating-score range combination.

When an assessment template is used to perform an assessment, the weighted scores from all responses are added to determine the total assessment score. That score will fall somewhere within the calculated score ranges, which then determines which rating is assigned to the assessment and what feedback text to display. The maximum total assessment score is 100.

Assessment Templates and Task Templates : How They Fit Together

One of the steps for creating an assessment template is associating task templates. You would take this step if you want to recommend sets of tasks to be done after an assessment is performed using your template. You associate task templates to ranges of scores in the assessment template, and where the overall assessment score falls within those ranges determines the tasks that are suggested to be performed after the assessment.

Assessment template to task template
relationships

Assessment Template

An assessment template is a set of weighted questions and possible responses used to evaluate the health of a business object such as an opportunity or a lead. An assessment template can be associated with one or more task templates that are recommended based on the outcome of an assessment.

Task Template

A task template is an instruction to generate a group of related activities. By marking a task template with a subtype of Assessment, you make that task template available for association with assessment templates. The task template's business object type should be the same as that assigned to the assessment template. When an assessment is performed using an assessment template that has associated task templates, one or more task templates are recommended based on the total score of that assessment and can be used to generate a list of activities to perform.

For example, you can associate a task template called Engage Business Development Manager with your assessment template called Potential for Win-Win. Associate the task template with the score range of 86 to 100, so if an assessment using the assessment template Potential for Win-Win scores within that range, the application recommends the Engage Business Development Manager task template and a list of follow-up activities based on that template can be generated.

FAQs for Manage Customer Center Assessment Templates

What happens if I include a free-form response for a question?

A score of 0 is assigned for free-form responses.

A free-form response option will have no effect on the overall assessment score. The free-form response offers the opportunity to enter a textual response to a question that does not conform to any of the pre-populated responses provided by the assessment template.

What's a Question Group?

A question group is a logical grouping of questions within an assessment template, and it is used strictly as a category header for those questions. Through careful naming of a question group, you can achieve the benefit of providing the user of the template with an approximate idea of the type of questions to expect in each group.

Why am I being asked to enter question weights again?

This step lists all of the assessment template questions in one place, and provides you with the opportunity to edit weights as necessary to ensure that the sum of all weights totals 100.