This chapter describes how to create and manage multiple brands in a single Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (BRM) system. The tasks described in this section are generally done by a brand administrator after the host administrator configures the BRM database for brands.
You must have the Brand Manager component to create and use brands.
The brand administrator handles all operations for the brand, including the following tasks:
You need to create a price list for your brand before you can create customer accounts or sub-brands.
To create a price list for brand accounts:
Create a price list in Pricing Center that includes a plan list of type new named CSR.
Use the brand administrator login name and password when you commit the price list to BRM. This saves the price list to the brand.
Note:
You can see a brand administrator's login name by opening the brand in Brand Manager.The customer service representative (CSR) accounts that you create in a brand inherit the default account settings of the parent brand. Before you create your CSR accounts, configure the brand with the default settings that you want the accounts to have to eliminate the need to change the settings at a later date.
You can change the following account settings:
The payment method. The default is prepaid.
The minimum and maximum amounts that a CSR can credit or debit an account.
The minimum and maximum amounts that a CSR can adjust payments to an account.
For more information on changing account defaults, see "Setting Up Permissions in BRM Applications" in BRM System Administrator's Guide.
You use Self-Care Manager to create Web pages for each brand you host, which enable customers to display and modify their account data. The host administrator must first install and configure Self-Care Manager for the BRM system. Then, brand administrators set up the Web pages for each brand.
For more information on creating a brand-specific Web page, see "Setting Up Customer Self Care with Self-Care Manager".
You can design a different invoice template for each brand. Invoice templates are HTML files or XSL style sheets. You then use pin_load_invoice_template to load the HTML or XSL invoice template for each brand. If a brand does not have a template associated with it, BRM uses the default system template.
Note:
A brand can contain only one template.
You can create a separate template for each brand, but not for an access group.
See "Designing and Generating Invoices" in BRM Designing and Generating Invoices.
Accounts that exist in a brand are automatically assigned a general ledger (G/L) segment for that brand.
In a branded environment, the only G/L IDs you can use are those defined by the host administrator when the BRM database is configured. You are limited to these IDs, but you can map them to any G/L accounts in your external system.
For more information on defining a brand-specific general ledger system, see "About Collecting General Ledger Data" in BRM Collecting General Ledger Data.
Using the BRM reports functionality, brand managers can generate brand-specific customer activity and billing reports such as accounts receivable reports, credit card reports, customer usage reports, and general ledger reports.
Note:
Before you can define reports for your brand, the host administrator must install and configure Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher. See "Installing BRM Reports" in BRM Reports.The BRM Reports package includes brand-configured versions of the BRM base reports.
You use Customer Center to create CSR accounts for brands and to define change permissions for CSRs.
For more information, see Customer Center Help.
To create CSR accounts for a brand:
Log in to Customer Center by using the brand login name and password.
Create the CSR account.
Note:
Select the CSR plan to add the admin_client service to the account.Give the CSR permissions. See "Setting Up Permissions in BRM Applications" in BRM System Administrator's Guide.
Add the CSR to the access group for each brand you want the CSR to access.
Note:
Before brand administrators can give account permissions to CSRs, the host administrator must give brand administrators permission to set account permissions. See "Giving Permissions to the Brand Administrator".For more information on CSRs, see "About Managing Customers" in BRM Concepts
The CSR account appears in Customer Center as a child account of the brand administrator account. If you want, you can move the CSR account to the same level as the administrator account by dragging the account icon.
To create a sub-brand, log in to Configuration Center by using the brand administrator login name and password.
See "Creating Brands" for detailed instructions on creating sub-brands.
Note:
There is no limit to the number of sub-brands you can create; however, sub-brands in the same brand hierarchy must have unique names. Sub-brands in different brand hierarchies can share the same name.For example, the brand East Coast Enterprises cannot have two sub-brands named Sales Division. However, it can have a sub-brand named Joanne's Toys, and each of these brands can contain a sub-brand named Sales Division.
You control access to a sub-brand and account groups in a brand by creating an access group. You create access groups by using Access Privileges, an application in Configuration Center.
Note:
You must have the Branding component of BRM to use Access Privileges.See "Controlling Access to Top-Level Brands" for instructions.
Using Customer Center, CSRs and brand administrators can create and modify accounts for any brand or account group for which they have access privileges.
Note:
When a CSR logs in to either tool, the word Self appears in parentheses after the name of the brand to which the CSR's BRM account belongs. A CSR might have access privileges to multiple brands, but the CSR account belongs to only one brand.
By default, CSRs can modify only the customer accounts they create; they cannot access accounts created by other CSRs. To enable CSRs to access all accounts in a brand, you must add them to the access group for the brand.
Brands appear in Customer Center as regular accounts, but they are identified by the account number and name of the billing contact, not by the brand name.
CSRs that have access to multiple brands can access accounts in all brands at the same time, without having to close one brand and open another.
To access a branded customer account:
Log in to Customer Center by using the brand login name and password.
Click Search, which opens the Search Accounts dialog box.
From Brand Selector, choose the brand to open.
Enter the search criteria.
Click Search.
Note:
You cannot move a customer account to a different brand. You must first close the account in the old brand and then recreate the account in the new brand.You use Payment Tool to process payments, refunds, and payment reversals for brand accounts.
To process payments for brand accounts:
Log in to Payment Tool as a brand administrator or as a CSR with access privileges.
Click Select Brand and choose the brand to work in.
Process payments as you normally would.
See Payment Tool Help for details.
To inactivate or close a brand, change the status of the brand account in Customer Center or in Brand Manager. You cannot delete a brand from the BRM system.
Inactivating or closing a brand changes the status of the brand and all customer accounts that belong to that brand; it does not change the status of any sub-brands.
Note:
When you reactivate a brand, all customer accounts in the brand are also reactivated, regardless of whether they were inactivated or closed independently from the brand.See "About Closing, Inactivating, and Reactivating Brands" for more information.
To prevent users from creating duplicate brand names within a brand and its sub-brands (the default) or within a BRM system, set the check_unique flag in the PCM_OP_CUST_POL_SET_BRANDINFO policy opcode. To allow duplicate brand names, disable this flag.
To change the brand of an account, use PCM_OP_CUST_SET_BRANDINFO. This opcode updates the brand /account object.
The PCM_OP_CUST_COMMIT_CUSTOMER opcode calls the PCM_OP_CUST_SET_BRANDINFO opcode when a brand account is created.
PCM_OP_CUST_SET_BRANDINFO calls the PCM_OP_CUST_POL_SET_BRANDINFO policy opcode for any user customizations, such as preventing duplicate brands.
To customize brand assignment, use the PCM_OP_CUST_POL_SET_BRANDINFO policy opcode. This opcode allows you to customize the error information or information about the brand returned to PCM_OP_CUST_SET_BRANDINFO. the PCM_OP_CUST_POL_SET_BRANDINFO policy opcode also includes hooks for setting site-specific information.