Siebel Partner Relationship Management Administration Guide > Using Market Development Funds >

About Market Development Funds

Brand owners administer market development funds (MDFs) using Siebel PRM Manager, and partners can apply for market development funds on the PRM Portal. The Advanced MDF option provides additional partner program features. For more information on Advanced MDFs, see Managing the Advanced MDF Option.

An MDF makes it possible to do joint marketing activities with one or more partners. For example, you might create an MDF to fund a joint advertising campaign with one of your large partners or to send several of your partners to a large trade show.

Working with an MDF requires the following steps:

• Creating the fund. When you create a fund, you specify how much funding it has and which partners participate in it.
• Authorizing employees to approve fund requests. You must authorize your employees to approve fund requests. Employees have a fund request approval limit. If a request is greater than an employee's limit, that employee routes it to other employees for further review.
• Requesting funding. After a fund has been created, people from the partner company or from the brand owner company can request funding on behalf of partners who participate in the fund.
• Approving funding requests. Your company must approve or reject funding requests. Optionally, you can use Siebel Business Process Designer to inform people by email when they must review a request or provide more information.
• Tracking the spending. The MDF checkbook lets you track the amount of credits, debits, and total funds available in the a fund.