Siebel Consumer Sector Guide > Product Distribution >

About Controlling Product Distribution

Distributing the right products to the right account is a key challenge for many companies. The Siebel Consumer Sector applications allow you to structure and track the distribution of a wide range of products to large numbers of accounts. In addition, you can control where the product is held within an account's premises. Topics include:

• About Distribution Lists
• About Account Market Segments
• About Buying Groups

Your company can control product distribution in the following ways:

• Manage distribution lists to automate product distribution. By assigning distribution codes to categories, products, and accounts within a customer's product distribution account hierarchy, you build a distribution system that determines which products are distributed to each account.

  For more overview information about distribution lists, see About Distribution Lists.

• Classifying accounts by market segment. Classifying an account's market segment automates the product distribution process by controlling the products (or product categories) that will be available to that account for assortment planning, or that will be displayed in that account's product catalog. You classify your customer accounts' market segments by applying the personalization attributes Account Channel and Product Differentiator for each account, and each product or product category or both.

  For more overview information about account market segments, see About Account Market Segments.

• Assigning product categories to an account. Administrators or end users can manually assign specific product categories to specific accounts, so that only those products will be available for distribution through assortment plans.
• Creating buying groups. Buying groups are accounts that act as product distributors, or suppliers, to their multiple member accounts. Buying groups can also help automate the management of assortment planning.

  For more overview information about buying groups, see About Buying Groups.

• Creating sizes and size distribution. You can establish the sizes available for each product or type of product your company manufactures. You can then establish the distribution of sizes, or quantity multiplier for each size, usually based on marketing trends. Establishing sizes and size distributions automates much of the process of designating sizes and quantities when sales representatives are assembling customer quotes or assortment plans.
• Designating merchandising locations. You can assign multiple merchandising locations to an account.