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Quote and Order Concepts in Asset-Based Ordering

This section describes quote and order concepts that are useful for understanding asset-based ordering.

New Quotes and Orders

In asset-based ordering, new quotes and orders are those that identify products and services that are first-time acquisitions for a customer or that are repeat orders such as additional software licenses.

After being processed and fulfilled, new quotes and orders result in new assets that become part of a customer's profile. A line item from an order becomes an installed asset if it is marked as a trackable asset in the product record.

Delta Quotes and Delta Orders

A delta quote or order is usually initiated when the customer asks to make a change to an existing product or service.

For example, the local telephone company provides local phone service to a residential customer. After the service has been installed, customers may want to make additions and changes to the services they receive, such as adding call waiting or changing the number to call when forwarding a call.

Each of these changes is a delta (or change) of the current asset. When the customer inquires about them, the salesperson issues a delta quote for the change. After the customer accepts the delta quote, it becomes a delta order.

Quote-to-Order Explode Functionality

With asset-based ordering, when a quote is converted to an order, line items with a quantity greater than one can be exploded, so that multiple quantities of an item become individual line items. Each line item becomes an individual asset when the order is fulfilled.

Multiple Open Orders

Multiple orders may be in progress for a particular customer or even a particular service item at any given time.

One benefit of having multiple open orders is that when a customer places an order and then reconsiders and requests different options before the order has been fulfilled, both requests can be placed, tracked, and addressed appropriately.

Modify Order

A modify order is an order that modifies an asset. When a modify order is placed, it does not modify the asset listed in the customer's profile, because it has not been fulfilled yet. The customer profile is only changed when the order is fulfilled.

Auto Asset Button

You might see an Auto Asset button on the Orders screen. This button is used for demonstration purposes, to show how order line items can be converted into assets that display in the Service Items view of the customer's service profile.

In actual deployments, a workflow is used to create assets automatically from completed order line items, so this button is not used.

Action Codes

New action codes for line items on quotes and orders help to keep track of changes made through Modify Orders and Supplemental Orders. These codes are Add, Update, Delete, Suspend, Resume, and -. They appear next to line items on quotes and orders to show which items will be affected, and which will not.

Supplemental Order

A supplemental order is created by revising an open order. A supplemental order overrides an order that has already been sent to the fulfillment system, is still in process, and has not yet been fulfilled. Supplemental orders are useful when a customer wants to make further changes to an order while it is in transit— that is, before its status is Complete in the fulfillment system.

The following is an example of when a supplemental order can be useful.

A customer currently subscribes to a wireless plan and now wants to change the call-forwarding number associated with the plan. In the Account Summary view, Service Items list, the call center sales representative selects the plan, clicks Modify, and creates a quote for the change. With the customer's approval, the sales representative then converts the quote to an order and submits it. The order is then sent to a fulfillment system. There is now an open order for this item.

An hour later, the customer calls again and wants to back out the change. The call center representative again goes to the Account Summary. In the Orders list, the call center representative drills down into the open order and reviews the order. The employee selects the appropriate line item, makes a change during the configuration session that returns the call-forwarding number to the previous number, and clicks Done to add the change. The employee then submits the supplemental order.

In this case, the change the end user submits is supplemental to the original order.

NOTE:  Some fulfillment systems do not support supplemental orders. Others only support a limited set of allowed changes. To support the widest possible set of fulfillment systems, your Siebel application supports these types of changes to an order: Add, Delete, Update, and no change.

Explode and Ungroup Line Items

If you use asset-based ordering, you can automate the ungrouping of multiple quantities of products that will become assets, so that each can be given a unique integration ID. When this feature is turned on, when an end user converts a quote to an order, each line item with a quantity of more than one is ungrouped to become multiple items, each with a quantity of one. This automatic ungrouping is referred to as exploding the items.

NOTE:  Ungrouping or exploding items is only required when the items will become trackable assets, and therefore require integration IDs. Items that will not become assets may remain as an order for a multiple quantity, without being ungrouped.

In addition to providing unique integration IDs, the Explode feature can simplify the process of creating complex orders. The following example shows how an end user can take advantage of the Ungroup feature to simplify a bulk order.

The customer wants to order ten local lines, with similar configurations: five will have voice mail, five will have call waiting. The customer wants each of the ten lines to have the same four additional features. An employee end user can start by creating one line item—with the four features that are desired on each of them—and the quantity two. Then, the end user ungroups that item, so that there are two items. Next, the end user takes one of those items, adds voice mail to it, and changes the quantity to five. Then, the user takes the second line item, adds call waiting to it, and changes the quantity of it to five. Finally, the user ungroups both line items, so that there are ten individual line items.

Now each line item has a setting for an integration ID, which is assigned when the line items are created. In addition, each line item has a field for Service ID. Depending on the implementation of the Siebel applications with the back end systems, the employee end user in this example might click a button to populate the field with phone numbers from the asset management system, or a phone number might be assigned as part of the provisioning process.