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

About Market Development Funds

A market development fund (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 you might create an MDF to send several of your partners to a large trade show.

To work with an MDF, you go through the following stages:

• You create the fund. When you create a fund, you specify how much funding it has and which partners participate in it.
• You authorize 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 will route it to other employees for further review.
• You or your partners request 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.
• You approve 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.
• You track the spending. The MDF checkbook lets you track the amount of credits, debits, and total funds available in the a fund.