Siebel Partner Relationship Management Administration Guide > Managing Sales > Scenarios for Partner-Led Sales >

Brand Owner Creates Opportunities and Transfers Them to Partners

All the other scenarios in this chapter assume that you are working with partners who use Siebel Partner Portal. However, you can also share opportunities with partners who do not use Siebel Partner Portal by using opportunity transfer to move opportunity data to the partner's customer relation management (CRM) system.

The brand owner can initiate the opportunity transfer. After the opportunity has been transferred, the brand owner may send updates to the partner that update it in the partner's system, and the brand owner may query the partner's system to receive updated information about the opportunity.

If the partner uses Siebel PRM or some other CRM system that supports opportunity transfer, the partner can also initiate an opportunity transfer, then send updates to the brand owner's system, or query the brand owner's system to receive updates.

This business scenario for using opportunity transfer is similar to Brand Owner Creates Opportunities and Assigns Them to Partners. It also applies to you if you generate opportunities through your marketing campaigns and you can clearly determine which partner should follow up on each opportunity. However, it is appropriate when you are working with large partners who have their own CRM systems and do not use Siebel Partner Portal.

This scenario shows how to transfer opportunities and send and receive updates manually. In practice, a brand owner can use Siebel Business Process Designer to automate the process of transferring opportunities to partners and of sending and receiving updates.

This scenario consists of the following steps:

Step 1: The brand owner sets up the ASIs for opportunity transfer

Opportunity transfer uses Siebel's Applications Services Interfaces (ASIs) to synchronize your Siebel database with the partner's CRM system.

Before you can transfer opportunities, you must set up the appropriate ASIs. There are three ASIs used for opportunity transfer—one used to initiate the opportunity transfer data, one used to send updates to the partner's system, and one used to query the partner's CRM system to receive updates.

For more information on setting up ASIs, see Setting Up Application Services Interfaces.

Step 2: The brand owner enters an opportunity and transfers it to a partner

The brand owner gathers and enters information about the opportunity in the same way described in the previous scenario, Brand Owner Creates Opportunities and Assigns Them to Partners. However, after entering the data, the brand owner clicks the Transfer Opportunity button, rather than simply assigning ownership of the opportunity to a partner company or partner employee.

To enter a new opportunity

  1. Navigate to the Opportunities screen.
  2. In the Opportunities list, click New to add a new record to that list.
  3. Enter information about the opportunity in the new record.
  4. In the Organization field for the new record, select the partner organization.
  5. Click the Transfer Opportunity view tab.
  6. In the Transfer Opportunity form, click Transfer Opportunity.

    7. A list of partners appears, including all partners who are set up for opportunity transfer.

  7. Select the partner you want to transfer the opportunity to, and click OK.

    8. The opportunity is transferred, and the Transfer Status field is updated with a value that specifies whether the transfer was successful.

Step 3: Partners view and work on the opportunity

After the opportunity has been transferred, partner employees work on it in the same way that they would work on any opportunity in their CRM system.

When the opportunity is transferred, all the contacts, revenues, notes, and activities associated with it are also transferred to your partner's CRM system, and converted to the data used in that system. For example, if your partner's system uses the word "lead" instead of "opportunity," the opportunity will appear to the partner as a Lead record.

Step 4: The brand owner tracks the opportunity

You can track a partner's progress on opportunities by using opportunity transfer to query the partner's CRM system and to update the opportunity record and related information back in the Siebel Partner Manager.

For example, if the partner's CRM system supports equivalent data, you can look at the Activity records attached to the opportunity, and look at the status field of each opportunity to see if the sale has been closed. If the partner has updated the revenue associated with the opportunity, you can use the Revenue record in your forecasting.

NOTE:  You can receive an update from a partner only if you already transferred the opportunity to the partner or if the partner transferred the opportunity to you.

To query the partner's database to update an opportunity

  1. Navigate to the Opportunities screen.
  2. In the Opportunities list, select an opportunity that has been transferred to a partner.
  3. Click the Click the Transfer Opportunity view tab.
  4. In the Transfer Opportunity form, click Receive Update, and click OK to confirm the action.

    5. Siebel Partner Manager queries the partner's system for an update of the opportunity.


 Siebel Partner Relationship Management Administration Guide 
 Published: 18 April 2003