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Differences in the Siebel eSales Web Site

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Siebel eSales Administration Guide describes the Siebel eSales Web site that customers see when they access Siebel eSales.

The Siebel eSales customer Web site for communications, media, and energy has a number of differences from the standard Siebel eSales Web site. The most important differences are:

Support for the complex ordering process used in communications, media, and energy, including multiple price types.
Support for account management needed by business users in these industries.
Improved customer usability with additional workflows.

Support for Complex Ordering Process

In the communications, media, and energy industries, companies provide services to their customers over an extended period of time. Typically, these products and services change over that time. New products and services are added, the attributes of existing products and services are modified, and services are disconnected or moved. These changes correspond to the four types of orders, which are move order, new order, modify order, and disconnect order. These order types are known within the industry as MACD (Move, Add, Change, and Delete).

Siebel eSales for CME has a number of differences to support these sorts of complex orders and the complex bundles of products and services that customers purchase:

Modify and disconnect orders. The user can make changes to or disconnect active service items.
Place supplemental orders. The user can make changes to orders that have not yet been fulfilled.
Ungroup products. The user can make a bulk order and then change individual items in the bulk order.
Associate products with assets. The additional fields Service ID and Service Point ID are unique identification codes for service or hardware.
Multiple price types. In the energy, media, and communications industries, a service product may have multiple associated price types. They include recurring, nonrecurring, and usage based price types.

In addition, Siebel eSales for CME has changed several views so the process of placing orders is adapted to the communications, media, and energy industries. For example, when a first-time customer is ordering a service, a workflow process is used in combination with modified views to automate the creation of an account and to associate the order with service items.

For more information about complex order processing, and CME-specific workflows and views, see Complex Order Management Guide for Industry Solutions.

Support for Complex Account Hierarchies

In the communications, media, and energy industries, it is common for a single customer to have multiple accounts, representing different types of service at different locations. For example, a customer may have accounts for its electric and gas service at a number of locations.

For this reason, Siebel eCommunications and Siebel eEnergy allow you to define hierarchical accounts and assign them to your customers. For example, you might define a parent account for a customer's business, separate child accounts for each utility service at each of the customer's sites, and a billing account which will aggregate the bills for the service provided at different group of sites. For more information about account hierarchies, see the section about accounts in Siebel eCommunications Guide or Siebel eEnergy Guide.

Automatic Account Creation

Because communications, media, and energy services involve a long-term relationship with the customer, Siebel eSales for communications, media, and energy automatically create accounts for first-time buyers of service products who do not have accounts.

Account Management

Siebel eSales for communications, media, and energy allows established customers to manage their account records.

The current account link provided in the My Account view allows users to access this information. They can use this screen to:

Change the current account. Customers can use the Current Account list at the bottom of the screen to select the account they want to obtain information from or make purchases from.
Select the primary account. Customers can use the Primary Account list at the bottom of the screen to select the primary account.
Add new accounts. Customers can click the Create New Account button to add and enter information about a new account. In addition, customers can use the Parent Account field to create account hierarchies.
Add new addresses. Customers can click the Add button of the Current Account Address list to add new addresses for the current account.

NOTE:  For security reasons, new addresses must be typed instead of selected from a list of addresses.

Billing and Service Accounts

To support this sort of complex account structure, Siebel eSales for communications, media, and energy has the following added fields:

Service Account. Allows users to associate the service delivery location with a product.
Billing Account. Allows users to associate the billing location with a product.

For information about how these fields are used in account hierarchies, see the section about accounts in Siebel eCommunications Guide or Siebel eEnergy Guide.

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