Siebel Order Management Guide Addendum for Communications > Creating Communications Promotion Groups >

About Promotion Groups

A promotion group is an offering that groups together existing contracts, assets, or services for shared benefits. For example, your company might offer a promotion group for an all-employees mobile phone plan, which brings lower rates for customer employees as a shared benefit. A promotion group can apply to any set of individuals including a company, an organization, or a family. A promotion group and its associated objects are added to an order as line items. The promotion group comes into existence as a result of the fulfillment of the order.

A promotion group differs from a bundled promotion in that a promotion group can contain another promotion as a member. A bundled promotion is used to group services that a customer buys and that become assets. By contrast, when a customer buys a promotion group the customer buys, not services, but the ability to group existing contracts or assets together to gain some benefit.

This topic describes promotion group functionality and defines the associated terms and concepts.

About Promotion Group Management

When managing promotion group functionality, users create promotion groups and several other entities on behalf of their customers.

A promotion group membership identifies the subscription of a customer asset to a promotion group. Memberships represent different roles in the promotion group, conferring different access rights to the customer subscribers. A promotion group member is a customer asset that is associated with a promotion group membership.

A promotion group subscriber is a person or entity that owns one or more assets (members) of the promotion group. The subscriber that controls all the assets of a promotion group is known as the promotion group owner. The promotion group owner is the holder of the account that owns the promotion group instance as an asset. This account is in the header of the order that contains the promotion group. Consequently, a promotion group has only one owner.

A reward is a product or promotion that is shared by all the members of a promotion group and that confers a benefit. For example, a promotion group reward might be 1000 Free Text Messaging minutes to be shared within a mobile phone community. Zero to multiple rewards can be associated with a promotion group. Benefits that can be conferred by subscribing to a promotion group might include: reward products, pricing adjustments to members, commitments for credits on bills, or a combination of these.

CAUTION:  Do not use promotion group products or promotion group membership products in any circumstances except in the context of promotion group functionality. Associating these products with other kinds of products, services, or promotions in a quote or order could cause unpredictable and undesired results.

About Promotion Group Administration

When setting up promotion group functionality, administrators define several types of program objects from which the customer entities are created.

The core of promotion group functionality resides in a promotion group definition, which acts as the template from which specific promotion groups are generated, much like an asset is generated from a product. Thus, a promotion group is a specific instance of a promotion group definition.

Similarly, promotion group memberships are generated from a membership definition, which defines a type of customer asset that can or must be a member of a promotion group. Thus, a promotion group membership is a specific instance of a membership definition. One or more membership definitions can be associated with a promotion group definition. A membership definition is itself a product with a Type field value of Promotion Group Membership. Products with Type field values other than Promotion Group Membership can be associated with a membership definition.

A membership definition points to a membership domain, which defines the collection of components (simple products, customizable products, and bundled promotions) or aggregates (product classes and product lines) that are eligible to be associated with the generated memberships. A membership domain defines the products and services that can be associated with a membership. Only one membership domain can be associated with a membership definition.

A membership attribute is the same as a product attribute, that is, an object used at run time to capture information that is relevant to the membership of an asset in a promotion group. For example, the choice of a short code to identify a mobile phone service within a promotion group is a membership attribute. A membership attribute is a characteristic that is specific to participation in the promotion group, and not to the asset itself. Membership attributes are grouped by a membership class, which is the same as a product class. When you associate a membership definition with a membership class, the membership definition inherits all the attributes defined for that class.

A reward definition is a type of product or promotion that is associated with a promotion group definition in order to convey a benefit to promotion group subscribers. Thus, a promotion group reward is a specific instance of a reward definition. One or more reward definitions can be associated with a promotion group definition. A reward definition is a product that can have any Type value.