This chapter covers the following topics:
Oracle Leads Management provides solutions to automate and optimize prospect-to-sales conversion across the enterprise. It provides a staging area for all prospective leads. In the staging area, the leads go through data quality processing, qualification, and prioritization before being assigned to sales teams for conversion.
Where does a lead appear in the Marketing and Sales cycles? Figure: Leads in the Marketing and Sales Cycles illustrates this.
Leads in the Marketing and Sales Cycles
Marketing Campaign: The marketing department kicks off a campaign by targeting prospective customers.
Enquiry: In response to the campaign, interested prospects make an enquiry. At this point, the details of the prospects are captured.
Leads: The details of prospects who respond to a campaign or who make an enquiry are stored as leads. Leads are prospective customers. After the leads are processed, they are assigned to appropriate sales teams.
Opportunity: The sales teams convert some leads to opportunities. An opportunity is still a prospect, but more mature. An opportunity is more likely to be converted to an order.
Quote/Order: Promising opportunities receive a quote from the sales team. When the quote is accepted, the opportunity become an order.
The Oracle Leads Management features include:
Capture of leads - Leads are captured from various sources such as marketing campaigns, events, and referrals.
Customer and lead data quality - Captured records are processed for customer and leads quality.
Interactions linked to leads - Relevant interactions are attached to leads, and wherever appropriate, new leads are generated from interactions.
Real time flexible rules engine - The Leads Processing Engines can be set up for lead filtering, evaluation and distribution based on business rules.
Integrated monitoring - Sales-ready leads are monitored for prompt action by the sales team.
Lead utilization and effectiveness analysis - Using the operational reports, the effectiveness of the engines and the status of the leads processed by them are tracked.