This chapter covers the following topics:
Referral Management enables partners to refer business opportunities that they cannot fulfill directly to the vendor organization. For example, the partner learns of an opportunity for a customer who is interested in one of the vendors products that the partner does not sell. In this scenario, the partner can submit a referral to the vendor and receive a percentage of the revenue.
When a partner submits a referral, it is routed to the appropriate approver(s). Approvers are notified of the referral and they review it and approve, reassign, or decline it. When the referral is approved, the partner is compensated after the customer places an order. The compensation is reviewed and approved internally and then sent to the partner for acceptance. After partners accept the compensation, the vendor pays the commission.
Vendors and partners receive notifications about the referral activity and can navigate directly from the notification into the associated referral. Notifications are configured by vendors and sent when the status changes, for example, when a referral is approved.
Vendors and partners can access a summary list of referrals that they have access to. They can build personal views to quickly find referrals in which they are most interested.
The Referral to Partner Compensation flow involves the following steps:
Referral request is submitted by partner
Referral request is approved by a channel manager and a DQM approver
A lead or opportunity is created
Commission is calculated and payment is processed
The partner accesses the system and submits a referral specifying customer and contact information as well as product categories, amount and any required additional information.
When a request is submitted, Oracle Workflow routes the request to the appropriate vendor approver. Workflow manages the entire approval process and you can configure notifications to be sent as soon as the request is approved, reassigned, or declined for more information. Oracle Workflow is driven by Oracle Approval Management (AME).
For more information on workflow, see the Oracle Workflow Guide.
The approval process includes two steps:
Verify the data
Check for duplicate records
You can review information entered by the partner. If you are satisfied with the data, you can proceed to the next step and check if there are already duplicates in the system.
If a duplicate referral, lead, or opportunity exists, the approver selects the referral and links it with the referral submitted by the partner. If a duplicate referral does not exist, the approver approves the referral after viewing the details.
After the approval, the customer and contact of the referral is checked against existing customers and contacts in the system.
Approvers can reassign requests to another vendor user and specify a reason and provide comments. Workflow routes the request to the new approver, who is notified that a new referral requires his/her approval. The alternate approver gets notified via notifications that are set up.
If the reviewer finds that the information is incomplete or inaccurate or that there is a duplicate, they can decline the referral and provide comments. Workflow notifications are sent to partners and to other users based on setup.
Data Quality Management (DQM) is a tool that is used to check for potential duplicate customers and contacts for a given customer or contact. The system finds potential duplicates using rules defined within DQM.
After the reviewer approves the referral, the referral must go through the DQM approval process before it is actually fully converted into a lead or an opportunity.
If a potential duplicate customer exists, the referral status changes to Pending customer dedup. The approver selects the existing customer and the system links the selected customer with the referral.
If a duplicate customer does not exist, the approver creates a new customer and the system links the new customer with the referral.
If a duplicate contact exists, the approver selects the existing contact and the system links the selected contact with the referral.
If a duplicate contact does not exist, a new person with a contact relationship with the specified customer is automatically created by the system.
When a referral is approved, it is automatically converted into a lead or an opportunity. If the referral is converted to a lead, the lead is processed through the lead engine and the system qualifies, ranks and assigns the lead. The lead is then assigned to a sales person and eventually converted into a qualified sales opportunity.
After the opportunity is won and the order booked and eventually shipped, the compensation process begins. If the opportunity is lost and closed, the referral status is updated and the partner is notified.
When the order is shipped, the system automatically calculates the compensation due to the partner. Then, a claim is automatically created and assigned to a claim analyst. The claim analyst researches the claim, and starts the compensation process. After the claim is approved internally, the compensation amount is published to the partner who needs to accept the compensation or ask for more assistance. When the partner agrees with the compensation amount, the claimed amount is assigned to the payables department for processing the payment.
You can perform advanced searches based on referral attributes. You can customize the search criteria by adding or removing search attributes. You can choose attributes on which you want to base your search. You can save your search criteria and use it as the default view of referrals.
While searching for a referral, you can select the view name, number of rows displayed, description and optionally set the display and sort options. In addition, you can select columns that you want to display in the search results.
Use this procedure to create and submit a referral request on behalf of a partner.
Navigation
Log in as a channel manager and navigate to Referrals Quick Link > Referrals page. Then select the referral benefit from the Create drop-down list and click Go. The Create Referral page appears.
Prerequisites
None.
Notes
Provide a referral name, and then select the partner and the partner contact. The partners that appear on the list are enrolled in a partner program that offers the referral benefit selected. The partner contact will receive notifications about the referral.
Enter details in the Customer and Contact Information region.
Enter an organization name, select a country from the drop-down list and click Go. The list of countries available in the drop-down list is dependent on the referral initiative you selected. If a country is not listed, click Cancel to navigate back to the Referrals page and select the appropriate initiative. The address fields change to reflect the address format valid for the country selected. Enter the address information.
Enter product categories for the referral in the Products region.
The list of products available is determined by the referral benefit selected. The unit price of all the products selected for the referral must be greater than or equal to the threshold amount specified in the referral benefit for the matching geographic region.
Select a currency for the products.
This becomes the currency displayed on the lead or opportunity record once the referral request is approved.
Enter notes in the Notes region by selecting a note type from the Note Type drop-down list. Select a value from the Status drop-down list to make the note private, internal or public.
You can use notes to store and maintain any extra information/comments while you are creating the referral.
To save a draft without submitting, click Save.
To save and submit for approval, click Submit.
If you are an approver, you can view referrals that are awaiting your approval or that you have already approved or declined. If you are a channel manager, you can view referrals submitted by the partners you manage. If you are the superuser you can view all referrals.
You can view the status of a given referral and manually change the status of a referral if you are a superuser.
You can evaluate a referral and approve or decline it.
You can approve referrals from either the Message Center or the Referrals page. Navigating via the Message Center Link provides you a list of open notifications and you can navigate to a referral from here. You can view the notification indicating that a referral is submitted for your approval. Use the steps below to navigate via the Referrals Quick Link.
Requests can be routed to a number of approvers who can approve the request in parallel. All approvers who are notified of an request, regardless of whether or not it is sent out in a parallel or serial fashion, can view the enrollment after any action is taken.
Use this procedure to approve a referral.
Navigation
Log in as an vendor user who is a referral request approver and navigate to Message Center Link or Referrals Quick Link > Referrals page.
Prerequisites
None.
Steps
Click the Update icon for a referral.
The Referral Details page appears.
Review the referral details. Once you decide the data entered by the partner is valid and this is a potential good lead, click Continue to review potential duplicates.
The Referral Duplicates page appears. If the system has not found potential duplicates, the Approve button is displayed, indicating that the referral is ready for approval.
Review the potential duplicates.
The system displays open leads, opportunities and referrals on similar customer records and product categories. If you find a duplicate record, select the record and click Link and Decline or Link and Accept.
If the referral is not a duplicate referral, click Accept. If the approver is also the customer approver, the user goes through the customer deduplication process. Otherwise, the next approver is notified. If there is no additional approver, the referral is approved automatically. The status changes to Pending Customer Dedup if the system finds potential duplicates.
If an approver realizes that he cannot make the approve/decline decision based on the details supplied, he can return the Referral to the submitter for additional information or clarification. This is done by clicking the Return Request button on the Referral Approval: Data Review page. The original submitter accesses the returned Referral and views the reason for the return. A notification can be set up, if necessary. The original submitter updates the Referral with requested information and resubmits the transaction, and the Referral goes through the approval process again.
A vendor user can reassign and decline referrals that have been submitted to her for approval. Reassigning allows the user to select another referral approver to complete the referral approval process.
Use this procedure to reassign or decline a referral.
Navigation
Log in as a channel manager and navigate to Referrals Quick Link > Referrals page.
Prerequisites
None.
Steps
Select the referral and click Update.
The Referral Details page appears.
Decline or reassign the referral:
Click Decline. You can also link the referral to another referral and approve or decline it.
Click Reassign to reassign the referral to another approver. The Reassign page appears.
Select a different country from the Country LOV or select a new approver and click Apply.
The list of approvers displays all channel managers.
Data Quality Management (DQM) is a tool from the Trading Community Architecture (TCA) group that is used to check for potential duplicate customer/contact/address and/or contact points for a given customer/contact/address/contact points attributes.
When a referral is created, the customer name, reseller entered by the partner needs to be matched to an existing record in TCA, if one exists.
If no matches are found for the customer, reseller (via DQM), a new customer is automatically created by the system.
If there are no matches for the person specified (via DQM), a new person with a contact relationship with the specified customer is automatically created by the system.
If there are possible customer matches, the referral status changes to Pending Customer Dedup after the referral approver has approved a submitted referral. The DQM approver is notified and can review the matches to review the organization and merge with an existing organization or choose to create a new customer.
If there are possible person matches, the DQM approver can review the matches and select an existing contact relationship in the system or choose to create a new contact.
Use this procedure to check for customer duplicates and ensuring that the leads/opportunities are generated for the right customer.
Navigation
Log in as an approver and navigate to Message Center Link or Referrals Quick Link > Referral Summary page.
You can approve referrals from either the Message Center or the Referral Summary page. Navigating via the Message Center Link provides you a list of open notifications.
Prerequisites
A referral with the status Pending Customer Dedup must exist.
Steps
In the Referral Detail page, click Continue.
Potential duplicate customers are displayed.
If you find a duplicate, select the record and click Use Existing Organization.
If the system finds a duplicate contact, choose between Use Existing Contact or Create New Contact.
If you do not find a duplicate customer, click Create New Organization. The system creates a new record using the information entered by the partner in the customer fields. In addition, a new contact is created using information entered by the partner.
A partner's request for compensation for a successful referral must be processed through the Oracle Trade Management application. A channel manager receives notification when a claim has been created for a partner. Refer to the Oracle Trade Management User Guide for additional information on completing claim processing.
The referral log tracks the history of the referral. To view the referrals log, navigate to Referrals Quick Link > Referrals, and then select the referral. From the Referral Details page, click the Log tab to view the log information.
The following table provides information on different statuses.
You receive notifications that notify the status of the referral at various stages in the referral process.
| Technical Name | Status |
|---|---|
| APPROVED | Approved |
| APPRVD_PENDNG_CSTMR_DQM | Pending Customer Review |
| CLOSED_DEAD_LEAD | Closed. Dead Lead |
| CLOSED_FEE_PAID | Closed. Fee Paid |
| CLOSED_LOST_OPPTY | Closed. Lost Opportunity |
| COMP_AWAIT_PRT_ACCEPT | Awaiting For Partner Acceptance |
| COMP_CANCELLED | Compensation Cancelled |
| COMP_INITIATED | Processing Compensation |
| COMP_BEING_NEGOTIATED | Negotiating Compensation |
| DECLINED | Declined |
| DRAFT | Draft |
| EXPIRED | Expired |
| MANUAL_CLOSE | Closed by Vendor |
| MANUAL_EXTEND | Extended by Vendor |
| PAYMENT_BEING_PROCESSED | Payment Being Processed |
| SUBMITTED_FOR_APPROVAL | Pending Approval |
Access to referrals are controlled based on user types and permissions.
User Types
Vendor Users - Employees in the vendor organization who can view referrals that they created. They can also view referrals that they have access to, because they are on the partner's channel team. An example of a vendor user is a channel manager who is responsible for managing a set of partners. Another example of a vendor user is a sales representative managing an opportunity generated from a referral.
Vendor Managers - Employees in the vendor organization who can view and update all referrals within their hierarchy.
Vendor Administrators - Employees in the vendor organization who can perform system setup activities.
Vendor Approvers - Employees in the vendor organization who can approve referrals. After they have performed the approval, they continue to have access to the referral.
DQM Approvers - Employees in the vendor organization who can run DQM in order to link customer and contact information on the referral into the master customer record in the system.
Partner Users - Employees in the partner organization who can view and update referrals they have created and referrals where they are identified as the Partner Contact.
Partner Administrators - Employees in the partner organization who can view and update all referrals owned by their organization.
Permissions
Super User Permission - [PV_REFERRAL_SUPERUSER] - Allows a vendor user to view and update all referrals and allows a partner user to view and update all referrals owned by their organization.
Compensation Approver - [PV_REF_COMP_APPROVER] - This permission enables partners to view and accept compensation for referrals.
Note that users who are granted access to all leads and opportunities within the sales application can access all referrals that generated a lead or an opportunity.