This chapter covers the following topics:
This chapter assists you in using Oracle Sales. It does not describe every field and value, assuming that many things are obvious to you as a sales professional. Rather, it seeks to define certain terms, give context for events, and help you locate the Oracle Sales functionality you need to get your job done.
Oracle Sales can be personalized by your administrator, so the functionality and navigation available to you in Oracle Sales might differ from what is described in this chapter.
The Sales Dashboard provides you with access to varied sales data from a single location. Rather than access the various areas of Oracle Sales individually, you can view summarized data on one page and see an overview of your current sales efforts. This summarized view enables you to look for issues in your business information and to use links to access detailed information.
The Sales Dashboard displays these information areas:
The Sales Funnel enables you to view a summary of the open opportunities in the pipeline. Each section of the funnel graphic can represent a separate sales opportunity stage or multiple stages. Click a funnel section to view all current open opportunities that can be forecasted in that stage or group of stages in the sales cycle.
Move your mouse over the text in the funnel graphic to see the total pipeline amount for the opportunities in that stage or group of stages. The amount is displayed in your default currency. To see the total for all of the opportunities you have in the pipeline, move your mouse over the text 'Sales Cycle' in the graphic. These are the actual amounts (not the forecast amounts) for your opportunities.
The Shortcuts are a list of links to sales tools and pages in Oracle Sales. The shortcuts list can be personalized by your administrator.
The Latest Submitted Forecast displays a summary of your most recently submitted forecast data, based on the set currency and your default forecast parameter settings (sales group, current period, and category). This summary includes Best Case, Forecast amount, and Worst Case.
The Sales Dashboard displays your daily appointments and tasks. The calendar you see can vary according to settings. You can view appointments for a specific day by entering that date, or clicking the calendar icon to select a date. To view today's appointments, click Today.
Your tasks are listed in a separate table. Sort the listed tasks by clicking the column headings. You can view task details by clicking the task name, or update a task by clicking the Update icon. Access details on appointments and tasks by selecting the appropriate link.
You can synchronize Oracle Sales calender with external calenders using Oracle Sales for Handhelds.
The Leads table lists your leads. Click the lead names to access an individual lead to view details or update the lead; click the contact or customer names to access details or update the contact or customer information. Sort the listed leads by clicking the column headings.
You can choose to use a view to filter the display of leads in the Leads table. Select a view from the menu and click Go. Click Personalize to access the Personalize Views page to duplicate, create, update, or delete a view, as well as to change your default view. Views provided with Oracle Sales cannot be updated or deleted. Leads Views that you create on the Sales Dashboard work only with the Leads table on the Sales Dashboard.
Click Full List to display a list of leads. This button is available through personalization.
Click Convert to Opportunity to convert a lead to an opportunity.
Click Export to download the list of leads to a file with a .csv extension that you can use in a spreadsheet application. The Export button can be added through personalization performed by your system administrator.
The Opportunities table lists your opportunities. Click the opportunity names to access an individual opportunity to view details or update the opportunity; click the customer names to access a customer to view details or update customer information. Sort the listed opportunities by clicking the column headings.
You can choose to use a view to filter the display opportunities in the Opportunities table. Select a view from the menu and click Go. Click Personalize to access the Personalize Views page to duplicate, create, update, or delete a view, as well as change your default view. Views provided with Oracle Sales cannot be updated or deleted. Opportunity Views that you create on the Sales Dashboard work only with the Opportunities table on the Sales Dashboard.
Click Export to download the list of opportunities to a file with a .csv extension that you can use in a spreadsheet application. The Export button can be added through personalization performed by your system administrator.
Click Full List to display a list of opportunities. This button is available through personalization.
Proposals
Lists proposals and has the same views functionality as the Leads and Opportunities tables.
Quotes
Lists quotes and has the same views functionality as the Leads and Opportunities tables.
Click Full List to display the Customers simple search page which lists customers and enables you to perform searches. This button is available through personalization. Also available through personalization is the Order By menu, which enables you to sort your top customers by Order Amount or Opportunity Amount.
The Leads by Age table lists your leads by rank and divides them into age groups. The table also shows closed leads, converted leads, and the conversion percentage.
This table enables you to find the older leads that might need immediate attention. Select the lead number links to view groups of leads. For example, if there are 25 leads with the rank of Hot Lead in the Open <=2 Days column, click the number 25 to display a list of those 25 leads with that rank and age.
Click Full List to display a list of leads. This button is available through personalization.
Note that this table might not display all of your leads that are currently in the system. For optimum performance when displaying the Sales Dashboard, it is recommended to limit how far in the past Oracle Sales must go when calculating the number of older leads. During system setup, your system administrator can define how far back in time these calculations should be made. Check with your manager or system administrator to determine the maximum age of leads that are displayed in this table.
Cross-Sell/Up-Sell Sales Campaigns
This table displays a summary of leads and opportunities generated from cross-sell/up-sell sales campaigns for which the user is on the sales team. The name of the sales campaign links to the Sales Campaign Details page. The leads generated by each campaign are broken out by status, including no action, in progress, and dead leads. The percentage of leads converted to opportunities is also displayed.
Opportunities that have been converted from the leads are displayed by status, including in progress, lost, and won. A won percentage number is also displayed.
Select the numeric links in the table to view groups of leads or opportunities. For example, if there are 10 leads in the In Progress column, click the number 10 to display a list of those 10 leads with that status.
Note that this table might not display all of your sales campaigns that are currently in the system. For optimum performance when displaying the Sales Dashboard, it is recommended to limit the number of sales campaigns that are displayed in this table based on the age of the campaign. During system setup, your system administrator can define the age of sales campaigns that are displayed. Check with your manager or system administrator to determine the maximum age of sales campaigns that are displayed in this table.
Leads are potential sales prospects, that can eventually be converted into opportunities. Leads can be generated from several sources:
Marketing: Based on marketing campaigns and trade shows, leads may be generated
TeleSales: TeleSales agents record lead information from phone calls
Oracle Sales: Sales representatives enter lead information from the field directly into Oracle Sales
After a lead is generated, it is ranked and assigned to a sales representative. After key information is gathered, a lead is qualified automatically depending on your settings.
You can view history information for your leads. This history enables you to track activity for a lead when it is initially created and each time it is updated. This history enables you to understand the progression of a lead and make appropriate decisions based on this history.
This section contains:
This page provides information about working with leads. If you are looking for information about working with Opportunities, see Viewing, Creating, and Updating an Opportunity
View Leads
The Lead Views page lists views that you can select to display your data. This page enables you to review and update a specific group of leads. If you want to see a summary of a particular lead, click the radio button in the Select column next to the lead name. This refreshes the page with the selected lead's summary details. These summary details can be updated if needed, or if you require more detailed information on the lead, click the lead name to display the Update Lead page.
If you want to see a different view, select the view name from the View menu and click Go. Click Personalize to access the Personalize Views page to duplicate, create, update, or delete a view, as well as change your default view. See Views in Oracle Sales for more information on views.
Click Simple Search to access the simple search page.
Click Export to download the list of leads to a file with a .csv extension that you can use in a spreadsheet application.
Click the name of the source or click the Details icon next to the Source field to access read-only marketing activity details.
Enter Information on the Create Lead and Update Lead Pages
Some fields may be available under a section called Show More Details. This section contains some flexfields and/or header fields, and is available through personalization by your administrator. When you have finished creating a new lead, click Apply. When you have finished working with the Update Lead page, click Save. Tabs on the Update Lead page can be combined, through personalization performed by your administrator, into one Details tab.
Also, you can create a lead for a customer contact from the Update Customer page.
Notes
Methodology: Captures your lead qualification process. Follow these steps to qualify a lead. See Sales Methodologies for more information.
Status: The status of the lead; for example New, In Progress, or Inactive. The status interacts with the Close Reason field.
Source: Marketing source name that generated the opportunity. For example, a direct mail campaign. Click the Details icon next to this field to access read-only marketing activity details.
Close Reason: The reason a lead was closed; for example No Interest, Price, or Wrong Territory. You cannot specify a close reason without a status that is closed, such as Inactive.
Rank: A subjective assessment that you make about the quality of the lead, or an automatic rank assignment.
Sales Channel: The sales channel assigned to the lead. For example, Alumni Visit, Commercial, Direct, or Email.
Budget Amount: The amount that a customer might be able to spend on the product or service detailed in the lead. This field is available though personalization performed by your system administrator.
Response Channel: The method by which the lead was acquired. This field is available though personalization performed by your system administrator.
Address: Customer address for the lead. After you create a lead, the address defaults to the primary address for the customer. However, you can select another address for the lead that is not the primary address.
Stage: The sales stages. These stages are determined by the sales methodology selected.
This tab contains:
Recent Opportunities: Displays the previous opportunities for the customer, showing the name of the opportunity, the close date, the current status, the owner, and the owner's telephone number. You can navigate to the next group of opportunities, or view previously displayed opportunities. Available through personalization.
Service Request Backlog: Displays a brief description of the customer's problem, severity level, whether the problem was escalated, the number of days the issue has been open. You can navigate to the next group of service requests, or view previously displayed service requests.
See the Notes and Tasks Tab for details.
This tab contains:
Suggested Contacts: Displays contacts that are suggested by Oracle Sales as likely contacts for this lead, based on previous opportunities with the same product categories and customers. Click the Add to Selected Contacts icon to add a suggested contact to selected contacts for the lead.
Selected Contacts: Displays the contacts for this lead, including the contact name, job title, phone, and e-mail, and their role in their organization relative to this lead. Select the Primary check box if this contact is the primary contact for the lead. You can also create, add, and remove contacts from this tab.
Displays the products associated with the lead, including unit of measure for items, product quantity, the amount for the product, and forecast information. Click the Remove icon to delete the product from this list. Select a product to view product details.
Click Add Product to search for a product to add to the table. Select the operating unit and enter the search criteria for the product category, then click Go. Expand the product categories that interest you, select the product items, and click Select to add the products to your lead.
If the functionality is enabled by your administrator, you can search for products across multiple operating units. To do so, select an operating unit name from the Operating Unit menu. Then enter the search criteria and click Go. Select the desired product items to add to your lead. You can repeat the search with different operating units to find products across the operating units to which you have access. Note that all product categories will be displayed in the search results table, but that the operating unit filtering occurs at the product item level.
This tab is available if there is a sales methodology associated with the lead.
Displays the sales stages. These are the stages of your organization's defined Sales Methodologies. They can include stages like:
Stage 1: Qualify
Stage 2: Assess
Stage 3: Propose
Stage 4: Close
The stages have defined steps; these are listed for each stage displayed. You can choose to view All Stages, or the Current Stage. Each stage has an overall Sales Coach, and each step has it's own specific Sales Coach. Click the Sales Coach icon to access. Sales Coaches are lists of questions related to each step of the sales stage.
Select the Completed check box as you complete each step.
Click View Worksheet to display the Sales Coaching worksheet for the selected stage or step in a text editor. See Sales Methodologies for more information.
This tab contains:
Sales Team: A sales team is a group of salespeople assigned to the lead. You can modify leads you own, and your fellow sales team members can view or modify the lead if they have access.
The Full Access check box determines whether the team member can update or only view the lead. The default is selected.
The Do Not Reassign check box determines whether the sales team member can be reassigned by TAP. The default value of the check box is based on the settings done by your system administrator.
The Owner check box determines which sales team member owns the lead. There can be only one owner for each lead.
Partners: A partner is an indirect sales channel selected (either automatically or manually) to pursue a lead. For example, partners can be value-added distributors (VADs) or value-added resellers (VARs). The partners table is not available unless it has been provided by your system administrator through personalization.
Displays the proposals that have been created for this lead, including the proposal name, a brief description, the proposal owner, the due date, and the status. You can create a new proposal from this tab.
Oracle Sales uses the functionality of Oracle Proposals. See the Oracle Proposals User Guide for more information.
You can convert only open leads into opportunities.
Note that if your system administrator has not specified the necessary settings, you will receive an error message when you attempt to create a new opportunity from a lead. If you see this message, contact your system administrator.
Click the Convert to Opportunity button or icon
The Update Opportunity page is displayed, containing the information carried over from the original lead. This information includes:
Lead name (which becomes the Opportunity Name)
Customer Name
Sales Methodology
Address
Sales Coach
Attachments
Sales Stage
Currency
Sales Channel
Source Name
Contact information
Product information
Sales Team information
Notes
Your lead's status is changed to Converted to Opportunity.
To access history, click View History on the Update Lead page.
View Information on the Lead History Page
You can view the history of a lead (specifically, changes to the lead header) as it flows through the sales cycle. This helps you make decisions about further action with the lead.
Notes
Updated Date From/To: Enables you to search for and view lead history that occurs between specific dates.
Updated By: Source for the update. Records displayed can be filtered by this source name.
Field: Name of the field that has changed. You can filter the records displayed by selecting the field name of the changed field you want to display.
Old Value: Value for the changed field before it was changed.
New Value: Current value for the changed field.
Sales Methodologies capture your organization's sale cycle guidelines for leads (for lead qualification) and opportunities. Sales methodologies and their associated Sales Coaches are created by business analysts in your organization.
You can select a sales methodology when you create a lead or an opportunity. The methodology can apply to the lead only, the opportunity only, or a lead and its resulting opportunity. When you convert a lead to an opportunity, the sales methodology carries over to the opportunity.
In Oracle Sales, sales methodologies consist of sales stages. For example, a methodology called Strategic Sales might have sales stages called:
Stage 1: Initial Assessment
Stage 2: Identify Business Drivers
Stage 3: Propose Value Proposition
Stage 4: Agreement and Close Deal
These stages can apply to a lead or an opportunity, or to both. In our example Stage 1: Initial Assessment might be accessible only from a lead. The rest of the sales methodology could then apply to the ensuing opportunity.
Within these stages are defined steps. These steps can contain tips, questions, or instructions. Stage 1: Initial Assessment might have steps like these depending on the setup of the methodology:
Identify Industry Issues/Trends/Standards
Determine Entry Strategy
Initiate Contact and Appointment
Assess High Level Business Needs
Make Go/No Go Decision
Each step has a set of questions associated with it, known as a Sales Coach. These questions are designed to help you work your way through the various stages of the methodology. They can be in the form of worksheets that you fill in as you advance through the stages of the sales cycle, or consist of instructional information. For example, the step Identify Industry Issues/Trends/Standards (the first step in our example Stage 1) might have questions like these associated with it:
What industry is the prospect in?
What are the key issues facing this industry?
What standards exist or are emerging in the industry?
Where do they stand in this industry?
You can create a lead or an opportunity without a methodology. If you create a lead or an opportunity without using a sales methodology, you can add one when you update the lead or opportunity. However, after you save a lead or opportunity with a selected sales methodology, the methodology is displayed as read-only text and cannot be modified.
See also: Using a Sales Methodology
When creating a lead or an opportunity, select a sales methodology. When you click Apply, the methodology you selected for the lead or opportunity is displayed in the Update Lead or Update Opportunity page.
Access the Sales Methodology
Click Sales Cycle to access the Sales Coaches in the stages of the methodology.
You can select the various stages and underlying steps and click View Worksheet to view a printable version of the Sales Coaches. Use this as a worksheet to help you get started on your customer research before you enter the data into the online Sales Coaches. After the Sales Coaches are complete, you can click View Worksheet to access this information.
Enter Data into Sales Coaches
To enter information into the Sales Coaches, click the Sales Coach icon for the desired stage (to access Sales Coaches for all of the steps) or step (to access the Sales Coach for that step only).
You can enter data into the Sales Coaches for the various stages and steps in the methodology prior to the lead or opportunity actually being in that stage. This enables you to capture information that is applicable to later stages of the lead or opportunity as soon as possible.
Indicate When a Step or Stage is Complete
When you have completed the Sales Coach for a step or stage in a sales methodology, you can mark it as Complete by selecting the associated Completed check box. The stages in the Sales Coach and the actual stages of the lead or opportunity are not synchronized with each other. As a result, you can mark the stages and steps as complete regardless of the actual status of the stages of the lead or opportunity.
Opportunities are defined as pending sales that can be forecasted. After an opportunity is identified, a sales representative or sales manager guides the opportunity through the sales process. An opportunity can be converted from a lead, or created as a new opportunity.
You can view history information for your opportunities, which enables you to track activity for an opportunity when it is initially created and each time it is updated, and includes product and non-revenue information. History enables you to understand the progression of an opportunity and make appropriate decisions based on this history. Opportunity history creation is enabled by your system administrator through personalization.
This section contains:
This page provides information about working with opportunities. If you are looking for information about working with Leads, see Viewing, Creating, and Updating a Lead.
View Opportunities
The Opportunity Views page displays views that you can select to display your data. This page enables you to review and update a specific group of opportunities. If you want to see a summary of a particular opportunity, click the radio button in the Select column next to the opportunity name. This refreshes the page with the selected opportunity's summary details. These summary details can be updated if needed, or if you require more detailed information on the opportunity, click the opportunity to display the Update Opportunity page.
If you want to see a different view, select the view name from the View menu and click Go. Click Personalize to access the Personalize Views page to duplicate, create, update, or delete a view, as well as change your default view.
Click Simple Search to access the simple search page.
Additional Information: If the ASN: Enable Non DQM Contact Search profile option is set to Yes, then while adding contacts to an opportunity, you can search for opportunities without providing any search criteria.
Click Export to download the list of opportunities to a file with a .csv extension that you can use in a spreadsheet application.
Click the name of the source or click the Details icon next to the Source field to access read-only marketing activity details.
Enter Information on the Create Opportunity and Update Opportunity Pages
Some fields may be available under a section called Show More Details. This section contains some flexfields and/or header fields, and is available through personalization by your administrator. When you have finished creating a new opportunity, click Apply.
When you have finished working with the Update Opportunity page, click Save. Tabs on the Update Opportunity page can be combined, through personalization performed by your administrator, into one Details tab.
You can also create an opportunity for a customer from the Customer Update page.
Notes
Methodology: Captures your sales group's best practices. These steps assist you in making sales.
Stage: The stage in the sales methodology for the opportunity. Stages are related to the win probability values.
Win Probability: The chance of winning the opportunity expressed as a percentage. Win probabilities are used to calculate weighted pipeline amounts (opportunity amount multiplied by win probability). Earlier numbers imply opportunities with a lesser chance of closing; higher numbers imply a greater chance of closing the opportunity with a win.
Sales Channel: The sales channel assigned to the opportunity. For example, Direct, Reseller, Other.
Response Channel: The source for the opportunity, such as Fax or Email.
Source: Marketing source name that generated the opportunity. For example, a direct mail campaign. Click the Details icon next to this field to access read-only marketing activity details.
Referral: Link to the Referral Details page. Appears only if the opportunity has a related referral, and is enabled through personalization.
Customer: Click Select to change the customer for the opportunity.
Address: Customer address for the opportunity. After you create an opportunity, the address defaults to the primary address for the customer. However, you can select another address for the opportunity that is not the primary address.
Status: The status of the opportunity; for example Preliminary, On-Hold, or Won. The status interacts with the Close Reason field.
Close Reason: The reason an opportunity was closed; for example Won Opportunity. You cannot specify a close reason without a status that is closed, such as Inactive.
Amount: The total opportunity amount.
Forecast Amount: The forecast amount, which is distributed to the individual product forecast based on proportion. For example:
Existing Opportunity Forecast: 100
Existing Product Forecast Line 1: 20
Existing Product Forecast Line 2: 80
If you change the opportunity forecast amount to 200, the result is:
New Opportunity Forecast: 200
New Product Forecast Line 1: 40
New Product Forecast Line 2: 160
This tab contains:
Recent Opportunities: Displays the previous opportunities for the customer. You can navigate to the next group of opportunities, or view previously displayed opportunities.
Service Request Backlog: Displays a brief description of the customer's problem, severity level, whether the problem was escalated, the number of days the issue has been open. You can navigate to the next group of service requests, or view previously displayed service requests.
See Notes and Tasks Tab for details.
This tab contains:
Suggested Contacts: Displays contacts that are suggested by Oracle Sales as likely contacts for this opportunity, based on previous opportunities with the same product category and customers. Click the Add to Selected Contacts icon to add this suggested contact to Selected Contacts for the opportunity.
Selected Contacts: Displays the contacts for this opportunity. Select the Primary check box if this contact is the primary contact for the opportunity. You can also create, add, and remove contacts from this tab.
Select a contact and then select Create Task, and click Go to create a task for yourself related to this contact. Select Send Proposal and click Go to create a proposal.
Select View Details and click Go to view the details for the selected contact.
Displays the products associated with the opportunity. Select a product to view product details.
Click Add Product to search for a product to add to the table. Select the operating unit, enter the search criteria for the product category, and then click Go. Expand the product categories that interest you, select the product items, and click Select to add the products to your lead.
If the functionality is enabled by your administrator, you can search for products across multiple operating units. To do so, select an operating unit name from the Operating Unit menu. Then enter the search criteria and click Go. Select the desired product items to add to your lead. You can repeat the search with different operating units to find products across the operating units to which you have access. Note that all product categories will be displayed in the search results table, but that the operating unit filtering occurs at the product item level.
Revenue: Displays the Forecast Owner for the product and the Sales Group in which the product is forecasted. This enables forecasting for individual products within a single opportunity, even if these products are the responsibility of several sales representatives. You can search for a new owner to be listed in this table. This table is useful if your organization does product level forecasting. This table is available only if your system administrator has personalized the interface.
Non-Revenue: Displays the sales representatives who perform non-revenue forecasts. Click Add Person to add non-revenue forecast owners and their sales groups. This table is available only if your system administrator has personalized the interface.
Competitors: Displays the names of competitors, competitor products, and the win/loss status (None, Won, Lost). Click the Remove icon to delete a competitor from this list.
This tab is available if there is a sales methodology associated with the opportunity.
Displays the sales stages. These are the stages of the sales cycle for your organization's defined Sales Methodologies. They can include stages like: Stage 1: Qualify, Stage 2: Assess, Stage 3: Propose, and Stage 4: Close.
The stages have defined steps; these are listed for each stage displayed. You can choose to view All Stages, or the Current Stage. Each stage has an overall Sales Coach, and each step has its specific Sales Coach. Click the Sales Coach icon to access. Sales Coaches are lists of questions related to each step of the sales stage.
Select the Completed check box as you complete each step.
Click View Worksheet to display the Sales Coach worksheet for the selected stage or step in a text editor.
Displays the sales team members for the opportunity.
The Full Access check box determines whether the team member can update or only view the opportunity. It is selected by default.
The Contributor check box enables you to specify if a sales team member has contributed effort (not revenue) to this opportunity. The Contributor check box is available if your interface has been personalized by your system administrator.
The Do Not Reassign check box determines whether the sales team member can be reassigned by TAP. The default value of the check box is based on the settings done by your system administrator.
The Owner check box determines which sales team member owns the opportunity. There can be only one owner for each opportunity.
This tab contains:
Proposals: Displays the proposals that have been created for this opportunity.
Click Create Proposal. Oracle Sales uses the functionality of Oracle Proposals. See the Oracle Proposals User Guide for more information.
Quotes: Displays the quotes that have been created for this opportunity. All quotes are listed, but you can only access the quotes that belong to your accessible operating units.
Click Create Quote. Oracle Sales uses the functionality of Oracle Quoting. See the Oracle Quoting User Guide for more information.
Projects: Displays projects associated with the opportunity. Oracle Projects enables project managers to manage the schedule, resources, finances, issues, and other aspects of their projects. Oracle Sales integrates with Oracle Projects to enable projects to be created and to capture the costs related to the pursuit of opportunities. See the Oracle Projects User Guide for more information. The project table is not available unless it has been provided by your system administrator through personalization.
The Partners Tab is not available unless it has been provided by your system administrator through personalization.
A partner is an indirect sales channel selected to pursue an opportunity. For example, partners can be value-added distributors (VADs) or value-added resellers (VARs). Assignment status indicates whether an opportunity has been assigned to a partner.
Partners are assigned opportunities either manually or automatically. After assignment, a partner is notified of the potential opportunity, and can accept or decline. If the partner accepts, the partner can view the opportunity. If the partner declines, the opportunity is returned to the vendor and may be routed to another partner. See the Oracle Partner Management Partner User Guide or the Oracle Partner Management Vendor User Guide for more information.
The Create Quote from Opportunity page is displayed, containing the information carried over from the original opportunity. This information includes:
Opportunity name (which becomes the Quote Name)
Customer Name
Customer Address
Primary Contact
Currency
Sales Channel
Source Name
Oracle Sales uses the functionality of Oracle Quoting. See the Oracle Quoting User Guide for more information.
Select a close status in the Status field, and select a Close Reason. Click Save.
To access history, click View History on the Update Opportunity page.
View Information on the Opportunity History Page
You can view the history of an opportunity as it flows through the sales cycle. This history helps you make decisions about further action with the opportunity. The history includes opportunity header, product, and non-revenue product information. Opportunity history is available through personalization performed by your system administrator.
Notes
Updated Date From/To: Enables you to search for and view opportunity history that occurs between specific dates.
Updated By: Source for the update. Records displayed can be filtered by this source name.
Field: The name of the field that has changed. You can filter the records displayed by selecting the field name of the changed field you want to display.
Old Value: Value for the changed field before it was changed.
New Value: Current value for the changed field.
Your customers might be individuals or organizations, or you might have customers from both categories.
Customer functionality in Oracle Sales can be controlled through personalization by your administrator. By default, you can access customers who are organizations. Depending on your implementation, you might have access to customers as persons, customers as organizations, or to both types of customers.
This page provides information about working with customers of type Organization. If you are looking for information about working with Persons, see Viewing, Creating, and Updating Customers (Persons).
View a Customer
Use the Customer Simple and Advanced Search pages to access your customer data. From the search results, you can view detailed information of the selected customer. If you have read-only access to a customer, the data displayed for that customer will also be read-only. From the search pages, you can also launch the Create Customer flow.
Note: If you log in as a sales representative who has the Full Access security setting or as a sales manager, the customer search results table is initially empty until you conduct a search.
Click Export to download the list of customers to a file with a .csv extension that you can use in a spreadsheet application.
Create a Customer
Oracle Sales uses Data Quality Management to prevent the redundant creation of customers. If you attempt to create a customer with a name that already exists, or is a close match to an existing customer name, a warning page is displayed. From this page, you can choose to either use the new customer, or select an existing customer.
Enter the required values. When you create a new customer, the only required field is the customer name.
Notes
Alias: Alternate name for the customer. For example, Big Rock Industries might have an alias of BRI.
Status: Default is Active; you can select a status of Inactive.
Address Purpose: Select a purpose for the customer's address. This can be Bill to, Install at, or another purpose. You can add additional purposes.
Registry ID: System-generated unique identifier for the customer.
D-U-N-S Number: Tax identifier supplied by Dun & Bradstreet.
Industrial Classification: Type of industry for the customer. The Standard Industry Code Standard Classification Systems, such as SIC. For example, the 1987 Edition of the U. S. Industrial Classification Codes.
You can:
Apply and Create Another: Create this customer record and return to the Create Customer page again.
Apply: Save this customer record and navigate to the Update Customer page.
Update a Customer
Tabs on the Update Customer page can be combined, through personalization performed by your administrator, into one Details tab.
Caution: If the ASN: Allow Identifying Address Removal profile option is set to Yes, then you will not be able to delete the identifying address without selecting another address as an identifying address. If there is only one available address, then you must create a new identifying address.
Notes
Save: Saves any changes you make on the Customer Update page.
Action LOV: Enables you to create a lead or opportunity for the customer.
Displays customer information, employee totals, financial information, private customer data, and business activities for customers.
Business activities include:
Open Opportunities
Open Leads
Proposals Received
Quotes Received
Recent Orders and Returns
Campaigns
Service Request Backlog
Sales Agreements
Sales Contracts
Service Contracts
For business activities, multi-operating unit access enables you to view complete lists of these business activities, belonging to all operating units:
Quotes
Orders
Sales Agreements
Sales Contracts
Service Contracts
Further access to Quotes, Sales Agreements, and Sales Contracts is controlled by operating unit access.
E-mail Interactions
Displays e-mail interactions originating in Oracle Sales for Handhelds. Information includes the type of e-mail (outbound or inbound), the action associated with it, and the name of the agent who took the action. Click the View E-mail icon to see the complete e-mail text.
See the Notes and Tasks Tab for details.
Displays contacts for this customer, including the name, job title, and contact information. You can also create and remove contacts from this tab. To view the details of the contact, click the hyperlink on the name of the contact. See Contacts for more information.
Displays the address, e-mail, telephone number, and website for the customer. You can add or modify this information.
For information on address validation, see the Real-Time Address Validation section in the Oracle Trading Community Architecture User Guide.
Displays the business relationships that are important to your customer. These can be divisions, affiliates, partners, or others.
Hierarchies
Displays company structure, especially of large accounts that have more then one operating unit. This enables you to see the headquarters, branches, and subsidiaries of a company, and how they are interrelated.
Select a Hierarchy Type and click Go to display the hierarchy based on the type selected.
Click the Party Name to access customer information.
Click the View Hierarchy icon to display the View Hierarchy page. The View Hierarchy page enables you to manage hierarchies. To perform actions on this page:
Click View Entire Hierarchy to display the whole hierarchy from its root.
Click the Add Child icon to add a subordinate level to a member of the hierarchy.
Click Cancel to return to the Business Relationships tab. You cannot modify the hierarchy for customers for which you do not have access.
Displays the general and industrial classifications for your customer. These classifications are set up using Oracle Customer Online Administration, and are based on lists of government-generated classifications for types of businesses. Use the Update and Remove icons to change or delete a classification.
You can locate a classification to add to your customer by entering a category of classifications and clicking Go. Or, you can create your own classification system and associate it with your customer.
Select the appropriate classification and click Continue. Add the end date for the applicability of the classification and click Finish.
This tab contains:
Sales Team: Displays the sales team members for the customer.
The Full Access check box determines whether the team member can update or only view the customer. It is selected by default.
The Do Not Reassign check box determines whether the sales team member can be reassigned by TAP. The default value of the check box is based on the settings done by your system administrator.
Partners: A partner is an indirect sales channel selected (either automatically or manually) to pursue a lead. For example, partners can be value-added distributors (VADs) or value-added resellers (VARs). This tab displays the partner name, address, and value level. Oracle Sales uses the functionality of Oracle Partners. See the Oracle Partners User Guide for more information.
This tab enables you to create account plans. Account plans enable you to capture important customer information, review that information, share it, and maintain it over time. Account plans enable you to manage key customers and maintain long-term relationships with these customers. This helps you know your customer and be able to sell to them more effectively. These plans provide an organized approach to your key accounts and help you formulate a selling strategy that includes an action plan that can be communicated to sales management.
The advantages of using account plans are:
Customer account plan data is accessible through Oracle Sales, along with other customer and general sales information
Customer information can be updated readily, and thus remain current and useful
Management has visibility of customer information, and can review and verify sales plans
By default the account plans provided in Oracle Sales contain Customer's Business Drivers and a Selling Plan. The other sections of the account plan can be customized by your administrator to meet your organization's business needs. Also, new sections can be added to the plan to meet your organization's requirements.
For example, the default account plan template supplied with Oracle Sales includes:
Customer Overview: Contains general customer information. By default, includes account goals, executive summary, and industry information, but can be customized by your administrator. Other information to capture might include account background or competitive information. This section can be personalized by your administrator.
Scorecard: Rating of subjective aspects of the customer relationship, such as level of relationship, customer satisfaction, or possibility of future business. This section can be personalized by your administrator.
Analysis: Identifies strengths and weaknesses and examines opportunities and threats. Provides customer analysis that can show you obstacles that you might face in attempting to sell to this customer. This section can be personalized by your administrator.
Customer's Business Drivers: Factors that might motivate the customer, such as the need for higher performance or greater capacity. You can create, update, or remove business drivers.
Selling Plan: Tool to increase sales with a customer containing strategic objectives.
Strategic objectives are tracked against dates, showing statuses like Open, On Schedule, Completed, or Behind Schedule. You indicate the status as you progress toward the completion of the objective.
The users preferred currency is used to display order amounts. The total ordered amount is fetched directly from order headers and order lines tables if.
The booked date is not NULL.
The booked flag is Yes.
The item type is not 'SERVICE' .
The source is not Internal or Retrobill.
The ordered quantity is not 0.
The charge_periodicity_code is NULL. This value is used to determine the price for an order line with a recurring charge item.
The inventory_item_id must be the same as inventory_item_id of the Items
The org_id from where the order lines are shipped from and the items.organization_id must be the same
The opportunities for the customers must have been created in the last four years.
The opportunities for which the representative is part of the sales team.
The orders have been booked in the last 4 years.
Creating an Account Plan
Gather and review customer information that will help you understand an account. Enter this information into the various sections of the account plan. From the Update Customer page, click the Account Plan tab. The account plan sections are read-only when you first access them (except for the currency choice). To add or change the information in Customer Overview, Score Card, and Analysis sections of the Account Plan, click Update . Click Create Business Driver to create a new driver; click Create Objective to create new strategic objectives.
Note that Oracle Sales supports the creation of a single account plan per customer.
You can modify the account plan information as needed, and update or remove business drivers and objectives.
Access to account plans is the same as access to customers.
Generating an Account Plan
Oracle Sales enables you to print a copy of the account plan to take to meetings, present to management, share with the customer, or use for reference. When you have completed the account plan, select an account plan output template and click View Worksheet to generate a printable copy of the plan. The results include the account plan data and other customer information that exists in Oracle Sales. You can choose to generate the account plans in RTF (rich text) or PDF formats.
The account plan output templates are created by your administrator to include the information important to your organization regarding customer accounts.
This page provides information about working with customers of type Persons. If you are looking for information about working with Organizations, see Viewing, Creating, and Updating a Customer (Organization).
To view, create, and update a customer:
View a Customer
Use the Customer Simple and Advanced Search pages to access your customer data. The customer search pages enable you to drill down to the customer details page. If you have read-only access to a customer, the data displayed for that customer can be viewed but not changed.
Note: If you log in as a sales representative who has Full Access or as a sales manager, the customer search results table is initially empty until you conduct a search.
Click Export to download the list of customers to a file with a .csv extension that you can use in a spreadsheet application.
Create a Customer
Oracle Sales uses Data Quality Management to prevent the redundant creation of customers. If you attempt to create a customer with a name that already exists, or is a close match to an existing customer name, a warning page is displayed. From this page, you can choose to either use the new customer, or select an existing customer. When you create a new customer, the only required field is the customer name.
You can:
Apply and Create Another: Create customer and return to the Create Customer page.
Apply: Create customer and navigate to the Update Customer page.
Update a Customer
Tabs on the Update Customer page can be combined, through personalization performed by your administrator, into one Details tab.
Save: Saves any changes you make on the Customer Update page.
Action LOV: Enables you to Create a Lead, Opportunity, Quote, or a Proposal for a customer from the update page.
Caution: If the ASN: Allow Identifying Address Removal profile option is set to Yes, then you will not be able to delete the identifying address without selecting another address as an identifying address. If there is only one available address, then you must create a new identifying address.
Notes
Click the plus sign next to Show Additional Basic Information to display personal information about the customer, such as marital status or income. This information is available through personalization by your administrator.
Displays customer information, employee totals, financial information, e-mail interactions, and business activities for customers.
Business activities include:
Open Opportunities
Open Leads
Proposals Received
Quotes Received
Recent Orders and Returns
Campaigns
Service Request Backlog
Sales Agreements
Sales Contracts
Service Contracts
For business activities, multi-operating unit access enables you to view complete lists of these business activities, belonging to all operating units:
Quotes
Orders
Sales Agreements
Sales Contracts
Service Contracts
Further access to Quotes, Sales Agreements, and Sales Contracts is controlled by operating unit access.
See the Notes and Tasks Tab for details.
Displays the address, e-mail, telephone number, and website for the customer. Address validation is available through Trading Community Architecture functionality. You can add or modify this information.
Restrictions: Indicates whether there are calling restrictions requested by the customer's contact to prevent telemarketing calls, or that the contact is not available due to a vacation. The contact may be in the Do Not Call Registry, or request that they do not get telemarketing calls. This indicator appears in the Restrictions column in the Phone Numbers table on the Update Contact or View Contact pages.
Displays the relationships between the customer and organization, and personal interests of the customer. Relationships include whether the customer is an employee or board member of a listed company. Personal interests can include entertainment, sports, or hobbies, as well as other preferences.
Displays the general classifications for your customer. These classifications are set up using Oracle Customer Online Administration. Use the Update and Remove icons to change or delete a classification.
You can locate a classification to add to your customer by entering a category of classifications and clicking Go. Or, you can create your own classification system and associate it with your customer.
Select the appropriate classification and click Continue. Add the end date for the applicability of the classification and click Finish.
This tab contains:
Sales Team: Displays the sales team members for the customer.
The Full Access check box determines whether the team member can update or only view the customer. By default, this is selected.
The Do Not Reassign check box determines whether the sales team member can be reassigned by TAP. The default value of the check box is based on the settings done by your system administrator.
Partners: A partner is an indirect sales channel selected (either automatically or manually) to pursue a lead. For example, partners can be value-added distributors (VADs) or value-added resellers (VARs). This tab displays the partner name, address, and value level. Oracle Sales uses the functionality of Oracle Partners. See the Oracle Partners User Guide for more information.
This tab enables you to create account plans. Account plans enable you to capture important customer information, review that information, share it, and maintain it over time. Account plans enable you to manage key customers and maintain long-term relationships with these customers. This helps you know your customer and be able to sell to them more effectively. These plans provide an organized approach to your key accounts and help you formulate a selling strategy that includes an action plan that can be communicated to sales management.
The advantages of using account plans are:
Customer account plan data is accessible through Oracle Sales, along with other customer and general sales information
Customer information can be updated readily, and thus remain current and useful
Management has visibility of customer information, and can review and verify sales plans
By default the account plans provided in Oracle Sales contain Customer's Business Drivers and a Selling Plan. The other sections of the account plan can be customized by your administrator to meet your organization's business needs. Also, new sections can be added to the plan to meet your organization's requirements.
For example, the default account plan template supplied with Oracle Sales includes:
Customer Overview: Contains general customer information. By default, includes account goals, executive summary, and industry information, but can be customized by your administrator. Other information to capture might include account background or competitive information. This section can be personalized by your administrator.
Scorecard: Rating of subjective aspects of the customer relationship, such as level of relationship, customer satisfaction, or possibility of future business. This section can be personalized by your administrator.
Analysis: Identifies strengths and weaknesses and examines opportunities and threats. Provides customer analysis that can show you obstacles that you might face in attempting to sell to this customer. This section can be personalized by your administrator.
Customer's Business Drivers: Factors that might motivate the customer, such as the need for higher performance or greater capacity. You can create, update, or remove business drivers.
Selling Plan: Tool to increase sales with a customer containing strategic objectives.
Strategic objectives are tracked against dates, showing statuses like Open, On Schedule, Completed, or Behind Schedule. You indicate the status as you progress toward the completion of the objective.
Creating an Account Plan
Gather and review customer information that will help you understand an account. Enter this information into the various sections of the account plan. From the Update Customer page, click the Account Plan tab. The account plan sections are read-only when you first access them (except for the currency choice). To add or change the information in the Customer Overview, Score Card, and Analysis sections of the Account Plan, click Update. Click Create Business Driver to create a new driver; click Create Objective to create new strategic objectives.
Note that Oracle Sales supports the creation of a single account plan per customer.
You can modify the account plan information as needed, and update or remove business drivers and objectives.
Access to account plans is the same as access to customers.
Generating an Account Plan
Oracle Sales enables you to print a copy of the account plan to take to meetings, present to management, share with the customer, or use for reference. When you have completed the account plan, select an account plan output template and click View Worksheet to generate a printable copy of the plan. The results include the account plan data and other customer information that exists in Oracle Sales. You can choose to generate the account plans in RTF (rich text) or PDF formats.
The account plan output templates are created by your administrator to include the information important to your organization regarding customer accounts.
A contact is a person related to a customer. You can create and update contacts within the context of a customer of type Organization. In Oracle Sales, customers of type Person do not have contacts.
To view, create, or update a contact:
View a Contact
Access the contact search pages from the Sales Dashboard Shortcuts. Use the Contact Simple and Advanced Search pages to search for a specific contact. The contact search pages enable you to access contact records and drill down into contact details if needed. If you have read-only access to a contact, then you will not be able to update details of that contact.
Click Export to download the list of contacts to a file with a .csv extension that you can use in a spreadsheet application.
Create a Contact
Oracle Sales uses Data Quality Management to prevent the redundant creation of contacts. If you attempt to create a contact with a name that already exists, or is a close match to an existing contact name, you receive a warning page. From this page, you can choose to either use the new contact, or select an existing contact to use. Click Create Contact to enter information about a new contact for a customer.
You can enter the contacts personal information and other details during creation of the contact. When you click the Next button on the Contact Details page, the application takes you to the Contact Review page. If the contact dedup feature is enabled and application detects a duplicate match, then you are directed to the Contact De Dup Warning page and then subsequently to the Contact Review page.
Additional Information: The Next button in Contact Details page is visible if the ASN: Show Contact DFF Page profile option or Contact Duplication is enabled; else the Submit button replaces this button.
For more information on Date Quality Management, see: Ensuring Data Quality.
Update a Contact
Tabs on the Update Contact page can be combined, through personalization performed by your administrator, into one Details tab.
Notes
Status: Default is Active; you can select a status of Inactive.
Address Purpose: Select a purpose for the contact's address. This can be Bill to, Install at, or another purpose. You can add additional purposes.
End Date: Date by which the contact should be removed, and is no longer active for the customer.
Action: Enables you to select Create Lead, Opportunity, Proposal or Quote for the customer.
Displays the business activities related to your contact. Select an activity from the menu and click Go to view details.
Business activities include:
Open Opportunities
Open Leads
Proposals Received
Quotes Received
Recent Orders and Returns
Service Request Backlog
Sales Agreements
Sales Contracts
Service Contracts
For business activities, multi-operating unit access enables you to view complete lists of these business activities, belonging to all operating units:
Quotes
Orders
Sales Agreements
Sales Contracts
Service Contracts
Further access to Quotes, Sales Agreements, and Sales Contracts is controlled by operating unit access.
Displays the address, e-mail, telephone number, and website for the contact. You can add or modify this information.
Restrictions: Indicates whether there are calling restrictions requested by this contact to prevent telemarketing calls, or that the customer is not available due to a vacation. The contact may be in the Do Not Call Registry, or request that they do not get telemarketing calls. This indicator appears in the Restrictions column in the Phone Numbers table on the Update Contact or View Contact pages. This functionality is available through personalization. You can add calling restrictions by clicking the Update icon in the Phone Numbers table.
See the Notes and Tasks Tab for details.
Displays e-mail interactions originating in Oracle Sales for Handhelds. Information includes the type of e-mail (outbound or inbound), the action associated with it, and the name of the agent who took the action. Click the View E-mail icon to see the complete e-mail text.
This tab displays degree of contact you have with the contact and their professional goals and personal goals as you have identified them. This tab can be customized by your administrator.
Sales Campaign functionality enables sales managers to explore their install base and historical customer data, and mine the data for cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. Sales Campaign is integrated with Oracle Marketing, Oracle Content Manager and Oracle Proposals to support the distribution of proposals and sales material for sales initiatives.
When a sales campaign is launched, leads are generated for sales follow up. TAP assigns the appropriate sales representatives to the leads based on predefined rules. If these leads are converted to opportunities, the same sales representatives handle the new opportunities. Each new opportunity is linked to the original sales campaign to enable the marketing and sales organizations to track the progress and success of sales initiatives.
This section contains:
Sales campaign activities created in Oracle Sales use the Sales Schedule template only. A schedule template provides a framework that includes predefined values and specifications for commonly used schedule attributes, such as the list template and approval requirements for the schedule.
You can also create a Sales Campaign activity by logging into Oracle Marketing with the appropriate responsibility, navigating to the Campaign Dashboard, and clicking the Create Schedule shortcut link. Refer Oracle Marketing User Guide for more information.
Associate a Time Line and Set an Objective
After defining a name for the sales campaign, define the related parent Marketing campaign. This enables Marketing to track the success of this sales effort as part of larger enterprise marketing activities. Specify the launch date to define the date from when leads must be generated (the Sales Campaign must be approved before leads can be generated). Define the sales methodology and objective to guide sales representatives. See Sales Methodologies for more information.
Select the Selling Product
Select a product or product category to use to generate sales leads. In the Products table, click Add Another Row and define the target product or product category being cross sold or up sold in the sales effort.
You can associate an offer to a Sales Campaign activity from the Campaign Workbench in Oracle Marketing. Refer Oracle Marketing User Guide for more information.
Specify Target Accounts
To define the target group or audience for the Sales Campaign, define the set of accounts in the Target Accounts table. Leads are generated for sales follow up against this target group.
To specify Target Accounts:
Select a List Template to base your target group selection on. A List Template is a set of filter selections that satisfy a given sales effort purpose. For example, you may want to use a list template that provides the ability to build a cross-sell list based on Orders. Cross-Sell/Up-Sell based on Orders is the default list template available to sales campaigns.
In the Selections region, enter the values for the selection conditions. To refine the Target Accounts selection, you can modify the selections.
To generate and display the projected lead counts, click Recalculate. Save the details when you have reviewed the lead numbers.
Use the Generate List button to generate the target list and the Refresh List Status button to change the status of the list to Available. Statistics for the list are displayed for your reference.
To remove individual contact entries from the generated list, click Update Entries.
Refer Oracle Marketing User Guide for more details on List Templates and Selections.
Select a Deduplication Rule
Select a deduplication rule to eliminate duplicates within the Target Accounts list. The rule is also used in suppressing the records from being targeted.
Enable Fatigue Rules
A fatigue rule defines maximum permissible contacts within a specified time period. An example of a fatigue rule is not to contact customers more than two times per month by any channel. These rules enable you to target customers so that they are more receptive to the marketing promotions and messages. If you want fatigue rules to be applied to the Sales Campaign, select the Enable Fatigue Rules check box in the Options region.
Click Preview Fatigue to view fatigue information in the form of a table and a chart. You can use the fatigue information to decide on the best time to launch a Sales Campaign, that is, when you have the maximum accounts to target.
Associate Sales Collateral
You can define proposal templates that sales representatives can use to generate and fulfill proposals for the Sales Campaign leads. Oracle Sales integrates with Oracle Proposals to make this functionality available.
You can also define the content to be made available to sales representatives such as to help train on product strategy and cross-sell opportunity while working on the leads. For this functionality, Oracle Sales integrates with Oracle Content Manager.
Associate Proposal Template
In the Sales Kit table, select Proposals. You can preview the proposal template before deploying it.
Associate Content
The product/product category you select to generate leads in the Products table drives the content. For example, it might control the sales training content. This content is read-only.
Content items are selected from the Oracle Content Manager (OCM) repository. You may also create the content if you have the necessary access permissions for OCM folders. Refer the Oracle Content Manager Implementation and Administration Guide for more information.
In the Sales Kit table, select Content and add the content items.
The Sales Campaign table in the Sales Dashboard displays summarized data regarding sales campaign activities. This section contains data related to tracking the leads and opportunities created from the corresponding sales campaign activities for which the user is on the sales team.
Notes
Drill down the Leads links to review those associated with the Sales Campaign. All the leads are set to be scored as A leads to ensure they are prioritized in the workload for the sales representative queue
Drill down the Opportunities links to review those associated with the Sales Campaign
Drill down the Sales Campaign link to preview the associated Product, Target Accounts criteria, and Content
Oracle Sales provides sales organizations with flexibility in managing their forecasts. Sales organizations can analyze their forecast data at opportunity and product levels, enabling management teams to judge the overall health of their organization. Through integration with opportunities in Oracle Sales, opportunity forecasts can be maintained within the opportunity itself. This provides instant visibility to management without the need for users to separately submit forecasts, reducing the time spent by users preparing their forecast. Product family forecasts may be provided to management dependent on, or independent of, the opportunity pipeline.
This section contains:
Oracle Sales supports product-level forecasting within an opportunity. This means that if multiple sales representatives have worked on an opportunity that contains multiple products, the opportunity is forecasted showing all of the product lines and the representative for each product line. As a result, multiple sales representatives can forecast on a single opportunity. This product level forecasting can occur within a sales group, and also across multiple sales groups.
Oracle Sales uses Best, Forecast, and Worst as its default forecasting terminology. These may be personalized by the administrator, if necessary, to use your organization's terminology.
Note: Users that are logged in using the Sales Administrator role might have view only or update access to their manager's forecasting information depending on system settings.
By default, forecast data is displayed in whole numbers. However, you can specify that forecast data be displayed in amounts that contain decimal places. To do so, set the Display Decimal value under Sales Default Preferences to Yes. See Setting User Preferences for Specific Fields for details.
How Best, Forecast, and Worst Values are Calculated
The default amounts for Opportunity product line forecasts are calculated using weighted pipeline or win probability range. As shipped, Oracle Sales uses weighted pipeline to determine forecast default amounts. This setting can be changed by your administrator. You might want to verify with your administrator the type of defaulting in place for forecast amounts for opportunity product lines.
If the weighted pipeline is used to calculate forecast amounts, it is used as shown in the following table:
| Status | Best | Forecast | Worst |
| Forecastable, Not Won | Pipeline Amount | Pipeline Amount * Win Probability | 0 |
| Forecastable, Won | Pipeline Amount | Pipeline Amount | Pipeline Amount |
| Not Forecastable | Blank and not editable | Blank and not editable | Blank and not editable |
If the win probability range is used to calculate forecast amounts, it is used as shown in the following table:
| Status and Win Probability Range | Best | Forecast | Worst |
| Forecastable, Not Won, Win Probability < 40% | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Forecastable, Not Won, 40% <= Win Probability < 60% | Pipeline Amount | 0 | 0 |
| Forecastable, Not Won, 60% < = Win Probability < 80% | Pipeline Amount | Pipeline Amount | 0 |
| Forecastable, Not Won, 80% < = Win Probability | Pipeline Amount | Pipeline Amount | Pipeline Amount |
| Forecastable, Won, Win Probability is not applicable in this case | Pipeline Amount | Pipeline Amount | Pipeline Amount |
| Not Forecastable, Win Probability is not applicable in this case | Blank and not editable | Blank and not editable | Blank and not editable |
Any manual updates that you make to the Best, Forecast, and Worst amounts will override the values that result from any defaulting that has been set for your organization.
Use these parameters to determine which opportunities to include in your forecast. Opportunities included in the forecast must be in an opportunity status that can be forecasted, belong to the user for the Sales Group selected (or to a subordinate group for managers), have a forecast date that falls within the selected Period, and contain product lines that belong to a product category that maps to the selected Forecast Category. Forecast Type enables you to choose between a revenue and a non-revenue forecast. If you select non-revenue, you can select the type of non-revenue forecast. The parameters Forecast Type and Non-Revenue Type are available through personalization by your system administrator if your organization uses product-level forecasting.
Modify these parameters and click Go to change the composition of the forecast.
The Export Opportunities button is available through personalization. Click Export Opportunities to quickly download to a spreadsheet all opportunities that match the forecast parameters criteria. Click Yes when the ActiveX box appears. This particular spreadsheet template enables you to view and format a large number of opportunities.
Additional Information: The Opportunity Filter does not affect the opportunities that you download using Export Opportunities.
View the Opportunity Forecast Summary
This forecast summary is calculated based on the opportunity line pipeline and forecast values, from the Opportunity Forecast Detail, that make up the forecast. These values are rolled up based on the product category to which they belong.
View/Edit the Opportunity Forecast Detail
This worksheet enables you to view the specific opportunities (and the opportunity lines) that make up the forecast. The opportunity line forecast values that can be edited (Best, Forecast, and Worst) are shared with the Opportunity page, so, any updates made to the opportunity forecast within the opportunity are displayed in the forecast page. You can view the details of the opportunity by clicking the opportunity name.
You can visually filter opportunities from the forecast by clicking Opportunity Filters, then entering your filter criteria. Opportunities that are filtered are not excluded from your forecast, but rolled into a summary line (identified as Other Opportunities) in the Opportunity Forecast Detail.
These totals from this worksheet roll up to the product categories and totals shown in the Opportunity Forecast Summary.
Click Export to copy the contents of the Opportunity Forecast Detail to a spreadsheet. The Export button is available through personalization.
Create Forecast Notes
You can submit notes to your manager to provide additional detail along with your forecast by entering text in the box on the left of the Notes section, then clicking Add Note.
Add Forecast Attachment
You can add attachments to your forecasts to support or augment your forecasts. Attachments can include:
Files created using third party applications, including graphics files such as .jpg. File attachments can come from your hard disk or external storage, or they can come from the Document Catalog. The Document Catalog contains all documents that have been attached to applications data in Oracle Applications.
Web addresses (web pages on the Internet or intranet)
Text that you can enter into or paste onto the Add Attachment page
To add a file as an attachment, select File/Web Page/Text and click Browse. To add an item from the document catalog, select Document Catalog File and then search for the item. You can search on any of the document attributes, such as name, category, or usage type.
A document can have the usage types of Template, Standard, or One-Time. Template and Standard types of documents are created using Oracle Applications. See the Oracle Applications User Guide for additional information.
One-Time usage type documents are created when a file, web page, or text is created using Add Attachment.
Click an attachment name to view an attachment.
View Forecast History
You can view a summary of previous submissions of your forecast. Click the Submission Date for a forecast to view the details of a particular submission.
View/Edit Your Forecast Worksheet
This worksheet enables you to provide forecast judgment, beyond the opportunity pipeline, at the product family level. You can choose to begin with a saved Forecast Worksheet, from the last time the worksheet was saved or submitted, or default values from the opportunity pipeline, by selecting either Current Opportunity or Previously Saved from the Worksheet Default Values menu. The worksheet can display only upto 200 rows. Note that any amounts associated with rows that are not displayed will not be shown in the total for the worksheet.
Save the Forecast or Submit the Forecast
After editing the desired forecast values, click Save to save the forecast to complete at a later time, or click Submit to immediately submit the forecast to your manager. After a worksheet is saved or submitted, Oracle Sales calculates Judgment for each forecast value. Judgment is calculated as the difference between the product category forecast value entered in the Forecast Worksheet, and the corresponding value in the Opportunity Forecast Summary. Judgment enables you to determine the difference between a salesperson's forecast in the worksheet and actual forecast amounts in the opportunity lines.
Download Your Forecast Worksheet
Click Export to copy the contents of the Forecast Worksheet to a spreadsheet.
Forecasting as a Sales Manager
As a sales manager or executive, your forecast is similar to that of a sales representative, with the following differences:
Option to default Direct Report Submitted forecast values (through the Worksheet Default Values menu) for each product category in the Forecast Worksheet. This is in addition to Previously Saved and Current Opportunity defaulting options.
Inclusion of the name of your Direct Report who has forecast ownership for each opportunity product line in the Opportunity Worksheet Detail.
In the Opportunity Forecast Detail Worksheet, you will see some opportunities that you cannot edit. These opportunities are owned by your subordinates.
Direct Reports Forecast Detail displays a summary of each direct report's individual forecast, with a link to additional details for each direct report. All of your direct reports are listed, whether they have submitted a forecast or not. An icon in the Status column indicates if a forecast was submitted, if a forecast was submitted with a currency conversion error, or if a forecast was not submitted.
As a sales administrator, your forecast is similar to that of a sales manager, with the following differences:
Have read-only access to a sales manager's forecast unless the profile ASN: Forecast Sales Admin Update Access is set to Yes. If this profile is set to Yes, you can save and submit forecasts on behalf of the sales manager.
Oracle Sales enables you to add or modify tasks related to your sales activities. Your tasks are listed in the Calendar and Tasks section of the Sales Dashboard.
Click Export to download the list of tasks to a file with a .csv extension that you can use in a spreadsheet application.
Enter Information on the Create Task and Update Task Pages
When complete, click Apply.
Notes
Source Visibility: Enables you to set the visibility level of the task: internal, private, or public.
Set as Primary: Select a contact and click Set as Primary to set a contact as the primary contact for the accomplishment of the task. Only one contact can be designated as primary.
The Notes and Tasks tab appears in these areas of Oracle Sales:
Leads
Opportunities
Customers
Contacts
It contains:
Notes: Displays notes and enables you to add notes. Notes can have these statuses:
Private: Viewed only by the creator of the note
Public: Viewed by any Oracle Applications user
Publish: Viewed by external users, such as partners. This status is available through personalization.
Tasks: Lists tasks and enables you to add tasks by clicking Add Another Row.
Attachments: Enables you to add external documents, files, and web addresses to your business object. These attachments are carried over when a lead is converted to an opportunity. Attachments can include:
Files created using third party applications, including graphics files such as .jpg. File attachments can come from your hard disk or external storage, or they can come from the Document Catalog. The Document Catalog contains all documents that have been attached to applications data in Oracle Applications.
Web addresses (web pages on the Internet or intranet)
Text that you can enter into or paste onto the Add Attachment page
To add a file as an attachment, select File/Web Page/Text and click Browse. To add an item from the document catalog, select Document Catalog File and then search for the item. You can search on any of the document attributes, such as name, category, or usage type.
A document can have the usage types of Template, Standard, or One-Time. Template and Standard types of documents are created using Oracle Applications. See the Oracle Applications User Guide for additional information.
One-Time usage type documents are created when a file, web page, or text is created using Add Attachment.
Click the attachment name to view it.
The calendar in Oracle Sales enables you to note appointments related to your sales activities. Your appointments are listed in the Calendar & Tasks section of the Sales Dashboard.
Enter Information on the Create Appointment and Update Appointment Pages
Appointments that you add appear in the Calendar table on the Sales Dashboard.
Notes
Check Availability: Click to check resource availability for your activity. Click Add Location to add a location for your appointment.
Displays your calendar, and the calendar of the resource with which you are attempting to create an appointment. Click the search icon to search for people with which to book appointments. The people you add must be recognized resources. After you find the person, click Select. Then, click Add to add the person to your appointment schedule.
Click Show or Hide to display or hide details about the people in your appointment schedule.
Displays the details associated with your appointment, such as the access to the appointment, and whether you want a reminder.
Enables you to specify if the appointment is a repeating event, like a regular weekly meeting.
Enables you to add notes and attachments to the appointment.
A quote can be created directly from an opportunity. An example for Oracle Sales:
A sales representative is working on a opportunity for ABC, Inc. ABC, Inc. requests a quote for printer products and services be mailed to them.
The sales representative generates the quote based on the prices of the products in the opportunity. Information from the opportunity is defaulted into the quote template.
The quote is printed and mailed to ABC, Inc.
The sales representative is able to view all quotes generated for that opportunity.
Oracle Sales uses the functionality of Oracle Quoting. See the Oracle Quoting User Guide for more information.
A proposal can be created directly from a lead, an opportunity or a quote. An example for Oracle Sales:
A sales representative is working on an opportunity for XYZ, Inc. XYZ, Inc. requests a proposal be mailed to them.
The sales representative generates the proposal based on the opportunity details. Information from the opportunity is defaulted into the proposal template.
The proposal is printed and mailed to XYZ, Inc.
The sales representative is able to view all proposals generated for that opportunity.
Oracle Sales uses the functionality of Oracle Proposals. See the Oracle Proposals User Guide for more information.
Oracle Sales uses the functionality of Oracle Incentive Compensation to enable you to view Sales Commission Statements, which include sales commissions, bonuses, and payment adjustments. These statements also include a balance summary showing balances, earnings, recoverable and non-recoverable amounts, payments due, and ending balances. See the Oracle Incentive Compensation User Guide for more information.
Click Commission Statement in the Sales Dashboard Shortcuts to view a Sales Commission Statement.
Oracle Sales uses the functionality of Oracle Incentive Compensation to enable you to view Earnings Statements, which include invoice number and date, order number, creation date, transaction type, plan element, sales credits, commission, and transaction amount. These statements also include total sales credit, total commission, and total transaction amount. See the Oracle Incentive Compensation User Guide for more information.
Click Earnings Statement in the Sales Dashboard Shortcuts to view this statement.
Oracle Sales uses the functionality of Oracle Incentive Compensation to enable you to view an Attainment Summary, which include the operating unit, resource name, resource role, compensation plan, from and to dates, quota and quota percentage, beginning balance, draw, and net due for yourself or for all resources in a sales group. See the Oracle Incentive Compensation User Guide for more information.
Click Attainment Summary in the Sales Dashboard Shortcuts to view this summary.
Oracle Sales uses the functionality of Oracle Incentive Compensation to enable you to view the Year to Date Summary, which includes compensation information such as sales commissions and bonuses. These summaries also include payment information including beginning balance, commission earnings, bonus earnings, recoverable and non-recoverable amounts, draw recovery, payments, and ending balances. See the Oracle Incentive Compensation User Guide for more information.
Click Year to Date Summary in the Sales Dashboard Shortcuts to view this summary.