This chapter covers the following topics:
The majority of Global 5000 businesses generate more than fifty percent of their revenue through indirect sales channels. These companies require a functionally rich and fully integrated partner management solution. Oracle Partner Management fills this need by enabling vendors to efficiently and effectively manage business with indirect channel partners, resulting in more successful and lucrative channel partnerships. Oracle Partner Management streamlines and strengthens the entire partner lifecycle, enabling companies to better recruit new partners, to more efficiently manage existing partnerships, to more effectively market to and through partners, to sell more with partners, and to measure the performance of partnerships. Oracle Partner Management is part of the Oracle E-Business Suite, an integrated set of applications that are engineered to work together.
The partner dashboard is the single entry point for all partners into the vendor's system. Using the dashboards, partners can:
Self register and enroll into partner programs.
Manage their partner program memberships, including upgrades and renewals.
Access vendor stores, browse catalogs, and create proposals.
Accept and manage assigned sales opportunities, create quotes, and place orders.
Submit referrals, register deals, request partner funds, and request special pricing.
Maintain organization and contact profiles.
View notifications.
Access targeted content such as product news, training information, and FAQs.
In addition, partners that are distributors can view their managed partners' profile information and invite new partners to join the vendor's partner programs.
The Channel Manager dashboard provides members of the vendor organization with an easy to use, configurable interface. The Channel Manager dashboard provides channel managers and channel representatives with a 360-degree view of their partners and activities, thereby enabling them to make informed decisions.
The Channel Manager dashboard provides three main features:
The Quick Links bin provides the user with hyperlinks to things such as notifications, opportunities, and partner program-related benefits such as partner referrals and special pricing.
The Key Metrics bin provides the user with a consolidated view of his partners' performance.
The Partner Query tool allows vendor users to perform advanced searches for partners based on partner profile attributes. Users can customize the criteria by adding or removing search attributes to tailor searches. Oracle Partner Management integrates with Oracle Marketing to enable channel managers to generate partner lists. These lists can then be used to run marketing campaigns and events thereby enabling marketing to partners.
Oracle Partner Management provides a flexible profiling framework to capture and track the attributes of a partner. Out of the box, the profiling framework ships with numerous partner profile attributes such as Partner Industry, Partner Level and Partner Annual Revenue. In addition, the implementing company can create custom profile attributes to capture partner profiles that are important to their line of business. For more information, see
Partner profile information can be manually entered by the partner user or channel manager via the partner profile page or can be derived from partner data that are stored in external tables, for example, TCA, or from partner transactions, such as orders placed by partners. The profiling framework provides a central repository to capture and track all partner related information. Channel managers can use this information to differentiate partners and provide better services, such as marketing funds, incentives, and opportunities.
Related Topics
Overview of Partner Profile Attributes, Oracle Partner Management Implementation and Administration Guide
Working with Attributes, Oracle Partner Management Implementation and Administration Guide
Programs are used to segment partners and provide different benefits to partners. You can create programs for existing partners as well as new partners. You can also recruit and maintain partners with specific incentive packages. This will help increase and maintain a strong partner community that will further help you to increase overall market share and revenues.
Oracle Partner Management extends the Oracle Sales opportunities model to support the assignment of indirect opportunities to partners. New opportunities can originate from leads and marketing campaigns, or can be entered manually. Sales representatives and channel managers can assign opportunities to partners.
Opportunity Management provides vendors with flexibility when it comes to matching opportunities with partners, and then routing the opportunities to the partners. Both the partner matching process and the routing process can be automated fully by the creation of rules. Matching and routing can also be partially automated, or can be performed manually by a vendor user.
When you route an opportunity to a partner, the partner can view details about the opportunity and accept or decline it. At any time, the partner can also abandon the opportunity.
The key features are:
A rules-based engine that can automatically processes leads, identify appropriate partners for an opportunity, and route the opportunity to partners based on opportunity criteria and partner profile.
Workflow based approval and notifications.
Multiple routing types allows the vendor to route an opportunity to one or multiple partners.
Ability to manually search for partners based on their profile.
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 a product that the reseller does not sell. In this scenario, partners can submit a referral to the vendor and receive a percentage of the revenue.
The key features are:
Partners can submit referrals online and track the progress of the referral from submission to acceptance to payment.
A referral can also be created by a vendor employee, acting on behalf of a partner.
A configurable questionnaire allows the vendor to collect relevant information about a potential opportunity.
Flexible approval rules can be set up using the Oracle Approval Management System based on multiple criteria like Partner Location, Customer location or Partner Type. These approval rules evaluate the approvers who will be required to approve the Referral.
Notifications can be sent out to relevant people at each step of the referral lifecycle. Notifications are sent out based on the message templates seeded in Oracle Workflow and the Notification-to-Recipient mappings setup in the Referral Benefit.
Program managers can setup referral initiatives based on geography and/or product lines. Users can define different commission rates based on product lines.
Channel managers and registration managers can review a submitted referrals, check for duplicate leads or opportunities, and approve or decline it.
Integration with TCA to verify customer and contact information and maintain the integrity of your customer database.
Integration with Oracle Sales to automatically carry over referral information to the opportunity or lead record and through the sales cycle.
Integration with Oracle Trade Management to automate referral commission calculation and payment.
When partners resell a vendor's products, there is often a conflict between the vendor's direct sales force and the partner network. Deal Registration enables partners to submit opportunities and receive a commitment from the vendor not to compete directly and to support partners on the deal. Deal registration helps to increase partner loyalty and allows the vendor to gain visibility into partner activity.
The key features are:
Partners can submit deal registrations online. Once the registration is approved, the partner can work on the indirect opportunity record that is automatically generated and assigned to the partner.
A deal registration can also be created by a vendor employee, acting on behalf of a partner.
Flexible approval rules can be set up using the Oracle Approval Management System based on multiple criteria, such as Partner Location, Customer location or Partner Type. These approval rules evaluate the approvers who will be required to approve the Deal Registration.
Notifications can be sent out to relevant people at each step of the Deal Registration lifecycle. Notifications are sent out based on the message templates seeded in Oracle Workflow and the Notification-to-Recipient mappings set up in the Deal Registration Benefit.
Program managers can setup deal initiatives based on geography and/or product lines.
Channel Managers and Registration Managers can review a registered deal, validate the information, check for duplicate deals, and approve or decline it.
Integration with TCA to verify customer and contact information and maintain the integrity of your customer database.
Integration with Oracle Sales to automatically carry over deal information to the opportunity record and through the sales cycle.
Special Pricing Management streamlines the submission, approval, and tracking of special pricing requests as well as the submission, validation, and tracking of claims. Special Pricing Management allows the vendor organization to respond quickly and intelligently to its partners' requests for special, discounted pricing, thus closing more sales and increasing partner loyalty.
The key features are:
Partners can request special pricing, view the status of their special pricing requests, and submit claims.
A vendor user can submit a special pricing request on behalf of a partner.
Special pricing request approvers can review special pricing information while approving a special pricing request, identify similar requests, and link them.
The vendor can gather competitive information for products.
The vendor can create claims and see outstanding special pricing requests.
A claim can also be created by a partner user.
Partner Funds Management streamlines the submission, approval, and tracking of fund requests as well as the submission, validating, and tracking of claims. It enables vendors to better manage and distribute channel marketing funds to channel partners. With a centralized marketing budgeting and claims management system, including a partner self-service interface to submit fund requests and claims, the vendor can share channel marketing funds with channel partners to motivate them, build loyalty, and financially assist them with marketing activities that will further drive sales. By assisting partners financially, a partner remains motivated, and this helps in building loyalty as well. Funds can be provided for a specific time period and based on an organization's fiscal cycles.
The key features are:
Partners can request funds, review fund request information, view fund request status, submit collateral for approval, and submit claims.
Vendors can attach funds to partner programs and submit fund requests on behalf of a partner.
Vendors can define standard processes for each activity type, and can define expense breakdown, approvals, and approvers.
The Partner Locator allows a potential customer to search for partners, resellers, and value-added resellers that are registered with the vendor organization. The Partner Locator integrates with the vendor's Web portal, which makes it available for customers independent of the Partner Dashboard or the Oracle Partner Management application.
The Partner Locator allows potential customers to provide some basic search criteria, and then returns partners that are within a vendor-specified distance of the customer. The Partner Locator can provide driving directions and maps to better help customers find partners.
Access to program enrollments is controlled based on user types.
User Types
Vendor Approvers - Employees in the vendor organization who can approve enrollment requests. After they have performed the approval, they continue to have access to the enrollment request.
Administrative Users - Employees in the partner organization who can view and update all enrollment requests.
Channel Manager of a Partner - This user can view and update enrollments of the partners that he or she manages.
Partner Users - Partner Users can only enroll in programs.
Access to programs is controlled based on user types.
User Types
Vendor Users - Employees in the vendor organization who can view programs that they created. An example of a vendor user is a channel manager who is responsible for managing a set of partner.
Vendor Approvers - Employees in the vendor organization who can approve programs. After they have performed the approval, they continue to have access to the program.
Vendor Administrators - Employees in the vendor organization who can perform system setup activities.
Access to deals is restricted by user types and permissions.
User Types
Vendor Users - Employees in the vendor organization who can view deals that they created. They can also view deals 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 deal.
Vendor Managers - Employees in the vendor organization who can view and update all deals 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 deals. After they have performed the approval, they continue to have access to the deal.
DQM Approvers - Employees in the vendor organization who can run DQM in order to link customer and contact information on the deal into the master customer record in the system.
Partner Users - Employees in the partner organization who can view and update deals they have created and deals where they are identified as the Partner Contact.
Partner Administrators - Employees in the partner organization who can view and update all deals owned by their organization.
Permissions
Super User Permission - [PV_DEAL_SUPERUSER] - Vendors with this permission can view and update all deals. Partners with this permission can view and update all deals for their organization.
Note that users that have access to all opportunities, will also access all the deal registrations that have been converted into opportunities.
Access to referrals is restricted by 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] - Vendors with this permission can view and update all referrals. Partners with this permission can view and update all referrals for their organization.
Note that users that have access to all opportunities, will also access all the referrals that have been converted into opportunities.
Referral Compensation Approver - [PV_REF_COMP_APPROVER] - Vendors with this permission can approve compensation requests initiated by the Partner.