1 Siebel CRM Integration Pack for Oracle Order Management: Order to Cash

The Siebel Customer Relationship Management (Siebel CRM) Integration Pack for Oracle Order Management pre-built integration provides a seamless and robust order-to-cash business process.

This chapter includes the following sections:

Section 1.1, "Siebel CRM Integration Pack for Oracle Order Management"
Section 1.2, "Order to Cash Business Process Flows"
Section 1.3, "Order to Cash Solution Assumptions and Constraints"

1.1 Siebel CRM Integration Pack for Oracle Order Management

The Siebel CRM Integration Pack for Oracle Order Management (Order to Cash: Siebel CRM - EBS) provides a seamless and robust order-to-cash business process. Leveraging the best front-office with the best back-office applications, this integration provides a solution that gives a streamlined, end-to-end Order to Cash business process, which in turn enables a faster time to market for new products and a faster time to revenue.

A quote or order created in Siebel Quote and Order Capture can generate an order in Oracle E-Business Suite (Oracle EBS) Order Management. The order-to-cash flow consists of master data flows and transactional flows. For master data, customer account data is synchronized bidirectionally, while product (item or bill of material [BOM]) data is synchronized from the Oracle EBS item master.

The transactional flows are Available to Promise (ATP), Credit Check, Payment Authorization, Shipping Charges, Quotes, and the Order integration flow.

The integration includes additional touch points between Siebel CRM and Oracle EBS that are required to enable this process: loading price lists and synchronizing assets.

The integration also provides the ability to invoke the Oracle Configurator, either from a Siebel quote or an order. This approach eliminates the costly and complex maintenance of configuration rules in Siebel CRM. It also leverages a customer's existing investment in Oracle Configurator.

This business process helps organizations:

Eliminate order fallout by ensuring that products are correctly configured and available before confirming the order.
Increase customer satisfaction by ensuring that the order is priced correctly.
Reduce customer callbacks by providing order availability and status.
Decrease time to market for new products.
Enable faster time to revenue.
Reduce the implementation costs using delivered mappings and business processes.

Figure 1-1 illustrates the Order to Cash: Siebel CRM - EBS integration solution.

Figure 1-1 Order to Cash Integration Functional Diagram

1.2 Order to Cash Business Process Flows

The Order to Cash: Siebel CRM - EBS integration consists of these integration flows:

Initial bulk data loading integration flows for customers, products, price lists, and assets.
Customer Management.
Product Management.
Price List Management.
Process integration for Quotes.
Service calls: Available to Promise, Credit Check, Payment Authorization, and Shipping Charges.
Order Management.
Asset Management.

Figure 1-2 and Figure 1-3 illustrate the Order to Cash business process flow:

Figure 1-2 Order to Cash Business Process Flow (1 of 2)

Figure 1-3 Order to Cash Business Process Flow (2 of 2)

The Order to Cash business process enables deployments to create and update an order across the life cycle of the entire order. This business process supports complex pricing and product configuration, availability checking, credit verification, shipping and tax calculations, and multiple methods of payment to ensure that before any orders delivered to the customer are complete and accurate. The initial data load processes enable bulk loading of customers, products, price lists, and assets.

In the Order to Cash process, customers contact customer service representatives (CSRs) to either place new orders or revise existing orders. The CSR first determines if the customer is new or exists in the system. For new customers, the CSR captures all of the pertinent information and creates an account in Siebel CRM. Next, the CSR creates the required orders. Working with the customer, the CSR selects products in order lines and enters shipping and billing information.

It is good practice to do the availability check to ensure that the customer's order can be fulfilled successfully in the back office (Available to Promise [ATP]). For new customers, or depending on the value of the order, the CSR should perform a credit check to ensure that the order is not placed on hold for credit reasons. It is also possible to calculate shipping charges before an order is submitted to the back office. If the ATP and credit checks are successful, the CSR can submit the order.

Order updates, including taxes and shipping charges due to order fulfillment in the back office, are synchronized to Siebel CRM. The CSR can access the latest order status, thereby serving customers better without having to toggle to a different application.

1.3 Order to Cash Solution Assumptions and Constraints

These are the assumptions and constraints for the Order to Cash: Siebel CRM - EBS pre-built integration:

Siebel SIA version is supported out-of-the-box.
Only Oracle Configurator is supported out-of-the-box.
Oracle EBS is the product master, and the item/BOM synchronization happens only from Oracle EBS to Siebel CRM.
Pricing is performed in Siebel CRM. Oracle EBS does not recalculate the price.
Business-to-customer (B2C) order scenarios are not supported out-of-the-box.
Prospects from Siebel are not synchronized to Oracle EBS.
Participating applications are implemented in either the same code page or Unicode.

Note:

Additional assumptions and constraints exist for each of the process integration flows; they are listed in the respective chapters.