Oracle® Fusion Applications Sales Implementation Guide 11g Release 7 (11.1.7) Part Number E20373-08 |
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This chapter contains the following:
Manage Partner Accounts and Programs
Manage Default Attributes for Partner Opportunities
FAQs for Manage Partner Budgets
Managing partners in Oracle Fusion Opportunity Management allows deploying companies to leverage alliances, thereby achieving growth and expansion strategies faster, and to maximize sales through broader territory coverage.
Opportunity Management partner relationship features focus on the following business benefits:
Direct sales force and partners can work collaboratively and share information effectively as a team.
The progress of a partner can be measured quantitatively, and thus compensated fairly based on the partner involvement.
Revenue from partner opportunities can be more accurately forecasted by brand owners.
Using Opportunity Management, sales representatives can add partners to opportunities and revenue lines. Partner users of the application can work individually or with internal sales team members to win opportunities.
Partners typically become involved in opportunities in one of the following ways:
A partner-registered lead is converted to an opportunity: In this case, a partner registers a lead on the brand owner's sales force automation system. An internal resource (usually a channel manager) approves the registered lead, and an opportunity is created based on the registered lead. The partner on the registered lead becomes a part of the opportunity.
Partner is added to an internal opportunity: In this case, an internal opportunity is created, either by a direct sales representative or through a lead-to-opportunity conversion, or any other method. The partner is manually added to the opportunity as the partner becomes engaged in the selling process.
Opportunity Management can distinguish between these different scenarios and take the appropriate action with regard to team assignment and credit allocation. Following is a high-level list of supported functionality:
Automatic territory assignment of direct salespeople and channel managers to opportunities
Manual assignment of partners to opportunities in which they collaborate
Support for a consolidated (for example, partner plus direct sales force) forecast of expected supplier revenue
A territory's forecast includes all, and only, those revenue items that fall into the territory's dimensional boundaries
Channel sales can submit a nonrevenue forecast of partner opportunities, and this can be compared to the quota for channel sales
Territory management analytics can distinguish between direct and indirect revenue by capturing the sales channel at the revenue line level
Tracking of partner relationship contributions to sales opportunities that partners generate and help close
Leads designated as sourced through a partner sales channel are not assigned to direct salespeople
Much like any other internal resources, partners can be added or removed from the opportunity team manually. However, the resource picker displays only partner resources whose partner organization is already associated to the opportunity. The same behavior is applied when choosing a partner resource for credit allocation purpose.
A partner resource cannot be removed from the opportunity team if the resource is receiving nonrevenue credit on a revenue line on the opportunity. The credit allocations must first be removed from the partner resource. When a partner organization is removed from the opportunity and no resource from that partner is receiving credits on the opportunity, all partner resources, if they exist, will be automatically removed from the opportunity team.
After a partner is added to a revenue line, the next step is to assign matching territories to the revenue line and relevant resources to the opportunity sales team. Partner territories and Partner Program territories (territories of type equal to Partner or Partner Program) are not assigned to opportunities, since they are not used to drive territory forecasting, metrics, or reporting. However, other territories such as Prime, Overlay, Channel Sales Manager territories, and territories of custom defined types will be assigned based on matching dimensional attributes on the revenue line, much like an internal sales opportunity. The treatment of a territory in terms of post-assignment, such as the side effect of adding territory owner or members to the opportunity team, is the same as that of an internal sales territory.
Partner resources are only eligible to receive nonrevenue credits on opportunity revenue. When selecting sales credits for partner resources, only partner resources whose partner organization is associated to the revenue line are eligible for sales credits. Partner resources are also not eligible for deal protection.
The Partner Center enables channel managers of a supplier or a brand owner that deploys the Oracle Fusion Partner Management application, to search for the partner accounts, as well as view and update the details of the partner profile, partner members, partner account team, partner programs, tasks, interactions, leads, and opportunities of the selected partner. The channel managers can only view the performance snapshot and partner contracts of the selected partner. The Partner Management application provides the following internal job roles:
Channel Operations Manager
Channel Account Manager
Channel Sales Manager
Channel Sales Director
A channel manager with any one of the above job roles can search and view the details of partner profile and related information of all partner accounts in Partner Center. Partner tasks, interactions, performance snapshots, leads, and opportunities are separately secured child objects of any partner account in Partner Center.
To view and update the partner tasks and interactions of any partner account in Partner Center, the channel manager needs to be a member of the partner account team of the partner account.
To view the partner performance snapshot and contracts of any partner account in Partner Center, the channel manager needs to be a member of the partner account team of the partner account.
When you create a partner user, you enable the partner member to access and use the deploying company's resources for working on assigned tasks. You also assign job and security roles to the partner member's user profile and specify the organization to which the new user needs to belong.
Every partner user needs to have an assigned job role. This job role can be used to create security roles for the user. Based on the security roles you assign, the user can access applications, locations, and data within the deploying company. You may choose to assign security roles automatically to a user; you can also assign additional security roles individually if needed.
While assigning non-manager partner users to organizations, you can either select an organization or a manager. Once you select an organization, the manager of the selected organization becomes the new user's manager. Similarly, once you select a manager, the new user automatically becomes a member of the organization to which the manager belongs.
If the role of the new user is that of a manager, you need to assign the new user to an organization even after specifying a manager. This is because you granted the new user a managerial role, and you now need to specify the organization that the new user needs to manage. You can either select an organization from the list of available organizations, or you can create a new one if required.
Automatic role provisioning is the process by which security roles are granted to a user based on the user's resource role.
Resource roles capture the nature of work intended to be performed by the partner user. As a result of automatic role provisioning, a range of security roles are granted to the new user. This enables users to access applications flows that are crucial for performing the tasks related to their resource roles.
Once the list of assigned security roles is populated, you can choose to remove roles or add new ones individually as needed.
This example demonstrates how to enable the link to register an existing account as a partner. There are two registration task flows available from the partner registration landing page:
Register Your Company as a New Partner
Register You Existing Account as Partner. This is not enabled, by default.
This launches the partner registration pages.
This highlights the corresponding region in the source pane.
This example demonstrates how to associate a contract terms template to a partner program. The following table summarizes key decisions for this scenario:
Decisions to Consider |
In This Example |
---|---|
Create a new terms template? |
No. Use an existing terms template |
Field |
Value |
---|---|
Language |
English |
Business Unit |
Vision Operations |
Contract Template |
Select an available contract template Note If a contract template is not available, you need to create a contract template from the Oracle Fusion Contracts application |
Contract Type |
Select a contract type |
Contract Owner |
Optional. Select a contract owner |
Term |
1 year |
Acceptance |
Online |
Country |
Brazil |
Cancellation Reason |
Select a cancellation reason |
Close Reason |
Select a close reason. Note A close reason is required, when a program period has gone beyond the expiration date for the program. |
The channel organization can either enable partner programs or not enable them. If partner programs are not enabled, then the channel organization can conduct business with partners without the partner having to enroll one of the channel organization's partner programs. If partner programs are enabled, then the partner must enroll into a partner program before the partner can be active.
If you enable partner programs:
you can set up program territories and child partner territories
business intelligence, such as reporting and deals, can use partner program data
If you disable partner programs:
you cannot set up program territories and child partner territories
business intelligence cannot use program data, so you will not have reports based on program data.
programs are not required for Lead Registration.
Note
If you do not enable partner programs, you should remove from the application all job and duty roles for programs. By doing so, Programs will not appear in the Navigator menu and the Partner Programs node will not appear in Oracle Partner Center.
During Partner Registration, the terms and conditions content can vary for different sites. You can customize the link to the terms and conditions content. This example demonstrates the steps to customize the Read Terms and Conditions hyperlink.
This launches the Partner Registration pages
This highlights the corresponding region in the source pane.
Channel program manager territory and partner territory are some of the sales territories for a brand owner. A sales territory is the area of responsibility of a sales representative over a set of accounts, leads and opportunities.
A Channel program manager territory and a partner territory will have an area of responsibility defined or bounded by a specific type and share the same data set of dimensions. Once a channel program manager territory has been created and activated from the Oracle Fusion Territory Management application, the territory can be reviewed in the Eligibility tab in the Program Details page.
Partner territories are child territories of channel program manager territories.
For partner-involved opportunities, capturing the lead registration type is vital to driving defaulting behavior within the opportunity for downstream processes of assignment and credit allocations. Supplied, supported lead registration types are Resell, Co-sell, and Referral, though the list can be extended through customization.
Lead registration type can be set during the following events:
When a lead is converted to an opportunity (occurs upon approval of a partner's lead registration). In this case, the lead registration type is carried over from the lead to the opportunity.
When a partner is added manually to an opportunity, and the user can specify the lead registration type for the partner.
Based on a pre-configured setting, the system may set a default sales channel and add the opportunity partner to all the revenue lines based on the value of the lead registration type of the partner. Sales channel is one of the dimensions that drives the territory assignment logic, and the tracking of partner and sales channel at the revenue line is also important for revenue reporting by channel. The defaulting feature eliminates the need for the user to manually manage these attributes and also minimizes data entry errors which can have far-reaching consequences on revenue reporting and territory metrics.
The following table shows the pre-configured settings for lead registration type behavior:
Lead Registration Type |
Add Partner to Revenue Lines? |
Default Sales Channel for Revenue Lines |
---|---|---|
Referral |
No |
Direct |
Co-sell |
No |
Direct |
Resell |
Yes |
Indirect |
None |
No |
Direct |
Note
Automatic propagation of the partner to the revenue lines (provided that the Add Partner to Revenue Lines setting is set to Yes) happens only when the first partner of that lead registration type is added to the opportunity. Subsequent additions of partners with a lead registration type that is flagged for partner propagation will not overwrite the first partner that has already been added by default to the lines. During the creation of a new revenue line, the system will also use the previously defaulted partner to populate the new line.
After a partner lead registration is approved, it gets converted to an opportunity. During the conversion process, lead attributes, such as sales account, products, revenue amount, primary partner contact, and registration type, is carried over to the newly created opportunity. This topic describes the mapping of these attributes between the lead management and opportunity management applications. Note that only some of these attributes are specific to partner lead conversions; most of them also apply to standard lead conversion to opportunities.
The following table lists the mapping of general lead attributes carried over into opportunities at the header (opportunity) level.
Lead Attribute |
Opportunity Attribute |
---|---|
Name |
Name |
Sales Account |
Sales Account |
Estimated Close Date |
Estimated Close Date |
Date Approved |
Creation Date |
Registration Type |
Registration Type |
Registration Number |
Registration Number |
Expiration Date |
Expiration Date |
Deal Approved By |
Owner |
Deal Approved By Resource Org |
Resource Org |
Budget Status |
Budget |
Budget Amount |
Budget Amount |
Currency Code |
Currency Code |
Partner |
Partner |
Partner Type |
Partner Type |
Partner Program |
Partner Program |
Owner |
Primary Partner Resource |
The following table lists the mapping of lead contacts attributes to opportunity contacts attributes.
Lead Attribute |
Opportunity Attribute |
---|---|
Contact Attributes |
Contact Attributes |
Contact Role |
Contact Role |
Primary |
Primary |
The following table lists the mapping of lead products attributes to opportunity revenue line attributes.
Lead Attribute |
Opportunity Attribute |
---|---|
Product |
Product |
Product Group |
Product Group |
Currency Code |
Currency Code |
Quantity |
Quantity |
Unit Price |
Unit Price |
Amount |
Revenue Amount |
Unit of Measure |
Unit of Measure |
Estimated Close Date (header) |
Close Date |
Marketing budgets exist for a limited time period, determined by the dates you specify.
When you create or edit a marketing budget, four date fields appear:
Budget Start Date
Budget End Date
Fund Request Submission Deadline
Claim Submission Deadline
These dates are described in the sections that follow.
This marks the beginning of the planning period for the budget. It is not necessarily the date on which the budget becomes available. You can create a budget with Draft status and then change it to Active when funds become available.
This is the date the budget expires. It must be later than the submission deadlines for fund requests and claims. You must specify the end date before you activate the budget. After this date, no funds can be drawn on the budget, no fund requests or claims can be made, and the budget cannot remain in or be placed in Active status. Optionally, you can inactivate the budget before this date.
This is the last date a budget fund request will be accepted. It must precede the budget end date.
This is the last date a budget claim will be accepted for reimbursement. It must precede the budget end date.
Partners can submit a fund request for expense items that they plan to claim, before incurring the expense. The approver can decide whether or not to approve some or all of the expense.
Partners submit claims for reimbursement of the approved expense after the expenses have been incurred.
When you click Refresh Budget Checkbook to update the available budget amount. The total budget is updated with entries that are Active, Complete and have an Effective Date before or equal to the current date. The available budget is the sum of total budget minus approved fund requests.
When claims that do not reference a fund request are approved.