2 Understanding the Process Integration for Product Lifecycle Management

This chapter provides an overview of the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) integration process.

This chapter includes the following section:

• Section 2.1, "Product Lifecycle Management Overview"

2.1 Product Lifecycle Management Overview

The process integration for product lifecycle management (PLM) enables you to synchronize billing products and billing discounts between Oracle Billing and Revenue Management (Oracle BRM) and Siebel Customer Relationship Management (Siebel CRM). You can perform synchronization in either real time or batch mode.

Oracle BRM is the master for billing products and billing discounts. As such, this flow assumes that billing products and billing discounts are created in Oracle BRM and enriched in Siebel CRM. Also, any further updates to those products and discounts are also made in Oracle BRM and synchronized to Siebel CRM for further enrichment.

The process integration for product lifecycle management delivers these integration flows, which enable the synchronize product and price and the query product classes business flows:

Synchronize Product and Price

This business flow is enabled using the Oracle Communications Order to Cash Siebel CRM and Oracle Billing and Revenue Management (Oracle BRM) pre-built integration options.

• Synchronization of billing products: Oracle BRM to Siebel CRM. The product synchronization integration flow enables you to create new products in Oracle BRM and synchronize those products to Siebel CRM. It also enables you to update existing products in Oracle BRM and then synchronize the updated products to Siebel CRM.

• Synchronization of billing discounts: Oracle BRM to Siebel CRM. The discount synchronization integration flow enables you to create new discounts in Oracle BRM and synchronize those discounts as products to Siebel CRM. It also enables you to update existing discounts in Oracle BRM and then synchronize the updated discounts to Siebel CRM.

For more information about the Synchronize Product and Price business flow, see Chapter 3, "PLM - Understanding the Synchronize Product and Price Business Flow."

Query Product Classes

This business flow is enabled using the Oracle Communications Order to Cash Siebel CRM and Oracle Order and Service Management (Oracle OSM) pre-built integration options.

• Query Product Classes: SCE Studio and Siebel CRM. The query product classes integration flow enables you to create new product classes in Siebel and query them from the SCE Studio. The query process includes product classes, associated attributes and valuesets. The new product classes and updates to existing product classes are queried from SCE Studio.

For more information about the Synchronize Product and Price business flow, see Chapter 5, "PLM - Understanding the Query Product Classes Business Flow."