Hierarchy Developer's Guide for Oracle Self-Service E-Billing > Hierarchy Manager Concepts >

Hierarchy Example

There are two types of hierarchy: the billing system and the organizational structure. Most billing systems cannot accurately model the business structure of an organization, because the two hierarchy structures are usually very different. The following diagram shows how a telecommunication company might model one of their customers in their billing system. In the example, there are two accounts, and each account has several mobile phones. Each account number has an invoice produced for it, and the accounts may be on different billing cycles. For example account #1234 might be billed on the first of each month, and account #2345 might be billed on the 15th of each month. The billing system might not know that these two accounts belong to the same company.

Most companies have more complex business structures than the preceding example, which they would like to map to the contracts they have with the Service Provider. The next example shows how these two accounts might be modeled from a business structure point of view.

This business structure provides much better interaction between the service provider and customer in an online customer self service offering. In this example, both contracts and users are assigned to a business structure. However, in many organizations, one business structure is not sufficient. Month to month, organizations may require a project structure that is very different from the original business structure. The following example illustrates how the same billing hierarchy used in the first business structure can be arranged into a completely different business structure.

Each of these example business structures model how a customer might design a hierarchy to support the functions provided in a customer self service application. Payment, electronic bill viewing, Order Management, Service Management, and reporting are all common features of self service that will utilize the business structures. The business structures provide the scope for the other components to act on. User and business objects can be assigned to each of the business structures. It is important to realize that Hierarchy Manager itself only provides these business structures and captures user access control. The ability to use this structure to perform analytics, make payments, or other features are the responsibility of the other modules.

Additionally, the user management and role based access control features are components separate from Hierarchy Manager. The assignment and role of a user at a level of hierarchy is done using Hierarchy Manager, but management of the user and controlling access based on role is separate.