Process of Certifying Your Partners

You can set up partner certification programs to give your partners an opportunity to improve their skills and let your customers know which partners are most skilled.

For example, you might enroll new partner companies as silver partners. When a partner company's employees have taken ten training courses, answered 20 customer service requests, and generated $20 million in revenue, you might make the company a Gold partner. Or, when employees have taken 20 training courses, answered 40 customer service requests, and generated $50 million in revenue, you might make the company a Platinum partner.

A partner company can work on several certification programs at the same time. For example, a partner might work on becoming a certified reseller and a certified service provider.

To certify partners, perform the following tasks:

"Creating Certification Metrics". Plan and create appropriate metrics for all of your certification programs.
"Creating Certification Templates". Set up certification templates that specify the requirements for each level of certification in a certification program.
"Associating Certifications with a Partner Company". Associate the appropriate certification template with each partner company.
"Recording Partners' Progress". You can enter the courses partners have taken, or you can set up Siebel Business Process Designer to enter these values automatically. For example, when a partner uses the Siebel PRM Portal to take a training course, Siebel Business Process Designer can increment the value in the Actual# field for that partner's training courses.
"Checking a Partner's Progress". Display a list of the certifications a partner company is working on, and check the progress on each certification.

You can also check information about partner certifications in the following ways:

"Displaying Certified Partners"
"Displaying Certifications Across Partners"

You can make partner certification easier with the following configuration: "Configuring Autopopulation of Partner Certification Criteria".

Creating Certification Metrics

This task is a step in "Process of Certifying Your Partners".

Before you can create any certification templates, you must create certification metrics.

A certification metric lets you find partners who are taking similar certification programs. For example, if you plan to develop a series of certification programs that require partners to take training courses, you could create a metric named # of courses taken. Then, when you evaluate partner performance, you can search on the metric field to list the certification programs that require training courses, and compare the performance of partners working on these programs.

A certification metric also lets you define the criteria for a particular certification. For example, you could define multiple criteria for a partner company to become a Certified Reseller. One of those criteria could be to generate $20 million in revenue. You would define this criterion by choosing a predefined metric named Sales Revenue and assigning a target amount value of $20 million.

A certification metric is not a mathematical formula that measures performance. Performance is measured using the Target and Actual fields of each certification definition. A metric lets you categorize criteria, so you can compare the performance of different partner companies measured using similar criteria.

To add a new certification metric

Navigate to the Administration - Application screen, then the List of Values view.
In the List of Values, add a new record.
A new record is added to the list.
Click the Single Select button.
The Pick Value Type dialog box appears.
Choose CHAMP_METRIC_CD, and click OK.
In the Order field, enter the order in which this metric appears on the list of values in the list for the Metric field of Certification Criteria records.
In the Display Value field, enter the name for the metric to appear in the list for the Metric field of Certification Criteria records.
Click Language Name, and select the language for this record.
Other fields are optional and are not generally used in certification criteria. Fill them out only if you have a special reason to do so.

This metric is added to the Metrics picklist in Certification Criteria records.

Creating Certification Templates

This task is a step in "Process of Certifying Your Partners".

A certification template includes general information about a certification program, such as its name and description, and a list of the criteria required for that certification.

For example, you could create a template for companies that want to become Gold partners with two criteria: that a partner company's employees must take ten training courses and answer twenty customer service requests.

There are three fields that define criteria for certification:

Target #. Enter the target number here when you create the certification template, and enter the actual number in the Actual # field as the certification program is being completed. For example, if you require a partner to resell one hundred of your computers to become a Gold partner, the measurement is the number of computers that a partner sells, so you would enter 100 in the Target # field.
Target Amount. Enter the target amount here when you create the certification template and enter the actual amount in the Actual Amount field as the certification program is being completed. For example, if you require a partner to resell $100,000 of your computers to become a gold partner, the measurement is the amount of revenue for a partner's sales, so you would enter 100,000 in the Target Amount field.
Condition Clause. If the criterion has a condition, enter a brief description of the condition that the partner company must satisfy when you create the certification template and select True or False in the Condition Met field as the certification program is being completed. For example, if the condition is to have the partner go to a trade show to display your computers, you would select True when the partner goes to the show.

In addition, if you are using the Target # or Target Amount field, you can optionally specify what the target refers to in the Training Course or Product field.

For example, in one certification definition, you might enter 100 as the target number and select Laptop computers as the product, showing that 100 refers to this product. In a second definition, you might enter 100 as the target number and select Printers as the product, showing that 100 refers to this product. Then, the partner would have to resell one hundred laptop computers and one hundred printers to receive this level of certification.

To create a certification template

Navigate to the Partner Certifications screen, then the Certification Templates List view.
In the Certification Templates list, add a new record.

Enter information in the following table about the certification template in the new record.

Field	Description
Template Name	Enter the name of the certification template.
Validity (months)	Enter the number of months that a certification, once gained, is valid.
Created	Displays the date when this certification record was created.
Created By	Displays the employee who created this template record.
Updated	Displays the date when this certification record was last updated.
Updated By	Displays the employee who last updated the certification template.
Active	Leave this field unchecked while you are working on the template. When the template is done, check the field to make the template active, so your partners can see it.
Description	A description of this certification for your own use.

Drill down on the name of the new record.
Click the Certification Criteria view tab.
In the Certification Criteria list, add a new record.

Enter the criteria from the following table in the new record's fields.

Field	Description
Condition Clause	If you are using a condition as the target, enter it here.
Metric	Select a metric, which you use to categorize and define your certification criteria.
Target #	If you are using a quantity as the target, enter the target number here.
Target Amount	If you are using an amount as the target, enter the target amount here.
Training Course	Optionally, choose the training course that must be completed as part of the criteria.
Product	Optionally, choose the product that the partner must have sold or been trained on, as a part of the criteria.

Associating Certifications with a Partner Company

This task is a step in "Process of Certifying Your Partners".

You can create a certification record for each of your partners and associate these records with certification templates.

You can also set up Siebel Business Process Designer to automatically enter the value Certified in the Status field of the Certification record when values are filled in the Certification Criteria list that satisfy all the requirements of the certification, making the partner company a certified partner. For more information about Siebel Business Process Designer, see Siebel Business Process Framework: Workflow Guide.

To create a certification record and associate it with a partner

Navigate to the Partners screen, then the Partner List view.
In the Partners list, drill down on the name of the partner company for which you want to create a certification.
Click the Certifications view tab.

Certifications view appears.
In the Certifications list, add a new record.

Enter information from the following table in the fields.

Field	Description
Template Name	Click the Single Select button and select a predefined template. The criteria in the Certification Criteria form are automatically filled based on the template chosen.
Certification Name	Enter a name for the certification.
Description	Enter a description of the certification.
Partner	Enter the name of the partner company.
Active	This field is automatically set to true if the End Date is greater than today.
Status	Indicates the status of the certification: In Progress, Not Started, Certified.
Certified Date	The date on which the status is set to Certified is entered automatically when you select this status.
End Date	The end date is entered automatically, set based on the certified date and the validity (in months) defined for the certification template.

Recording Partners' Progress

This task is a step in "Process of Certifying Your Partners".

Partner employees can view certification programs in the Certification view of the Siebel PRM Portal. This view has Actual#, Actual Amount, and Condition Met fields in addition to the Target#, Target Amount, and Condition clause fields whose values you entered when you created the template. Your partners can view these fields to see a certification program's requirements.

You can configure Siebel Business Process Designer to fill out these fields automatically, based on actions that partner employees take when they register for training courses, or work with Opportunity records, or work with Service Request records, and so on. For more information about Siebel Business Process Designer, see Siebel Business Process Framework: Workflow Guide.

Checking a Partner's Progress

This task is a step in "Process of Certifying Your Partners".

At any time, you can look up each certification a partner company is working on and how much progress has been made on each one.

To look up a partner company's certifications

Navigate to the Partners screen, then the Partner List view.
In the Partners list, drill down on the name of the partner company whose certifications you want to check.
Click the Certifications view tab.

Certification view appears.
Select any certification record in the Certifications list.

The criteria for that certification are displayed in the Certification Criteria list.

In the Certification Criteria list, compare the Target#, Target Amount, or Condition Clause field for each record with the Actual#, Actual Amount, or Condition Met field for each record.

Displaying Certified Partners

You can display the partner companies that have achieved each of your certification levels in the Partner Certification screen.

To display certified partners

Navigate to the Partner Certifications screen, then the Certification Templates List view.
In the Certification Templates list, drill down on the name of a certification template.
Click the Certified Partners view tab.

The Certified Partners list includes the partners with that certification.

Displaying Certifications Across Partners

You can display the certifications all of your partners have completed or are working on in the Partner Certifications screen. The list includes the status of each certification.

To view certifications across partners

Navigate to the Partner Certifications screen, then the Partner Certifications List screen, then the All Certifications Across Partners view.

The partner certifications appear.

Configuring Autopopulation of Partner Certification Criteria

When the user adds a Certification child record to a Partner record in the Partner Certification - Certifications Detail view of the Partners screen, the criteria associated with the template selected are automatically populated in the Certification Criteria list.

This autopopulation depends on the following user properties in the Partner Certification business component:

Child Attribute BC
Template Definition BC

Autopopulation also requires that the following business components are configured in the Channel Partner business object using the appropriate links:

Partner Certification
Partner Certification Criteria
Partner Certification Template
Partner Certification Template Definition

The user properties and the business components must be consistent.