Process of Sharing Master Data with Partners

Master data is assigned to groups of employees rather than to individual employees. It is most common to assign the following types of master data to your partners:

• Literature. These are documents used to sell or understand your products, such as sales brochures and technical background information.

• Solutions. These are answers to common service requests.

• Training Courses. These are courses administered through the Administration - Training screen.

• Products. These are the goods or services that you sell.

• Price Lists. These are the prices you charge this partner for the goods or services that you sell.

In addition, auction items, competitors, decision issues, events, resolution items, and response templates can also be assigned to categories.

For most master data, visibility is controlled by using catalog visibility. This mechanism lets you categorize master data into catalogs. The value in the catalog's Type field must be Partner for the catalog to be visible in the Siebel PRM Portal.

You control visibility to these catalogs using access groups, which are groups of different parties in your Siebel environment. Partner communities are a type of access group that you use to group partners, so you can give groups of partners access to the same catalogs of master data. For example, you might have a catalog specifically for Partner Literature, and you might give all partner communities visibility to this catalog. You might have a catalog for a specific product line, such as a catalog of all literature, solutions, products, and training courses related to your line of server products. You might put all resellers who sell your line of server products into one partner community, so you can give this group of partners visibility to this server catalog.

You can also create public catalogs, which have no visibility restrictions, to provide master data visibility to unregistered users and individual partners.

To assign most types of master data to partners, you add the partner company to the appropriate access group. Make sure your channel operations manager has set up the appropriate access groups and categories of master data. Then, any partner company that you add to the access group has access to all the master data in the categories visible to that access group.

The exception is price lists, which are usually assigned to smaller groups of partner companies than other types of master data. For example, you might assign master data to an access group called Resellers, but you might have a different price list for each reseller, or you might have a standard price list for most resellers but special price lists for five of your resellers. Assigning price lists to access groups would limit the utility of the access groups, because price lists often do not follow the same rules as other master data. For more information about master data, categories, and user groups, see Siebel Security Guide.

To assign master data to partners, perform the following tasks:

1. "Creating Categories and Access Groups"

2. "Adding Partner Companies to Access Groups"

3. "Adding Master Data to Categories"

4. "Assigning Price Lists to Partner Companies"

In addition, when you produce new master data, such as new sales brochures, you must add them to the appropriate category to make them visible to your partners.

Creating Categories and Access Groups

This task is a step in "Process of Sharing Master Data with Partners".

Before partner managers assign any master data to partner companies, the channel operations manager or system administrator must analyze the way you need to share master data with your partners and create the appropriate categories and access groups.

Though most of the work of setting up catalogs and access groups is done when you first set up Siebel PRM, you can add catalogs and access groups at any time. Some examples of when you would add them are as follows:

• If you start a new product line, you would probably want to add a new catalog or to add new categories to an existing catalog for information about that product line.

• If you restructure your partner program, you might have to rework your system of access groups completely.

You would also want to continuously add information to catalogs as more data is created and made available. For example, you would need frequent updates to catalogs as you create new FAQs and new product data sheets or brochures. For more information on creating categories and access groups, see Chapter 3, "Setting Up Siebel PRM."

Adding Partner Companies to Access Groups

This task is a step in "Process of Sharing Master Data with Partners".

After categories and access groups have been set up properly, you assign a partner company to the appropriate access group to give it visibility to all the master data associated with that access group.

For example, you might have access groups for resellers, value added resellers, service providers, and system integrators. If you form a new partnership with another service provider, you associate it with the appropriate access group to give it visibility to your sales literature, training courses, and other master data that service providers need. You do this when you first enroll the new partner in your partner program and create a Partner record.

Partner communities are the type of access group used specifically to group partner companies. It is useful to have partner communities, because you can identify which access groups are used to manage partners and which are used for other purposes. When Siebel PRM users add access groups, it is recommended that they use partner communities.

If you add a new partner program, for example, if you introduce a new product to a select group of resellers, you would create new partner communities so you can give these partners access to the information they need about the product. These partners would probably still belong to the same partner communities as before, but they would also belong to this new one in order to get access to specific information about this new product they are reselling.

You might create several new groups for resellers of this product line, named Authorized, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Each group would have access to different data sets. You could also use the inheritance rules to set up these groups hierarchically. For example, if you are in the Platinum group you see everything that Gold sees plus the information specific to your group; if you are in the Gold group, you see everything Silver sees plus the information specific to your group; if you are in the Silver group, you see everything authorized resellers see plus the information specific to your group. Inheritance rules give you flexibility in modeling relationships among groups.

If you do not know which access group to use, ask the partner operations manager who set up access groups in your company.

To add a partner company to an access group 

1. Navigate to the Administration - Partner screen, then the Registered Partners view.

2. In the Partners list, drill down on the name of the partner company that you want to add to a community and click the Access Groups view tab.

3. In the Access Groups list, add a new record.

4. In the Add Access Groups dialog box, select the group or groups to which you want to add the partner. If necessary, use queries to find these groups, and click Add.

Adding Master Data to Categories

This task is a step in "Process of Sharing Master Data with Partners".

Using access groups allows you to assign new master data to partner companies. For example, when you create a new sales brochure, you just have to associate it with the appropriate category. If categories and access groups have been set up correctly, the brochure is visible to all your partners who are in access groups associated with that category.

For example, when you come out with a new datasheet for a new version of an existing product, or when you introduce a new product line and build a new catalog about that product line, you would perform the following process tasks:

• If you are creating a new catalog for the new data, ask your channel operations manager to help you set up the new catalog structure and to associate it with the appropriate access groups. To add master data, you must understand the structure of access groups and categories that the partner operations manager has set up.

• Create the new master data content, such as new literature or new solutions.

• After the content is finished, add it to the Siebel database by navigating to the appropriate screen (for example, the Literature or Solutions screen) and adding a new record for the content file. If you are adding a whole catalog, you would add multiple items on each screen and categorize the items as you add them.

• Add each item to the correct category, by either navigating to the Category view in the screen where you added the item or by navigating to the Administration - Catalog screen, displaying the correct category, and adding the item. (If you are associating existing master data with categories, it is generally easier to use the Administration - Catalog screen. If you are creating new master data content, it is generally easier to use the Administration - Catalog screen, Category view where you added the data.) All of the partners in partner groups associated with these categories have visibility to the data.

The following two procedures show how to associate literature with a category. You associate other types of master data in exactly the same way, using the other view tabs instead of the Literature view tab or using other screens instead of the Literature Administration screen.

To associate literature with a category using the Catalog Administration screen 

1. Navigate to the Administration - Catalog screen.

2. In the Catalogs list, drill down on the name of the catalog that contains the category with which you want to associate the literature to drill down into that catalog.

   A Categories list appears that contains that category.

3. Select the Category with which you want to associate literature.

4. In the Categories link bar, click Literature.

5. In the Literature list, add a new record.

   The Add Literature dialog box appears.

6. If necessary, enter criteria for a search and click Go.

7. Select the literature item that you want to associate with the category, and click OK.

   The literature is associated with the category.

Use the following procedure to associate literature with a category using the Literature Administration screen.

To associate literature with a category using the Literature Administration screen 

1. Navigate to the Administration - Document screen, then the Literature view.

2. In the Literature list, add a new literature item, or select the record for the literature you want to associate with a category.

3. Click the Category view tab.

4. In the Category list, add a new record.

   The Add Category dialog box appears.

5. Select the category with which you want to associate the literature, and click OK.

   The literature is associated with the category.

Assigning Price Lists to Partner Companies

This task is a step in "Process of Sharing Master Data with Partners".

In order for a partner to access your company's products, you must assign it a price list as well as a buying catalog.

Buying catalogs are catalogs that contain products you sell. They are set up in the same way as other catalogs, which were discussed earlier in this chapter. For example, you can give different internal divisions and partners access to different buying catalogs in the same way that you give them access to different literature catalogs. A buying catalog must have the value "Buying" in the Catalog Type field.

Caution: If you do not set the Catalog Type to Buying, users are able to see products in the InfoCenter and All Product Lists view, but the Catalog screen is empty.

Buying catalogs do not contain prices. Price lists are stored separately from buying catalogs to give you greater flexibility. You could use this flexibility in several ways, for example:

• All resellers of a certain product line might have access to the same catalog; you put them all in the same access group, and you give the group access to the catalog. However, you might give resellers a discount that is determined by sales volume, so each reseller needs a different price list.

• All resellers of a certain product line might have access to the same catalog and to the same price list. In this situation, there are no volume discounts and no special deals. Regardless of what product lines you sell, you pay the same price.

Price lists must contain prices for every product; products are visible only if they are included in the price list as well as in the catalog. Each partner must be assigned a price list; you can assign the same price list to multiple partners, or assign a unique price to each partner if necessary. For more information about creating pricing models and price lists, see Siebel Pricing Administration Guide.

To assign a price list to a partner organization 

1. Make sure the price list to be assigned has already been created in the Siebel PRM Manager or some other Siebel Business Application.

2. Navigate to the Administration - Partner screen, then the Registered Partners view.

3. In the Registered Partners list, drill down on the name of the partner company for which you want to assign a price list.

4. Click the Price Lists view tab.

   The Price Lists list appears.

5. In the Price Lists list, add a new record.

   The Add Price Lists dialog box appears.

6. Select the price list you want to assign to the company, and click OK.

   The Price Lists list appears with the price list that you selected added to it.