Contacts

This chapter includes information about administering and using contacts. It includes the following topics:

About Contacts

Contacts are individuals with whom your company conducts business or expects to conduct business in the future. These individuals can be employees of other companies, independent consultants, vendors, or personal acquaintances. Contacts can be associated with several accounts, but a contact is the primary on only one account. Contacts can also be associated with numerous opportunities.

If your organization serves mostly individual consumers, or if you are answering inbound calls related to a marketing campaign, then use the Contacts screen when answering inbound calls. If your organization serves mostly businesses, then use the Accounts screen when answering general inbound phone calls.

This chapter describes how sales professionals can use the Contacts screen to record information about individuals who interact with their company.

Scenario for Managing Contacts

This topic gives one example of how contact management might be used. You might use contact management differently, depending on your business model.

In the course of a business day, a sales representative interacts with other professionals. These formal and informal exchanges can result in potential leads or sales opportunities.

A sales representative determines if her company has done business with a particular company by reviewing account and contact records. In cases where contacts are not listed, the sales representative creates new contact records in the Siebel Sales application, and associates the contacts with new or existing accounts.

If the possibility of doing business (an opportunity) arises, then the sales representative creates the opportunity and associates activities and contacts with the opportunity to help her track important milestones for obtaining and closing deals.

Adding a Contact

When a sales representative identifies an individual as a possible source for leads, that individual’s information is added to Siebel Sales as a contact. Team members can access this contact information while they are working on potential business opportunities.

A contact team is a group of employees or partners who can view the contact information in the My Contacts view. If you work in a Mobile Web Client environment and are a member of the contact team, then the contact information is downloaded to your local database the next time you synchronize.

Use the following procedure to create a contact record.

To add a contact

Navigate to the Contacts screen, then the Contacts List view.
A contact record appears on the My Contacts view only if you are on the contact team for the contact.

In the Contacts List, create a new record, and complete the necessary fields.

Some fields are described in the following table.

Field	Comments
Last Name	Type the contact’s last name.
First Name	Type the contact’s first name.
Account	Select the account with which the contact is associated.
Contact Method	Select the contact’s preferred method of interaction. Default values include Email, Fax, Pager, and Phone.
Job Title	Type the contact’s professional title.
Household Status	Displays the status of the household to which the contact is affiliated.
Organization	Select the organizations for the contact. You can associate multiple organizations with a contact, but your organization is the default organization. Your system administrator sets up organizations in your Siebel application.
Middle Initial	Type the contact’s middle initial.
Manager Last Name	Select the manager’s last name. This field must have a value before you can perform an organizational analysis.
Account Status	Displays the status of the account with which the contact is associated.

Drill down on the Last Name field of the record, and navigate the More Info view to complete more fields.

Some fields are described in the following table.

Field	Comments
Do Not Call	Select the check box to indicate to not telephone the contact.
Do Not Email	Select the check box to indicate to not send email to the contact.
Do Not Mail	Select the check box to indicate to not send mail to the contact.
Send Email Updates	Select the check box to indicate that the contact wants to receive email updates about products and services.
Comments	Type any additional information associated with the contact.
Contact Status	Select the status of the contact. Examples are Active, Qualified, Marked for Deletion.
Households	Select the households with which the contact is affiliated. Households allow you to track and target contact affiliations, and often these contacts share an address. For more information about households, see Households.
Contact Team	Select the employees for the contact team. This field displays a default value that is based on your user ID. After you create a contact, you are automatically listed as the primary team member. You can add individuals to the contact team by selecting them from the employee list. Only a manager or administrator can change the primary contact team member, or can delete the primary contact team member.
Global Owner	Select the name of the team member who is the global account owner. In cases of multinational or global companies, this field designates one main account team member to oversee the account.
Registration Source	Displays a value for how the contact was registered. For example, the contact might have been registered at a particular marketing event.
Price List	Select the price list associated with the contact.
Disable Cleansing	Select the check box to not permit data cleansing.
Sync List	Select the user IDs of users who synchronize the contact with a personal information manager (PIM) such as Lotus Notes or Microsoft Outlook. This field requires Siebel Server Sync.
Sync	Displays a check to indicate the user has included the contact record in the user’s Sync List. This field requires Siebel Server Sync.
Lock Assignment	Select the check box to lock the contact team assignment from reassignment by Siebel Assignment Manager.
Employee Flag	Displays a check to indicate that the contact is an employee of your company.
Time Zone	Select the time zone in which the contact works or lives.

Promoting a Personal Contact to a Contact

Contact records can be promoted from the My Personal Contacts view to the My Contacts view.

To promote a contact from My Personal Contacts to My Contacts

Navigate to the Contacts screen, then the Personal Contacts List view.
In the Contacts list, select the contact for promotion.
In the Contact form, clear the check box in the Private field.
The Contact record appears in the My Contacts list.

Note: You cannot designate a contact as Private (My Personal Contacts) from the My Contacts list.

Creating a Profile for a Contact

A profile consists of information that is collected about a contact. This information can include a contact’s expenditure approval, hobbies, education, and the name of the contact’s spouse.

To create a profile

Navigate to the Contacts screen, Contacts List, then the Profile view.
Query for the contact.
In the Profile form, complete the necessary fields.

Adding a Contact to a Synchronization List

A contact can be added to a list for synchronization with a personal information manager (PIM), for example, Microsoft Outlook, using Siebel Server Sync. For more information about synchronizing contacts, see Siebel Server Sync Guide.

To add a contact to a sync list

Navigate to the Contacts screen, then the Contacts List view.
In the Contacts list, drill down on the Last Name field of the contact to add to the sync list.
Navigate to the More Info view.
In the More Info form, click the cogwheel icon, and select Add to Sync List.
A check mark appears in the Sync check box of the More Info form.

You can also add a contact to a different sync list by selecting the contact in the Sync List field of the More Info form.

Removing a Contact From a Synchronization List

Complete the following procedure to remove a contact from the sync list.

To remove a contact from a sync list

Navigate to the Contacts screen, then the Contacts List view.
In the Contacts list, drill down on the Last Name field of the contact to remove from the sync list.
Navigate to the More Info view.
In the More Info form, click the cogwheel icon, and select Remove from Sync List.
The check mark is removed from the Sync check box in the More Info form.

Assessing a Contact

You can use assessments to compare contacts with each other, compare them with a model, or to determine the information that is present for a contact. To perform the assessment, you enter values for the assessment attributes, and a composite assessment value for the contact is calculated. For information about how to perform an assessment, see Performing an Assessment (End User).

Synchronizing Contact Information with External Applications

The Application Services Interface (ASI) feature allows you to synchronize the account data between a Siebel application and an external application in real time. This feature enables you to maintain consistent account information across your enterprise, and to eliminate manual entry of data in multiple applications.

If your Siebel administrator has set up real-time account integration between a Siebel application and another application, then you can use the Update External System command to send new and modified account information from the Siebel application to the other application in real time. For more information about ASI, see Siebel Application Services Interface Reference and Integration Using ASIs .

To synchronize contact information with an external application

Navigate to the Contacts screen, then the Contacts List view.
In the Contacts list, select a contact record.
To create a new contact record, see Adding a Contact.
In the Contacts list, click the cogwheel icon, and select Update External System.