About Siebel PRM

This chapter is a general overview of the capabilities of Oracle’s Siebel PRM. It summarizes the functionality of the Siebel PRM Manager and the Siebel PRM Portal, and it discusses supported platforms. It includes the following topics:

What Is Siebel PRM?

Siebel PRM automates and streamlines the relationship between brand owner companies and their channel and alliance partners, distributors, resellers, agents, brokers, or dealers.

Prospective partners can use Siebel PRM to view information about the brand owner company's partnership program, and to apply to be partners. The brand owner’s partner manager must approve the prospective partner’s application, convert the prospective partner into a partner, and give login access to the partner company. The brand owner can add partner employees or can assign this task to a delegated administrator at the partner company.

Then, the brand owner can treat the partner's employees as members of its extended sales and service team. Using Siebel PRM, you can share opportunities, service requests, accounts, solutions, and other business information with partners in the same way as you do with your own employees. You can either assign this information manually or use Siebel Assignment Manager to assign it automatically. Siebel PRM also lets you share master data, such as products and solutions, with partner companies.

In addition to letting you share business information, Siebel PRM lets you send information about special promotions and Web messages to your partners. It also lets you work collaboratively with your partners to develop plans to meet strategic goals. It helps you and your partners analyze partnership effectiveness, forecast revenue, manage market development funds, and analyze partner performance in many ways.

Siebel PRM is made up of four applications:

The Siebel PRM Portal. This is a portal that partner companies use to share business information with the brand owner and to do some administrative tasks.
The Siebel PRM Manager. This is the Siebel Business Application that the brand owner company uses to share business information with partners and to manage partners.
Siebel Partner Manager Analytics. These tools allow the brand owner to analyze and manage its partners’ performance and its channel go-to-market programs.
Siebel PRM Portal Analytics. These tools allow partners to analyze and manage their performance.

The brand owner company can share business information with partners using Siebel Business Applications such as Siebel Sales, Siebel Service, or Siebel Call Center, as well as by using the Siebel PRM Manager. These products are integrated with Siebel PRM, though the other products do not provide the full functionality of the Siebel PRM Manager.

Siebel PRM Portal

The Siebel PRM Portal lets partners communicate, collaborate, and conduct business with the brand owner. It supports joint planning and execution between partners and the brand owner by giving partners access to market development funds management, opportunity and account management, Commerce selling tools, service request management, and many other tools for doing business transactions with the brand owner and customers. The Siebel PRM Portal also provides the partner with information such as literature and news.

Note: The procedures in this guide assume that you do not use the Tree navigation control option to access screens and views. However, you can choose to use the Tree navigation control if required. For more information about setting navigation options, see Siebel Fundamentals Guide.

Siebel PRM Portal Login Page

The Siebel PRM Portal home and login page is accessible to anyone who enters the URL in a Web browser.

This home and login page has several functions. It allows:

Public users to learn more about your company and partnership programs.
Individuals to register as partners and view the information available to individual partners.
Companies to apply to become partners.
Employees of partner companies to log in, so they can use the full functionality of the Siebel PRM Portal Web site.

Note: You need to use the partnerportal_<lang> URL to launch Partner Portal.

Siebel PRM Portal Screens

After employees of partner companies log in, they can view the Siebel PRM Portal. Its screens generally have many views as screens typically do in your own Siebel Business Application.

Note: As an overview, this list includes all the screens of the Siebel PRM Portal. When an employee logs in, he or she sees only the screens and views that are appropriate to that employee’s responsibilities.

Siebel PRM Portal includes the following screens:

Home. This screen greets the partner employee by name and provides links to the employee’s current work. The partner employee can click any of these items to view more information about it.
Opportunities. This screen displays sales opportunities that you assigned to the partner. The partner can also enter new opportunities here, which you can view using the Siebel PRM Manager.
Accounts. This screen displays customer accounts that you assigned to the partner. The partner can also enter new companies here, which you can view using the Siebel PRM Manager.
Service Requests. This screen displays customer service requests that you assigned to the partner. The partner can also enter new service requests here, which you can view using the Siebel PRM Manager.
Contacts. This screen displays customer contacts that you assigned to the partner. The partner can also enter new contacts here, which you can view using the Siebel PRM Manager.
Activities. This screen displays activities that the partner does to complete sales or fulfill service requests. You can assign activities to partners, or partners can schedule and enter activities themselves. You can view them using the Siebel PRM Manager.
Customer Quotes. The partner can use this screen to generate, review, and modify customer quotes, which you can view using the Siebel PRM Manager.
Customer Orders. The partner can use this screen to enter, review, and modify customer orders, or you can use it to assign customer orders to the partner for fulfillment.
Product Catalog. This screen displays a catalog of your products that you have made available to the partner.
Infocenter. This screen displays sales literature, other documents, and other master data that you have made available to partner organizations. The partner can download these documents or view this master data.
Solutions. This screen displays solutions to common service requests.
Funds. This screen displays market development funds in which this partner company is a participant, with a checkbook that lists the amount spent and balance available in each fund.
Fund Requests. This screen displays requests made against market development funds in which this partner company is a participant. The partner can enter new requests for funding or you can enter requests on the partner’s behalf using the Siebel Business Application. Partners can also view the status of requests during the approval process.
Assets. This screen displays assets. Field service businesses use it to track assets that field engineers must service.
Inventory. This screen displays inventory. Field service businesses use it to track parts that field engineers use for service.
Calendar. This screen allows partners to manage their daily, weekly, and monthly activities.
Administration. This screen allows the partner’s delegated administrator to enter positions, to add and remove users, and to associate users with responsibilities.
Partner Programs.This screen allows brand owners to set up, approve or reject, and administer partner programs. Prospective partners can apply for these partner programs on the Siebel PRM Portal.
Partner Locator. This screen allows partners and customers to find the correct partner to meet their needs. For example, they can find the partners who are located closest to them, or the partners who provide the products or services they want.
Logout. This screen disconnects the partner from your database. The partner can use this feature for security reasons so no one else can use the data after the partner leaves the computer.
Profile. This screen displays the partner employee’s user and company profile.
Help. This screen displays a help page that includes instructions about using Siebel PRM through the Web.

Siebel PRM Manager

The Siebel PRM Manager gives the brand owner company a single application to manage partner interactions through the entire partner life cycle from recruitment, registration, profiling, certification, joint planning, and execution through measurement and analysis of partner performance.

Siebel PRM Manager lets the brand owner manage channel and alliance partners as extended virtual sales, marketing, and service teams. It gives the brand owner full visibility into the entire partner community, and provides support for multiple partnering models, such as resellers, multitiered global distributors, service providers, alliance partners, and many others.

Siebel PRM Manager addresses the needs of everyone who works with partners. For example, vice presidents of Channels can use it to analyze partner sales forecasts or partner performance. Channel marketing managers can use it to execute marketing programs. Channel operations managers can use it to collaborate with partners in customer sales and service.

Screens Shared by the Siebel PRM Manager and Other Siebel Business Applications

When the partner managers at your company use Siebel PRM, they see the Siebel Partner Manager Web site. The actual screens and views that your employees see depend on their responsibilities.

The Siebel PRM Manager includes virtually all the screens that you use in Siebel Sales, Siebel Service, Siebel Call Center, or Siebel Field Service to share information with your employees and to administer the Siebel system. You use these screens in the Siebel PRM Manager in the same way you use them in other Siebel Business Applications.

For example, you assign a customer contact to a partner by using the Siebel PRM Manager’s Contacts screen in the same way that you assign a contact to an employee by using the Siebel Sales, Siebel Service, or Siebel Call Center Contacts screen.

You can also share information with partners using other Siebel Business Applications. For example, you can assign a contact to a partner by using the Siebel Sales, Siebel Service, or Siebel Call Center Contacts screen. You enter partners in your Siebel database as employees, and you work with them the same way you work with your own employees. If you are logged in under the same user name, then you can work with the same partner or employee data in the Siebel PRM Manager as in other Siebel Business Applications.

This guide covers features of the Siebel PRM Manager that are particularly useful in working with your partners. It does not cover many of the features that the Siebel PRM Manager has in common with Siebel Sales, Siebel Service, and Siebel Call Center. For more information on these common features, see Siebel Applications Administration Guide.

Screens That Are Specific to the Siebel PRM Manager

In addition to incorporating the functionality of other Siebel Business Applications, the Siebel PRM Manager has specific screens that are used only for managing partners:

Home. The Siebel PRM Manager home page includes lists of records that you might want to work on, such as your prospective partners and your current fund requests. Items on these lists are links that you can click to display more information about them. The home page is fully customizable.
Partners. The Partners screen lets you record general information about your partners and helps you manage your relationship with them. For example, it lets you work with the Partner Profile and Partnership Profile, it lets you assess your partners' performance, it lets you enter and look up partner management activities, contacts, and notes, and it lets you view your partners' progress in your training and certification programs.
Partner Programs. The Program Partner screen lets you set up partner programs, view partner program applications from the Siebel PRM Portal, and accept or reject those applications. It also allows you to set up and maintain eligibility criteria for each partner program.
Partner Operations. The Partner Operations screen lets partner managers view the transactional data for a given partner, giving an overall view of the partner's operations. You can look up a partner and see its accounts, contacts, opportunities, orders, quotes, and service requests.
Administration - Partner. The Administration - Partner screen lets you do much of the work that you must do to add a new partner company, such as adding a record for the partner, assigning user IDs and passwords to partner users, and approving and registering partner companies. In this screen you can complete the necessary steps to get a partner company started, including creating a new organization and putting it in the proper place in the hierarchy. You can also administer partner information, such as adding or changing information about users, or about the partner organization.
CHAMP Planning. Siebel PRM provides tools to support the Channel and Alliance Management Process (CHAMP), which helps alliance and partner organizations improve business performance. You can use the CHAMP Planning screen to create new initiatives, which are corporate strategies for a given period. After you have created an initiative, you can add partners as participants, and then create a specific partner plan for working with each participant. Finally, you can add objectives that help your partners accomplish the goals of the plan.
Certifications. The Certification screen lets you set up programs to certify partners. For example, you might require that your partners be certified in a certain product or service that you offer to make sure that your partners deliver those products or services in the same way that your company delivers them. You can use this screen to define any levels of certification that you choose, and any criteria that you choose for each level of certification.
Fund Design. Market development funds are funds that are allocated for joint marketing activities during a certain period. You use these funds, either directly or indirectly, to help your partners with activities that can generate demand for your product or service. The Fund Design screen lets you create market development funds by specifying how much is in each fund and which partners participate in and can request funding.
Fund Requests. After market development funds have been created, partners or partner managers make requests for specific use of these funds, such as paying for a partner to participate in a trade show where they display your product. The Market Development Fund Requests screen lets you work with and approve these requests.

Supported Browsers

Like other Siebel Business Applications, Siebel PRM is Web-based, which means users can use a Web browser to work with Siebel PRM. For more information on the browsers supported by Siebel Business Applications, see Siebel System Requirements and Supported Platforms on Oracle Technology Network.

Siebel PRM Mobile Web Client

In addition to working directly through the Web in connected mode, you and your partners can use your Siebel Business Applications through the Siebel Mobile Web Client. The Siebel Mobile Web Client lets you or your partners work when you are disconnected from the Web and synchronize data with the rest of the Siebel database later.

This is useful if you or your partners want to work on a laptop when you are traveling and synchronize with the main Siebel database when you return to the office.

When you set up mobile users, you must associate a routing model with each mobile user. The routing model describes the data to be synchronized between the user's local database and the server database. You must use one of the following:

Mobile PRM Manager users must use the routing model named Mobile Client - Standard.
Mobile PRM Portal users must use the routing model named Mobile Partner User.

In addition, a mobile PRM Portal user must have only one responsibility, Partner User - Mobile, to prevent the mobile user from seeing views with unsynchronized data.

For security purposes, mobile PRM Portal users must have access to the brand owner’s private network or connect through a virtual private network. For more information about using the Siebel Mobile Web Client, see Siebel Mobile Web Client Administration Guide.