Managing Opportunities

This chapter describes handling opportunities with both companies and individuals. It includes the following topics:

About Managing Opportunities

An opportunity is a potential revenue-producing event related to one or more companies or individuals. An opportunity often has a close date, a win probability, and a sales team. It is typically related to contacts, products, decision issues, activities, and competitors.

In Siebel Finance, opportunities help an organization to nurture and manage the entire life cycle of a revenue-generating opportunity, from creation to closing. Relationship managers and sales representatives, who are responsible for managing and generating revenue, use opportunity information on a regular basis. Top management also uses the opportunity analysis tools in Siebel Finance to analyze pipeline performance and help manage overall business performance through well-planned activities.

About Deal Management Capability

In addition, Siebel Finance includes deal management capabilities through extensions to the basic opportunity management functionality. Using deal management, end users can manage and track deal information throughout the deal life cycle. Specifically, users can track the following types of information:

Deal type
Industry
Product line
Related activities
Related attachments
External deal contacts
Closure information
Related products
Status information

Users can control access to deals and deal details by adding and deleting people to the deal team. Users can further narrow deal visibility and any associated activities and attachments by enabling the Secure flag. The combination of these restrictive visibility features provides basic security functionality.

End users use the Opportunities screens to add an opportunity, create an opportunity from an application, and review opportunity details. From a deal management perspective, end users can create new deals, manage deal team members, secure deals, change the primary deal team member, create deal activity plans, create new deal activities and associate team members, and add attachments to deals.

This chapter describes opportunity functionality that is unique to Siebel Finance. For more information on basic opportunity functionality, see Siebel Applications Administration Guide.

Scenario for Creating a New Opportunity

This scenario features sample opportunities tasks performed by a sales representative, an investment banker, and their managers in the securities and banking industries. Your company might follow a different workflow according to its business requirements.

Sales Representative Records a Loan Opportunity

The sales representative has a new lead. The company is already entered in Siebel Finance, and the individual the representative is calling on is already a contact for that company.

The customer calls to let the sales representative know that she is interested in negotiating a loan. She would like the sales representative to present a proposal. If that goes well, she will want to discuss the terms of the deal.

First, the sales representative creates a new opportunity record. Then, he schedules the meeting, records the associated activities on his to-do list, and enters the terms of the proposal.

As the sales process continues, the sales representative continues to gather information about the company, its contacts, and the opportunity. At any time, he can review a summary of the profile, sales team, contacts, and activities associated with this opportunity.

Every morning, the sales representative’s manager reviews the opportunities created the previous day. The manager evaluates the new opportunities and determines if she must add more members to each opportunity’s sales team to make sure the new opportunity is covered sufficiently. In a few critical cases, she decides to change the primary team member from the sales representative to herself.

In this scenario, end users are sales representatives who manage opportunities in the field. They use the Opportunities screen to:

Create new opportunities for new and existing accounts
Update existing opportunities
View information about an opportunity
Perform actions related to an opportunity. These action include reviewing details about products, projects, and competitors, creating activity plans, performing organization assessments and analyses, entering campaign leads and call reports, accessing decision issues, or generating proposals, quotes, and presentations

Investment Banker Creates IPO Deal

An investment banker, who is responsible for helping companies raise funds in the form of equity or debt, is starting work on an IPO deal for one of his companies. He creates the deal in the Opportunity screen. As the deal creator, he is automatically added as the primary deal team member. He sets the deal attributes, and secures the deal by checking the Secure flag. As the primary deal team member, he has the ability to add and delete other deal team members as needed; he adds his manager and a research associate to the deal team to make sure they have visibility to the deal and all its details. Finally, the banker assigns a task, the pitch book creation, to the research associate.

Instead of starting from scratch, the research associate copies and modifies an IPO pitch book document that she previously created for another deal. After the pitch document is completed, the associate’s involvement in the deal is finished, so the investment banker takes her off the deal team to restrict her visibility.

During the life cycle of the deal, the investment banker’s manager occasionally reviews the deal with respect to the current pipeline, revenue numbers, and forecasts.

After the deal is won, the investment banker includes closing information, such as the reason the deal was won, and a closure summary. He also deselects the Secure flag so that other employees in the company outside the deal team now have visibility to this completed deal.

In this scenario, the end users are an investment banker, his manager, and a research associate in the banking industry. They enter information to:

Create a new deal
Secure the deal
Add or delete deal team members
Create deal activity plans
Create new deal activities and assign deal team members
Add attachments to a deal

Process of Managing Opportunities

This topic details sample tasks often performed by administrators and end-users when managing opportunities. Your company might follow a different process according to its business requirements.

Administrator Procedures

The following list shows tasks administrators typically perform to manage opportunities:

End-User Procedures

The following list shows tasks end users typically perform when managing opportunities:

Adding Opportunities as an Administrator

Administrators can add, modify, and delete opportunities from the Opportunity Administration view, as well as the Opportunities List view.

To add an opportunity from the Opportunities Administration screen

Navigate to the Opportunities screen, then the Opportunities Administration view.
In the Opportunities form, add a new record, and complete the necessary fields.

Note: Deleting an opportunity completely removes the opportunity, as well as every activity related to the opportunity, from Siebel CRM. If you are unsure whether the opportunity is still active (and therefore must not be deleted), you can remove yourself from the opportunity team instead of deleting the record.

Managing Opportunities and Team Members

You might want to modify the members of the sales team for an opportunity, or change the primary team member designation. When the existing primary team member is a direct report, a manager can change the designate using the Opportunity Sales Team view or the My Team’s Opportunities view. If you are logged in as an administrator, you can change the primary team designate for any opportunity in the Opportunity Administration view.

The primary designate of the opportunity can use any of the opportunity views to secure an opportunity in order to restrict visibility to just the members of the sales team. When the Secure flag is checked, the opportunity is hidden from other users. A secured opportunity can only be viewed by members of the sales team from the All Opportunities or the My Opportunities view.

Note: The primary sales team member for an opportunity can add and delete sales team members, and edit the Secure flag setting. Only managers or administrators can change the primary designate of an opportunity. Use the MVG Set Primary Restricted user property to overwrite this behavior. For more information, refer to Using Siebel Tools.

You can also share opportunity information with members of associated product groups in a matrix organization. For more information on establishing and using product group visibility, see Managing Product Group Visibility.

To add or delete members of the sales team for an opportunity

Navigate to Opportunities screen, then the Opportunities Administration view.
In the Opportunities list, drill down on the opportunity.
In the Sales Team field, click the Select button.
Choose one of the options described in the following table.

To...	Select...
Add an employee to the sales team.	The employee and click Add in the Team Members dialog box.
Delete an employee from the sales team.	Select the employee in the Selected Team Members list and click Remove.

Changing the Primary Sales Team Members for an Opportunity

Use the following procedure to change the primary sales team member for an opportunity.

To change the primary sales team member for an opportunity

Navigate to Opportunities screen, and then the Opportunities Administration view.
In the Opportunities list, drill down on the opportunity.
In the Sales Team field, click the select button, and click the check box in the Primary field to select a new Primary designate.

Securing an Opportunity

Use the following procedure to secure an opportunity.

To secure an opportunity

Navigate to Opportunities screen, then the Opportunities Administration view.
In the Opportunities list, select an opportunity that you want to secure (lock).
In the Opportunity form, click the Secure check box.
Only the primary member of the sales team or the Siebel administrator can set the Secure check box. When an opportunity is marked Secure, only members of the sales team can view it in the All Opportunities view. Sales team members can also see a secure opportunity in their My Opportunities views.

Adding Opportunities in Siebel Finance

When end users identify a unique opportunity, they add a new opportunity record.

To add an opportunity

Navigate to the Opportunities screen, and the Opportunities List view.

Add a record, and complete the necessary fields described in the following table.

Field	Comments
Closure Summary	Summary comments about the closing of an opportunity. Financial institutions use this information when closing deals in order to track the circumstances and success or failure of closing.
Commitments	A read-only monetary value representing sum of commitments made in a commercial loan opportunity. This value is entered on the Opportunity Detail, Commercial Loans view. For more information, see Adding Opportunity Details.
Deposits	A read-only monetary value representing the sum of deposits made in a commercial loan opportunity. This value is entered through the Opportunity Detail, Commercial Loans view. For more information, see Adding Opportunity Details.
Lead Quality	Estimate of the quality of the deal.
Loans	A read-only monetary value representing the total amount of loans made in a commercial loan opportunity. This value is entered through the Opportunity Detail, Commercial Loans view. For more information, see Adding Opportunity Details.
Probability %	The estimate of the likelihood that the opportunity will result in business, expressed as a percentage: 0% means it is doubtful that business will result 100% means it is certain that business will result
Product Group	Select the product group to which you want to assign this record for the purpose of product group visibility.
Product Line	Select the product line associated with the opportunity.
Public Flag	Select Public Flag if you want everyone to be able to see this record. Deselect this field if you want this record to be seen only by those positions of the same product group and of the other product groups with which the creator’s product group shares information. The value of Public Flag defaults to the value of Confidential Flag in the creator’s product group.
Revenue	Enter the amount of money you expect this opportunity to generate. When combined with the probability you assign to the opportunity, the Expected Value field is calculated.
Sales Cycle	Select the current cycle of the opportunity. The total number of opportunities in a specific cycle stage, and the length of time that a particular opportunity has been in that cycle, are important data for evaluating that opportunity.
Secure	Click on this check box to restrict the visibility of an opportunity in the All Opportunities view to the members of the sales team. Only the primary member of the sales team or the Siebel administrator can set the Secure field. Leave this field unchecked, to make the opportunity visible to every end user in the All Opportunities view.
Start Date	Start date for the opportunity.

Adding Opportunity Details

End users can add details specific to commercial lending, equity, fixed income, advisory, and lending syndicate opportunities in the Opportunities Details view tab.

To add specific opportunity details

Navigate to the Opportunities screen, and then the Opportunities List view.
In the Opportunities list, drill down on the opportunity, and click the Opportunity Detail view tab.
Select one of the following links:
- Advisory
- Commercial Loan
- Equity
- Fixed Income
- Lending Syndicate
In the appropriate lists, add a record and complete the necessary fields.

Sharing Opportunity Information with Product Groups

If your administrator has created a product group for you, then you can share your opportunity information with members of other product groups. For more information on establishing and using product group visibility, see Managing Product Group Visibility.

Creating Opportunities from Applications

End users can also create opportunities when they create a financial application.

To create an opportunity from an application

Navigate to the Applications screen, and then the Application List view.
In the Applications list, add a record, and complete the necessary fields.
The new application is saved and an opportunity is created.

Managing Deals in Siebel Finance

Perform the deal management end user tasks detailed in this topic from any of the Opportunities views. The tasks described in this topic include:

Securing a deal
Changing the primary deal team member
Creating a new activity plan for a deal
Creating a new activity and assigning a deal team member
Creating a new attachment for a deal

In Siebel Finance, user’s responsibilities can limit the availability of certain views and functionality. As a result, the views that appear might vary from those documented here.

End users add a new deal by creating a new opportunity in the Opportunities screen. For more information, see Adding Opportunities in Siebel Finance.

Note: Deals can also be added from the Opportunities Administration view.

The deal primary members and their managers can restrict other deal team and nondeal team members’ visibility to a deal by securing it. Securing a deal also secures the deal activities associated with the deal. Give end users visibility to the deals and activities by adding them to both the deal team and the activities team.

For information on adding and deleting deal team members, see Managing Opportunities and Team Members.

To secure a deal

Navigate to the Opportunities screen, and then the Opportunities Administration view.
In the Opportunities list, drill down on the deal you want to secure.
In the opportunity form, select the Secure field to indicate that the deal is secure.

Note: Administrators can secure deals from the Opportunities Administration view.

The primary deal team member, and occasionally the primary’s manager, act as the deal administrator.

Changing the Primary Deal Team Members

You can change the primary deal team member. Use the following procedure to change the primary deal team member.

To change the primary deal team member

Navigate to the Opportunities screen, and then the Opportunities Administration view.
In the Opportunities list, drill down on the opportunity.
In the Sales Team field, click the select button.
In the Sales Team list, select the Primary field of the contact.

Note: Only the primary’s manager in the My Team’s Opportunities view or the Opportunities Administration view can change the primary deal team member. Use the BC user property - MVG Set Primary Restricted: visibility_mvlink_name to overwrite this. See Siebel Developer's Reference for additional details.

Creating a New Activity Plan for a Deal

You can create a new activity plan for a deal. Use the following procedure to create a new activity plan for a deal.

To create a new activity plan for a deal

Navigate to the Opportunities screen, and then the Opportunities List view.
In the Opportunities list, drill down on the opportunity, and click the Assessments view. tab.
In the Assessments list, add a record, and complete the necessary fields.
In the Template Name field, select an activity plan template.

Creating a New Activity and Assigning a Deal Team Member

You can create a new activity and assign a deal team member. Use the following procedure to create a new activity and assign a deal team member.

To create a new activity and assign a deal team member

Navigate to the Opportunities screen, then the Opportunities List view.
In the Opportunities list, drill down on the opportunity, and click the Activities view tab.
In the Activities list, add a record, and complete the necessary fields.
In the Employees field, select the employee to assign to the activity.

Creating a New Attachment for a Deal

You can create a new attachment for a deal. Use the following procedure to create a new attachment for a deal.

To create a new attachment for a deal

Navigate to the Opportunities screen, then the Opportunities List view.
In the Opportunities list, drill down on the opportunity, and click the Attachments view tab.
In the Attachments list, add a record by clicking either New File or New URL.
In the resulting dialog box, do one of the following:
- Select the file to add as an attachment.
- Type a URL to the file to add as an attachment.
  The remaining fields are automatically updated using the selected file’s properties.