2Overview of Siebel Finance
Overview of Siebel Finance
This chapter describes the modules of Siebel Finance and their functionality. It includes the following topics:
About Siebel Finance
Oracle’s Siebel Finance includes various modules that you can mix and match according to your business needs.
Siebel Finance is built upon the Siebel Business Architecture, which includes Siebel Sales, Siebel Service, and Siebel Call Center applications. Like many other Siebel Business Applications,Siebel Finance uses the Siebel Data Model, the Siebel Object Architecture, and the Siebel Application Server Architecture.
For customers with the Siebel Janna applications, theSiebel Finance. Basic application and modules provide a migration path.Siebel Finance Basic also uses the Siebel Data Model, the Siebel Object Architecture, and the Siebel Application Server Architecture.
Siebel Finance Functionality and Modules
Siebel Finance provides the following functionality:
Multiple lines of business management, permitting use by a range of users in retail and investment banking, which includes call center representatives, commercial bankers, investment bankers, mutual fund managers, small business officers, private bankers, division and regional managers, tellers, and others
Financial account management, allowing the user to see and manage different types of financial accounts such as checking, savings, mutual funds, and credit products
Campaign management, allowing product promotion to specific segments, accounts, and other targeted opportunities
Activity management, integrated with the Calendar, promoting streamlined call planning and call reporting
Enterprise-wide product management, promoting product information sharing across sales teams and regional branches
Knowledge management, supporting customer-service centers and providing solutions for Financial Services-specific inquiries
Multi-channel correspondence management, supporting a large number of inbound telephone calls, faxes, email, and Internet correspondence for customer service, sales, banking agents, and investment specialists
Outbound campaign management, supporting outbound calling for telesales, telemarketing, and meeting planning
Multi-channel relationship management, supporting all customer touch points and modules of interaction, which includes Supermarket, Call Center, Field Sales, Marketing, Sales, Service, Kiosk, Branch, and Relationship Managers
Siebel Finance Modules
Siebel Finance includes the following modules:
Small Business Banking. Formerly called the Business Relationship Management module, this module is primarily targeted at Business Lending and Relationship Management. Within a small business banking organization, the primary users of this module include vice presidents, assistant vice presidents, line officers, and credit officers who have responsibility for business accounts. These positions are often referred to as relationship managers, account officers, or bankers. The Small Business Banking module provides detailed client profile information, competitive information, and summary charts to allow relationship managers to better identify and close opportunities with business customers.
Needs Analysis/Applications. Siebel Needs Analysis/Applications, which is designed for sales personnel, their managers, and their associates, focuses on consumer sales opportunities. This module identifies appropriate product recommendations for deposit, investment, and home banking products for consumers and small businesses.
The Needs Analysis/Applications module also allows agents to capture information required to open and establish new liabilities products or services for customers. This module supports universal applications to facilitate a streamlined application process. For credit products application, use the Credit origination module.
Call Reports. Siebel Call Reports are records of meetings and conversations with clients or other organizations and individuals. Financial institutions often require employees to generate call reports when employees meet customers.
Credit Origination. The Siebel Credit Origination module supports loan origination. This module helps call center, field, and branch personnel do what if analysis to determine the needs of customers, recommend the right loan products, prequalify the customer, take the application, provide additional information about the product’s fees, rate, and conditions, and manage loan documentation. This module further supports the consumer credit industry with the five most frequently used calculators in the industry, which includes Loan Amount, Monthly Payment, Loan Comparison, Refinance Break Even, and Loan Payoff.
Financial Accounts. The Siebel Financial Accounts module allows organizations to view account details along with associated transactions. This module supports products such as checking, savings, credit cards, certificates of deposit (CDs), and all types of loans. It also includes investment accounts and holdings.
Securities. Siebel Finance also provides functionality for investment accounts that support brokerage financial accounts and their related investment holdings. This module records and provides information about various securities (stocks, bonds, mutual funds, options, or unit investment trusts [UITs]) that make up these holdings. A financial institution using this module can execute trades of securities (buy and sell orders) on behalf of its clients.
Institutional Sales & Research. Siebel Institutional Sales & Research provides a client management system for securities firms serving institutional clients. By facilitating communication across product groups and geographic regions, Siebel Finance allows client team members to work with the entire firm’s relationships and competencies, thus institutionalizing the client relationship. Siebel Institutional Sales & Research includes the following functionality:
Holdings & Interests Tracking. Siebel Institutional Sales & Research provides institutional salespeople with a tool for tracking client holdings and contact interests. Siebel Finance accepts feeds from third-party vendors of holdings data, and also allows individual salespeople to import spreadsheets sent to them from clients. Salespeople can query holdings and interests data to build their day’s call list, and then make the calls with the assistance of Siebel CTI. Activity records are automatically generated, thus reducing data entry for the salesperson while still maintaining accurate contact histories.
Research Distribution Management. Siebel Institutional Sales & Research provides a central repository for company research publications, and allows professionals to fax or email research documents to clients. Siebel Finance automatically tracks research distribution, allowing sales and research professionals to better understand their clients’ interests. Security firms can also use Siebel Finance to better understand the channels through which its research is being distributed, and to manage entitlements.
Investor Profiling. Siebel Institutional Sales & Research provides institutional salespeople with an understanding of organizations or companies as investors, with their holdings and transaction history, charts and profiles of the investor, and the literature distributed to the organization. As well, you can integrate Siebel Finance with external news sources to display additional information about the investor.
Securities. Siebel Institutional Sales & Research includes the Securities module. This module provides for the set up and profiling of securities, which includes mutual funds. The Securities module provides the salesperson with a picture of each security available for sale to his or her clients, which includes literature about the security and information about mutual funds, their objectives, risk profile and asset mix.
Commercial Banking Loan Approval. Siebel Commercial Banking Loan Approval provides the necessary tools and functions for the commercial banking market. Commercial Lending allows end users to automate the application approval process in commercial banking. It allows agents to capture the information necessary for a credit committee to make decisions. Users can capture both customer and facility-level information. The customer-level information includes the Request Summary view, and displays general information about the primary borrower and the relationship. The information at the facility level includes the facility detail views, which display detailed information about the specific facilities for which approval is requested.
Corporate & Commercial Banking. Siebel Corporate & Commercial Banking is designed for financial services professionals working with corporations and other business customers in corporate banking. This module augments the customer relationship management features of Siebel Finance.
Company profiling provides corporate bankers with an in-depth picture of companies, which includes their investment and financial profile, competitors, third-party providers, and investors. Also, it includes summary views to provide quick snapshots of the key information about the company. Siebel Corporate & Commercial Banks includes the following functionality:
Retail Brokerage. Siebel Retail Brokerage provides tools that allow an advisor or a broker to provide the right advice to the right customer at the right time. This results in increased returns on investment for the customer and increased profitability for the financial institution. Siebel Retail Brokerage includes the following functionality:
Household Holdings. Because retail brokerage sales are often to residents in the same household, this module also provides the total household picture which includes all the holdings for individuals within the household. It provides the advisor the ability to select and aggregate holdings for a household with multiple accounts, view the time-weighted rate of return or anticipated cash flows for an identified period, and compare the household's actual portfolio by asset class or by industry sector against a selected model portfolio.
Holdings & Interests Tracking. Brokers and advisors can use this module as a tool for tracking an individual's holdings and interests. Siebel Finance accepts feeds from third-party vendors of holdings data, and also allows individual brokers and planners to import spreadsheets sent to them from clients. Brokers and advisors can query holdings and interests data to build their day's call list and then make the calls. Activity records are automatically generated, thus reducing data entry for the salesperson while still maintaining accurate contact histories.
Securities. Siebel Retail Brokerage includes the Securities module. This module provides for the setup and profiling of securities, which includes stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and other investment products. The salesperson is provided with a picture of each security available for sale to his or her clients, such as literature about the security and information about mutual funds, their objectives, risk profile and asset mix.
Research Distribution Management. Siebel Retail Brokerage provides a central repository for company research publications, and allows brokers and planners to fax or email research documents to clients. Siebel Finance automatically tracks research distribution, which allows sales and research professionals to better understand their clients' interests. The securities firm can also use Siebel Finance to better understand the channels through which its research is being distributed and to manage entitlements.
Retirement/Pension Management. Siebel Retirement/Pension Management provides comprehensive support for group pensions. It allows a user to manage private group pensions, which includes defined contribution plans, such as 401(k) plans and occupational pensions, and defined benefit plans. It is designed to meet the needs of sales and service professionals, managers, and pension administrators. The module allows users to define group pension plans, plan classes, plan eligibility rules, and plan funding vehicles. Siebel Retirement/Pension Management also provides eligible and enrolled participants tracking, participant contribution and investment allocation management, as well as a participant beneficiary management.
Siebel Retirement/Pension Management includes the Securities module that provides for the set up and profiling of funding vehicles such as mutual funds for pension plans. The plan administrators are provided with a picture of each mutual fund available for investment under the terms of the plan, which includes literature about the fund, fund objectives, risk profile, and asset mix.
Investment Banking. Siebel Investment Banking offers investment bankers and their managers the tools to identify which customers need the most attention to push deals through to closure. Siebel Investment Banking includes the following functionality:
Company Profiling. Company profiling provides investment bankers with an in-depth picture of companies. This information includes their investment and financial profile, competitors, and investors. Also, summary views provide quick snapshots of the key information about the company.
Investor Profiling. Siebel Investment Banking provides bankers with an understanding of companies as investors with their holdings and transaction history, charts and profiles, and the literature distributed to the company. Users can integrate Siebel Finance with external news sources to display additional information about the investor.
- Research Distribution Management. Siebel Investment Banking provides a central repository for company research publications, and allows bankers to fax or email research documents to clients. Siebel Finance automatically tracks research distribution, which allows sales and research professionals to better understand their clients' interests. The firm can also use Siebel Finance to better understand the channels through which its research is being distributed, and to manage entitlements.
Investment Management. Siebel Investment Management gives the account manager the tools to determine how best to build and maintain customer relationships, and how best to manage customer assets. Information is provided on customer financial accounts and holdings, as well as recent activity within customer accounts. Siebel Investment Management includes the following functionality:
Company Profiling. Company profiling provides account managers with an in-depth picture of companies. This information includes their investment and financial profile, competitors, and investors. Also, summary views provide quick snapshots of the key information about the company.
Investor Profiling. Siebel Investment Management provides account managers with an understanding of companies as investors with their holdings and transaction history, charts and profiles of the investor company, and the literature distributed to the company. Users can integrate Siebel Finance with external news sources to display additional information about the investor.
Holdings & Interests Tracking. It also provides account managers with a tool for tracking holdings for both corporate and individual clients and their interests. Siebel Finance accepts feeds from third-party vendors of holdings data, and also allows individual account managers to import spreadsheets sent to them from clients. Account managers can query holdings and interests data to build their day's call list and then make the calls. Activity records are automatically generated, thus reducing data entry for the salesperson, while still maintaining accurate contact histories.
- Research Distribution Management. Siebel Investment Management provides a central repository for company research publications and allows account managers to fax or email research documents to clients. Siebel Finance automatically tracks research distribution, which allows sales and research professionals to better understand their clients' interests. The firm can also use Siebel Finance to better understand the channels through which its research is being distributed and to manage entitlements.
Rollup. Siebel Rollup provides a comprehensive view of a client relationship in a single click, thereby eliminating the process to collect this information.
Siebel Rollup offers four views of the relationship with a client—Activities, Opportunities, Coverage Team, and Contacts. These views show the records for the selected client and for any hierarchical children. For example, the Contacts Rollup view displays all contacts associated with the selected company, all subsidiaries of the selected company, and the regional offices.
Executives, sales managers, or sales professionals are often looking for aggregate information across a corporate enterprise, and the individuals who work there. For example, before the Global Relationship Manager visits the CEO at his client company, he might want to view a report of all the latest activities, and deals conducted with the client company or with any of the subsidiaries, divisions and offices of the client company. This information arms the Global Relationship Manager with a picture of the relationship between the client and his company, and is an excellent preparation tool for his meeting.
Siebel Finance Basic Functionality and Modules
Siebel Finance Basic (exclusively for customers upgrading from the Siebel Janna applications) provides comparable functionality to Siebel Janna for Institutional Finance or Siebel Janna Contact Enterprise, which includes the following functionality:
Relationship management, provides a graphical, hierarchical representation of an entity’s relationship with other entities for use by a range of users in financial services
Specific querying, which allows product promotion to specific segments, accounts, and other targeted opportunities
Activity management, integrated with the Calendar, promotes streamlined call planning and call reporting
Enterprise-wide literature repository at your employees' fingertips, provides information sharing across sales teams and locations
Siebel Finance Basic Modules
Two modules, Siebel Opportunity Manager and Siebel Household Management, are exclusively for use with Siebel Finance Basic:
Siebel Opportunity Manager. When used with Siebel Finance Basic, Siebel Opportunity Manager helps financial sales professionals develop, manage, and drive their pending opportunities or deals to closure. Siebel Opportunity Manager's opportunity and deal management capabilities include lead generation, managing opportunities, and forecasting.
Siebel Household Management. When used with Siebel Finance Basic, Siebel Household Management helps financial sales professionals manage consumer household information.
List of Reports
To see a list of the preconfigured reports available for the data in a view, click Reports in the toolbar while in the view. The list specifies which reports are available as Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher reports. From the list you can access individual reports.
Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking
Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking is a single, comprehensive solution that covers retail, corporate, and investment banking needs across multiple delivery channels and regions. Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking can be integrated with Siebel Finance to provide the following enhanced functionality:
Financial Accounts. When a financial accounts is created in Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking, a subset of its data is sent to Siebel Finance to create a financial account record in Siebel Finance. For more information about Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking financial accounts, see Managing Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking Financial Accounts.
Financial Contracts. When a contract is created in Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking, a subset of its data is sent to Siebel Finance and the contract is created in Siebel Finance. For more information about financial contracts, see Managing Financial Contracts.
Contacts. When a contact is created in Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking, a subset of its data is sent to Siebel Finance and the contact is created in Siebel Finance. For more information about Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking contacts, see About Managing Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking Contacts.
Service Requests. When a service request is created in Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking, a subset of its data is sent to Siebel Finance. In Siebel Finance, the service request record is created and assigned to a default owner. Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking users can query for their service requests and update them in Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking.
Activities. An activity is created in Siebel Finance when one of the following nonfinancial transactions are executed in Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking:
Requesting a stop payment in a current account
Creating a standing instruction for a customer
Issuing a checkbook to a current account
Leads and Offers. When users create leads in Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking, the leads data is sent to Siebel Finance. The leads can be Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking customers, non Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking customers in Siebel Finance, or new prospects. Leads are also created for contact or corporate customers. The leads are also associated with products of interest and offers retrieved from Siebel Finance.
For more information about Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking and Siebel Finance integration, see Siebel CRM Integration to Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking Implementation Guide.
For more information about Siebel Financial Services Customer Order Management for Banking, see Siebel Order Management Guide Addendum for Financial Services on Oracle Technology Network (http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/indexes/documentation/index.html).
Basic Access Control for Siebel Financial Services
Basic access control for Siebel Financial Services applications is implemented (as described in Siebel Security Guide), with the following exceptions:
Access Control Mechanisms
The information in this topic applies to access control for opportunities in any view that uses personal, position, or organization access control.
If an opportunity’s Secure field is checked, then only positions on the sales team have visibility of the opportunity in any view that applies person, position, or organization access control. For example, in the All Opportunities view, users on the sales team can see a secure opportunity, but other users in the same organization cannot. In the My Team’s Opportunities view, a manager cannot see a secure opportunity on which a direct report is a primary unless the manager is also on the sales team. Any activities or events related to a secure opportunity are also hidden from any user who is not on the sales team.
Secure opportunity access control is provided by the following search specification on the Opportunity business component:
[Secure Flag] = 'N' OR EXISTS([Sales Rep Id] = LoginId())
Access-Group Access Control
Households can also be used in combination with other party types to form an access group. In all access control contexts, include households in lists of the party types that can be members of access groups.
Administration of Access-Group Access Control
This topic provides procedures for associating an access group with a catalog or category when you are using Siebel Financial Services applications.
Associating an Access Group with a Catalog
By associating an access group with a catalog of master data, you grant access to the data in the catalog to individual users in the access group.
To associate an access group with a catalog
Navigate to the Administration - Catalog screen, then the Catalogs view.
The Catalogs list appears.
Select a catalog.
Click the Access Groups view tab.
The Access Groups list appears, which shows the access groups associated with this catalog.
In the Access Groups list, add a new record.
A pop-up list appears that contains access groups.
Select an access group, and then click Add.
The access group appears in the Access Groups list. For more information on creating access groups, see Siebel Security Guide.
You can disassociate an access group from a category similarly. When an access group is disassociated from a category, it is automatically disassociated from all of the category’s descendant categories.
Associating an Access Group with a Category
By associating an access group with a category of master data, you grant access to the data in the category to individual users in the access group.
To associate an access group with a category
Navigate to the Administration - Catalog screen, then the Catalogs view.
The Catalogs list appears.
Drill down on a catalog name.
The Categories list for the catalog appears.
Click the Access Groups view tab.
In the Access Groups list, add a new record.
A multi-value group appears that lists access groups.
Select an access group, and then click Add.
The access group appears in the Access Groups list. For more information on creating access groups, see Siebel Security Guide.
You can disassociate an access group from a category similarly. When an access group is disassociated from a category, it is automatically disassociated from all of the category’s descendant categories.
Configuration File Names for Siebel Financial Services Applications
The names of the application configuration files that are used by Siebel Financial Services applications differ to the application configuration file names used for other Siebel Business Applications. Table C–3, " Siebel Financial Services Application Configuration File Names" contains the names of application configuration files that are used by Siebel Financial Services applications