2Overview of Order Management
Overview of Order Management
This chapter provides an overview of the general order management process, and introduces the specific concepts and capabilities available through Siebel Order Management.
This chapter covers the following topics:
About Order Management
Oracle’s Siebel Order Management allows employees such as salespeople and call center agents to create and manage quotes and orders through their entire life cycle. Siebel Order Management can be tightly integrated with back-office applications, allowing users to perform tasks such as checking credit, confirming availability, and monitoring the fulfillment process.
To administer order management, you must understand product and pricing administration. For more information, see Siebel Product Administration Guide and Siebel Pricing Administration Guide.
Many order management features are available in Siebel eSales and Siebel Partner Portal applications. This book focuses on order management features in employee applications such as Siebel Sales and Siebel Call Center. For details about Siebel eSales and Siebel Partner Portal, see Siebel eSales Administration Guide and Siebel Partner Relationship Management Administration Guide.
Asset-based ordering allows quotes and orders to be created according to a customer’s existing assets. Asset-based ordering is particularly useful in supporting companies whose product offerings include complex service products, such as phone services and equipment.
Siebel Order Management allows employees to:
Create quotes and orders for new products and services
Create quotes and orders to modify existing products and services
Modify in-process orders that have been submitted for fulfillment
Generate order information for submission to back office billing and fulfillment applications
The Order Management Life Cycle
The order management life cycle includes tasks that fall into several groups:
Preorder tasks. Can include creating accounts, contacts, and opportunities or helping anonymous customers through the needs-analysis process.
Order entry tasks. Can include selecting products and services, capturing quotes and orders, verifying products and pricing, checking availability to promise, entering shipping, tax, and payment information, and performing a credit check.
Post-order tasks. Can include fulfilling the order, providing the customer with order status, notifying the customer that the order has shipped, creating supplemental orders, and monitoring or modifying activities that support the order, such as installation.
Scenario for Order Management
This topic gives one example of how order management might be used. You might use order management differently, depending on your business model.
When your customer expresses interest in your products and services, you keep track of that information and help the customer identify the appropriate solution. A sales representative creates an opportunity and records the best solution to meet the customer’s needs.
After the best solution is identified, you provide a quote that details the products and their prices. A sales representative converts an opportunity to a quote, or creates a quote manually. Products and services are customized so that your customers specify exactly what options they are interested in and see the associated prices for each option.
Your customer accepts a quote, and it is converted to an order. (Or, a sales representative creates an order directly, without creating a quote.)
The sales representative enters shipment information and checks on the availability of the items. If an order contains a number of items, then the sales representative checks the availability of each line item. The sales representative also performs tasks such as calculating tax and shipping costs, verifying payment information, checking the customer’s credit, and authorizing the use of a credit card.
The sales representative performs final tasks, such as attaching electronic documents such as a purchase order or a letter of credit to the order, and generating service activities related to the order such as installation.
The sales representative submits the order. If appropriate, the order is routed for approval by a supervisor. An acknowledgement of the order is automatically sent to the customer by email.
If you are using asset-based ordering, then when the order has been filled, the appropriate product line items become assets. Assets are associated with your customer’s account and are a central part of your customer’s service profile.
When using asset-based ordering, not all products in an order convert to assets. For example, if you create an order for telephone service, then the installation is a line item of the phone service product, but it does not become an asset. You specify what products will become trackable assets through the Product Administration screen.
If your customer wants to revise an order before it is fulfilled, then you handle the change by modifying unsubmitted orders or by creating supplemental orders that revise submitted orders.
As the needs evolve over time, the customer may request additions and changes to the products and services. To make these changes, the new quotes and orders are based on the current items in the customer’s profile. Requests for changes to existing services are called delta quotes or delta orders.
Roadmap for Working with Order Management
To set up and work with Siebel Order Management, perform the following processes and tasks:
For more information, see Setting Up Order Management
Integrating order management with third-party applications.For more information, see Integrating Order Management with Back-Office Applications
Working with quotes and orders.For more information how end users can work with quotes and orders, see Creating a Quote or Sales Order Working with Quotes and Working with Sales Orders
Working with asset-based ordering.For more information about asset-based ordering, see Using Asset-Based Ordering and Workflow Reference for Employee Asset-Based Ordering