5Financial Services EAI Business Scenarios
Financial Services EAI Business Scenarios
This chapter describes several common integration scenarios.
Overview
Sometimes, the best way to determine your integration needs is to study examples of similar problems faced by other financial services organizations. This chapter presents three scenario categories, each with a number of permutations. The categories are:
This first step in getting started on an integration project is to identify your integration needs. Siebel Business Applications provide solutions for a variety of business requirements. They play a key role in the application environment in which you might use other applications, such as:
Back-office solutions for claims processing, policy administration, or bank transaction management
E-commerce applications as Web store fronts
Mainframe-based applications that can store millions of customer transactions
As customer facing applications, Siebel Business applications need to interact with multiple external systems to provide an integrated view of customer information to the enterprise. Siebel Financial Services EAI provides the tools as well as prebuilt components that a company can use to allow this integration.
It is important to identify your needs prior to designing the integration. Your design choice could be based on the following:
Data Transformation
Data transformation between two systems is a key part of any integration project. You might want to implement this data transformation using the Siebel-provided data transformation functions or, if your organization has already standardized on a data transformation tool, you might choose to model the integration flow so that it uses the external tool for data transformation.
Data Sharing
Sometimes you might need only to view data from an external source within your Siebel applications, rather than needing replicated data. In this case, you might use a specific set of objects and tools designed explicitly for this purpose. For example, you might want to view credit card transaction details from within the Siebel applications. Your credit card transaction details might be stored in a mainframe system, whereas the Siebel applications maintain the contact information. When a customer requests credit card transaction details, you want to access the mainframe system and display the transaction details for that contact within your Siebel application, rather than replicating all the information within the Siebel application.
Real-Time versus Batch
Another important issue to consider is what type of integration you need: real-time integration or a batch-mode process. In certain situations you might want to publish to the external system any new opportunities or contact information created or updated in the Siebel application as soon as the creation or update occurs. Likewise, you might want to exchange information in batch mode. For example, you might want to aggregate account information from all the customers financial institutions and load it into the Siebel application in batch mode.
Common Integration Scenarios
The scenarios described in this chapter apply to many of the integration requirements you might face. Siebel Financial Services EAI allows you to accomplish integrations within the scope of these scenarios, but is not limited to the scenarios described here.
Outbound Message to a File
In this scenario, you create a Siebel workflow process to create a unique report in a company standardized format such as XML. The file is to be sent to a central directory on a network server, where at midnight it is bundled automatically into a company standardized format for that day. These become part of a corporate knowledge base to go to management or head office.
Round Trip Message from a File to Siebel and Back
In this scenario, you want all service requests entered from the company’s EJB Web site to be entered as a service request in Siebel Service. You also want to pull an automatically generated service request number from Siebel Service, add it to the service request, and generate a file that is attached to a confirmation email message to the service requestor's email address.
Round Trip Message from an External Application
In this scenario, whenever your back-office, for example ACORD based Policy Management, issues a new type of life product, it sends a message to your Siebel system to notify salespeople. If the salespeople like to issue such a policy, they can respond to the message and the response message will be generated and routed back to the back-office application indicating interest.
Round Trip Message to an External Application
In this scenario, your salespeople want to be able to issue a new loan issued from Siebel Business Applications to companies credit rating systems such as Fair, Isaac’s Liquid Credit System and receive a confirmation with a rating score generated by the Fair, Isaac’s Liquid Credit System.
Inbound Message from an External Application
In this scenario, whenever new auto policy information in the enterprise back-office (for example, ACORD-based Policy Management system) is updated, you want the system to send an update to your Siebel system in the form of an ACORD XML message containing the <PersAutoPolicyAddRq> message and have the policy information updated in the Siebel Asset business object.
Outbound Message to an External Application
In this scenario, you want to update a subscribed policy modification made through your Siebel Business Application to the Policy Administration system. An outbound message containing the modification of customers' policy data is sent from the preconfigured business process in Siebel applications. The outbound message can be a standard ACORD XML message.
Data Access and Replication
At times, you may need access to some specific data to accomplish a given task. Often it is not sufficient to bring everything to the same screen. Many business processes require access to particular data in order to accomplish a given task. This section describes the following four examples:
Accessing Customer History Information
Financial Service institutions are typically very cautious in the way they treat customer data. However, they still need to provide access to data while replicating as few times as possible, if at all. Your Customer Service agents need to know the transaction history of your customers in order to serve them best. This information is typically stored in Customer Account Transaction Management systems on mainframe computers.
The following table details the requirements for integrating customer transaction history information into Siebel.
| Business Requirement | Technological Requirement | Oracle’s EAI Solution |
|---|---|---|
To access the Siebel database |
Business service to query the integration object |
Industry XML Transaction Manager FINS ACORD XML Transaction Manager FINS IFX XML Transaction Manager Transaction Manager Factory Class |
To convert internal Siebel message format into different industry XML standards. |
Siebel message-to-XML conversion technology |
Industry XML Converter FINS ACORD XML Converter FINS IFX XML Converter Converter Factory Class |
To place the converted XML document in the destination queue |
IBM MQSeries compatibility |
EAI MQSeries AMI Transport EAI MQSeries Server Transport |
Siebel Virtual Business Components (VBC) are built to handle just this business need. VBCs abstract external data and present it to the Siebel application as part of the Siebel data model. All the Siebel business logic and user interface components can process Virtual Business Components in exactly the same way that they handle regular Siebel Business Application components.
The following table displays the requirements for customer data access integration.
| Business Requirement | Technological Requirement | Oracle’s EAI Solution |
|---|---|---|
To provide access to the Customer Information Files (CIF) stored on a mainframe and display the information in the customer portal |
Access to non-Siebel data without replication |
Siebel Virtual Business Components (VBC) |
Exporting Contact Information
Consider a sample business scenario where you want to send all changes to contact information in the Siebel database to an external mainframe system through the IBM MQ Series transport mechanism.
Your first step in this process would be to define and configure the message that needs to be exchanged. In this case, you want to exchange contact information. In the Siebel database, the Contact business object contains several business components and each business component has several fields. You do not want to send all of this information to the external system. You want to choose only a subset of this information. You also want to determine the XML standards the external systems implement and obtain the correct version of the XML standards schemas or DTDs.
The first task, therefore, is to use Siebel Tools to define the integration objects for the Contact contents in XML message you want to exchange. Siebel Tools provides an Integration Object Builder that walks you through the process of defining your integration objects. Once you define the message, you define what you want to do with this message.
You can now use the Siebel Workflow Process Manager to model this integration message flow to send the message to the external system. An integration message flow is a sequence of business services that are connected. For information on configuring messages, see:
Siebel Financial Services Connector for ACORD P&C and Surety Guide
Siebel Financial Services Connector for IFX XML Guide
Replicating a Company Catalog
In this scenario, you need to provide your sales people access to a price list while they are on the road. So, you need to import the price list information into Siebel so that Oracle’s Siebel Remote can take care of the mobile replication. The Enterprise Integration Manager (EIM) can take care of this task for you.
The following table details the requirements for importing a company’s catalog for mobile replication.
| Business Requirement | Technological Requirement | Oracle’s EAI Solution |
|---|---|---|
To import the company’s product catalog |
High-volume batch replications |
Siebel Enterprise Integration Manager (EIM) |
Updating Siebel Using Java Beans
In this scenario, you have a Customer Service Web application written using J2EE Server Pages (JSPs). To pass this data into Siebel so that account records can be updated, you invoke the Siebel Object Interface, Siebel Java Data Beans. Now your Customer Service representatives can use the same information from the Java Server Pages while serving the customer.
The following table details the requirements for updating Siebel using JSP technology.
| Business Requirement | Technological Requirement | Oracle’s EAI Solution |
|---|---|---|
To update Siebel account data from a J2EE Server Page (JSP) enabled application |
Programmatic interaction |
Siebel Java Data Beans Object Interfaces |
Data Sharing Across the Enterprise
Business processes often need to cross departmental or even enterprise boundaries. Because different organizations may be using different applications, you need a way to make sure one application can hand off the execution of a business process to the next application. This section describes three examples:
B2B Integration
Legacy Data Integration
ERP Integration
B2B Integration
To allow business-to-business transactions to take place over the Internet, Siebel Financial Services EAI provides HTTP adapter and the Business Integration Manager, which are used to model and execute business processes. In case the organization supports IFX XML or ACORD XML standards for B2B integration, Siebel provides connectors that work with the HTTP adapter. Furthermore, organizations may implement the Siebel Industry XML Connector Factory APIs for building customized XML connectors. The following table details the requirements and the solution for a successful B2B integration.
| Business Requirement | Technological Requirement | Oracle’s EAI Solution |
|---|---|---|
To create a business-to-business integration to send an order directly to a partner over the Internet for fulfillment |
XML messaging over HTTP |
|
Legacy Data Integration
On the Internet, HTTP is the standard protocol for exchanging data. In a mainframe environment, IBM MQ Series is the most common application messaging transport. Therefore, the HTTP protocol can be replaced with MQ Series and still carry out the transaction. In case the organization supports IFX XML or ACORD XML standards for legacy data integration, Siebel provides Connectors that work with the HTTP adapter as well as IBM's WSBCC and MQSFSE product suite. In addition, they can be customized to support different message sets and packages to suit your business needs. The following table details the requirements and the solution for a successful integration of legacy data existing on a mainframe.
| Business Requirement | Technological Requirement | Oracle’s EAI Solution |
|---|---|---|
To create an order against a mainframe system |
Cross-application business process management |
|
ERP Integration
In this scenario, the main purpose is the correct and timely fulfillment of an order, but the back-end is now a popular ERP application. Siebel has developed prebuilt solutions that interface with SAP R/3, PeopleSoft, and with Oracle applications (both for the character-based 10.7 release and the GUI and web client release 11i). These applications are set up to exchange order information, customer information, and so on, out-of-the-box. Additionally, they can be customized as needed to exchange as much or as little information from these external applications as your situation requires.
The following table details the requirements and the solution for a successful integration of ERP data.
| Business Requirement | Technological Requirement | Oracle’s EAI Solution |
|---|---|---|
To create an order against SAP R/3 |
Integration with popular applications |
Siebel Enterprise Application Integration Connector for SAP |
Data Transformation
When performing the data transformation within the Siebel environment, you use two types of integration objects.
Internal integration objects mirror the data structure of a Siebel business object and contain a subset of business components and fields.
External integration objects mirror the data structure of an external system. You define integration objects of both types in Siebel Tools.
The Industry XML Transformation Engine performs the same function whether the data transformation is performed inside or outside of the Siebel environment. The Industry XML Converter and the transports also perform the same function, whether used within the Siebel environment or outside the Siebel environment. The only difference is that when used outside the Siebel environment, these business services perform operations on external integration object instances as opposed to performing operations on internal integration object instances when used within the Siebel environment.
Each of the Siebel Connectors for industry XML standards (IFX XML and ACORD XML) has a slightly different data transformation process that is specific to the industry that uses it. For more information about the data transformation process and connector configuration procedures, see Siebel Financial Services EAI Architecture Siebel Financial Services Connector for ACORD P&C and Surety Guide, and Siebel Financial Services Connector for IFX XML Guide.