Scenario for Using and Administering Global Accounts

This topic gives one example of how global accounts might be used. You might use global accounts differently, depending on your business model.

A midsized company, Corp 123, wants to view consolidated data at the global account level. This company has a sales organization and a financial organization set up in its Siebel application. The accounts administrator sets up two account hierarchies, one hierarchy for each organization. These hierarchies allow users to view the opportunities and contact information associated with parent accounts.

The sales organization uses the default hierarchy, which is based on the Parent account field. For various reasons, the financial organization requires a modified version of the account hierarchy. One of these reasons is that some accounts’ billing structures are different from the accounts’ purchasing structures. For example, in the case of XYZ Inc., the following four XYZ accounts are customers of Corp 123: the XYZ Holding company, two regional subsidiaries, and a financial company. The 123 sales organization wants to view the account hierarchy where all accounts report to the parent holding company. Because all account billing for the XYZ companies is funneled through XYZ Financial, Corp 123’s financial organization wants to view the account hierarchy where all accounts report to the XYZ Financial. The following image shows the two hierarchies as follows:

1. Sales Hierarchy. XYZ Holding has the following accounts: XYZ Financial, XYZ Europe, and XYZ Asia.

2. Finance Hierarchy. XYZ Financial has the following accounts: XYZ Holding, XYZ Europe, and XYZ Asia.

The default hierarchy used by the sales organization automatically updates when new accounts are added or Parent fields are changed. However, the accounts administrator updates the finance hierarchy on a weekly basis as new accounts are added and the structure of existing accounts changes.

The global accounts manager wants to review all opportunities at Corp 123. The global accounts manager navigates to the Accounts screen, and then the Global Accounts view. In this view, the manager can see the opportunities for Corp 123.

The global accounts manager can use the Enterprise Selling process (ESP) module to develop global account strategies. For information about how to use ESP with global accounts, see Enterprise Selling Process.