Understanding Offers

A PeopleSoft Marketing offer represents the way in which a particular product or service being offered as part of a marketing campaign activity. In other words, the offer is not the product or service itself, but some sort of discount or product giveaway that is designed to encourage customers to buy. Each activity can have only one offer. Price Rules associated with the offer define the discount or giveaway structure.

Offer details are carried through the entire transaction chain. Offers can also be presented to customers either associated with a marketing activity or as a standalone offer, , and their reactions to the offers can be tracked. Third-party optimization tools can be used to make decisions as to which offers are most appropriate for a given customer. Other than marketing activities, customers can be presented with offers from:

Case.
Order Capture.
360-Degree View.

See PeopleSoft Call Center Applications .

See PeopleSoft Order Capture Applications.

Offer Statuses

Offers pass through structured life cycles. At each stage in its life cycle, an offer has a status. Status changes must follow predefined status rules. You can use the status rules that are delivered with your system, or you can redefine status rules on the Status Rules page.

Status	Description
New	Offer has just been created or imported.
In Review	Offer is being reviewed for approval.
Declined	Offer was not approved for use in this campaign activity.
Planning	Offer was approved for use in this campaign activity and is now in development.
Completed	Offer is defined and ready for use.
Archive	Offer has been set to be no longer usable.

When presenting offers, the system requests recommendations from third-party optimization engines that determine the best choice for a customer based on various criteria.

Offers can be presented to customers in two ways:

Passive offers require the user to click on an icon in order to view the offer.
Active offers pop up automatically on an agent's screen, their content based on which offers are the most appropriate for the given customer.

Both active and passive offers take the user to the same page—the only difference is how they are invoked.

Configuring the System to Allow Offer Management

Before you can use Offer Management, you must set up the third-party optimization engine and set up the appropriate AAF policies to activate passive and active offers.

Delivered with the application is an abstract wrapper class named OfferRecEngineAbstract. This class contains an abstract definition of the methods that Offer Management uses to communicate with the third-party optimization engine. Also included is the OfferRecEngineProd class, which extends the abstract wrapper class and contains implementations of actual communication with the third-party optimization engine. Because every customer's actual implementation is different, the methods in this class are mostly empty—you must supply the necessary code to integrate with your chosen third-party engine.

You can find additional information about the wrapper classes by searching for the extension reference ROF_REC_ENGINE at select Setup CRM, then select Common Definitions, then select Component Configuration, then select Application Class Extensions.

See Defining Offer Options.

Passive Offers

In the case of passive offers, the user requests offer recommendations from the third-party optimization engine by clicking on a predefined button on a page. In the delivered applications, this button appears as either a "spinning dollar sign" on the page's toolbar (360-Degree View and Case) or in the middle of the page (Order Capture).

The button is available when the following conditions are met:

Configuration information is set to indicate that the customer is running a third-party optimization engine, or
The customer or contact on line to a call center has been targeted for a campaign-driven marketing promotion (this applies to passive offers presented from Order Capture only).
The appropriate AAF policy has been set, as shown in the following table:

Toolbar

AAF Action

360-Degree View

Display Offer Icon in 360

Case

Upsell Configuration on Case

Order Capture does not require an AAF policy to display the icon on the Order Capture page.

Toolbar	AAF Action
360-Degree View	Display Offer Icon in 360
Case	Upsell Configuration on Case

Note: The spinning dollar sign button is also available on the customer's 360-Degree View.

In order to perform retrieval of offer recommendations, additional AAF policies must be set up. For 360-Degree View, and Case, a policy must be set up that uses the action "Display Offer Alerts." The number of offer recommendations can be configured in the policy. For Order Capture, a policy must be set up that uses the action "Display Offers and Promotions." On this policy, you can configure the number of offer recommendations as well as the option to use the third-party optimization engine to retrieve offer recommendations, retrieve campaign-driven marketing promotion, or use both.

After the agent clicks the button, the system returns recommendations (the number of which the user can configure) based on conditions set up in the AAF policy. The recommendations are returned in the form of a series of offer IDs, the details of which are displayed along with applicable campaign-driven promotions for which the customer has been targeted. From this page, the agent can:

View products and pricing rules associated with the offer.
Initiate a branch script that is associated with the offer for the purposes of scripted selling.
Select products associated with an offer.
Accept an offer.
Reject an offer.
Register interest in an offer.

Active Offers

In the case of active offers, the system uses an AAF action to request offer recommendations from the third-party optimization engine automatically at multiple trigger points throughout the application. Additional AAF actions can be configured to invoke the request action from preconfigured trigger points whenever the policy conditions are met. For the 360-Degree View, Case, and Order Capture, you must set up a policy that uses the action "Display Offer Alerts."

As in the passive offer, the system returns a user-configurable number of recommendations, in the form of offer IDs, based on conditions set up in the AAF policy. The AAF action initiates a pop-up window to display the details of the recommended offers. The pop-up window contains links that allow the user to view further details for each offer. Each link opens a subsequent page, from which the user can:

View products and pricing rules associated with the offer.
Initiate a branch script that is associated with the offer for the purposes of scripted selling.
Select products associated with an offer.
Accept an offer.
Reject an offer.
Register interest in an offer.

Delivered AAF Actions

The following table shows the AAF actions that are delivered with Offers.

AAF Action	Description
Initiate Offer Rec Section	Initiates a new section with the third-party optimization engine for the given customer or contact.
Send Offer Session Data Update	Sends data updates to the third-party engine for the customer actions that might change during the call.
Display Offer Alerts	Requests a list of offer recommendations from the third-party optimization engine and displays the list in a pop-up window.
Display Offer Icon in 360	Displays the spinning dollar sign icon on the 360–Degree View toolbar.
Display Offers and Promotions	Generates a list of offer recommendations from the third-party optimization engine, from offers associated with marketing campaigns, or both.
Upsell Configuration on Case	Displays the spinning dollar sign icon on the Case toolbar. This action can be configured to use offers as the type of upsell this icon will represent. The offer configurable option is only be available if a third-party optimization engine is installed.

You will need to create AAF policies to use these actions.

See Understanding AAF.

Offer Logging and Post-Presentation Flow

When a customer registers a reaction to an offer presented via the third-party system (for example, Accept or Decline), this reaction is logged. The following occurs:

The reaction (including customer ID, contact ID, offer ID, disposition of the offer, and the timestamp) is logged in the Offer History table and in an Offer History node in the 360-Degree View that shows offer history by disposition.
A message is sent to the third-party system to indicate the customer's disposition of the offer.

If the customer accepts the offer and there are related products associated with it, the system navigates to the Order Capture Screen, where the following occurs:

An order line is created for the product selected from the offer.
Pricing rules associated with the offer are applied to the order.
Order Capture tracks the offer by storing the Offer ID.

If an order is generated from an offer relating to a case, corresponding order details are tracked back to the originating case.