Critical Choices for Implementing MDF for Channel Sales

The Marketing Development Fund feature (MDF) is optimized for partner users. To optimize the user experience for channel managers, you must modify the relevant fields and pages for the relevant roles with Oracle Application Composer and Oracle Page Composer.

Activity management pages are optimized for direct sales. You must modify the activities pages to expose MDF attributes for customers offering MDF programs to their partners.

You must make the appropriate decisions during implementation for the following features that drive MDF request and MDF claim approvals:

• Approval routing rules

• Approval process flows

MDF Requests and MDF Claims Approval Routing Rules

MDF requests and MDF claims submitted by partners must be assigned to appropriate personnel in your organization so they can get access to MDF requests or claims based on their roles. For example, people who are approvers must be assigned properly so they can view, approve, reject, or return an MDF request or an MDF claim.

By default, commonly needed approval routing rules for MDF requests and MDF claims are provided. However, you can create your own approval workflow to route MDF requests and MDF claims to the correct approvers.

MDF Request and MDF Claim Approval Process Flows

The default MDF approval processes should meet most MDF request and MDF claim use cases. However, if you need to modify one or both flows, you can do so by editing the included human task flows, using the existing business flows as your templates. The templates are: FundRequestApprovalHumanTask for MDF requests and ClaimApprovalHumanTask for MDF claims.

Use these steps to edit the existing business flow templates in the Worklist application.

1. Sign in with your sales administrator credentials.

2. Click the Notification bell icon in the global header.

3. Click More Details, and then click Customer Relationship Management.

4. From the user_name drop-down list, select Administration - Task Configuration.

5. Perform the following steps as needed:

   1. For MDF Requests

      1. Search for Fund% in the search field in the left panel.

      2. Click the Edit icon in the left panel.

      3. In the Assignees tab, and click inside the MDF Request Stage One Approvers box.

      4. Click the FundRequestApproval business rule.

      5. Make the changes you need to fit your business needs.

   2. For MDF Claims

      1. Search for Claim% in the search field in the left panel.

      2. Click the Edit icon in the left panel.

      3. In the Assignees tab, and click inside the MDF Claim Stage One Approvers box.

      4. Click the ClaimRequestApproval business rule.

      5. Make the changes you need to fit your business needs.

6. Save your changes.

Change the Number of Stages in an Approval Flow

MDF offers up to five approval stages, with both serial and parallel approvals on each stage for both MDF requests and MDF claims. If you need to add additional approval stages to the MDF request or MDF claim flow, follow these steps:

1. Click the MDF Request or MDF Claim Approval Stage Three box.

2. Deselect the Ignore Participants check box.

3. Click Advanced.

4. Deselect the Ignore Stage check box.

5. Click MDF Request or MDF Claim Approval Stage Three Approvers.

6. Click Advanced.

7. Deselect the Ignore Participants check box.

8. Save your changes.

To remove stages, you can create rules that skip approval levels. For example, use these steps if you want to have one approval stage for MDF claims:

1. Create a new rule that skips stage one.

2. Move this rule so it's the first rule in the UI.

3. Inactivate the first seeded rule.