5 Adding Siebel CRM Promotion Names to Invoices

Learn how to add Siebel promotion names to your customers' invoices in Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (BRM).

Topics in this document:

• Adding Siebel CRM Promotion Names to Invoices

• How BRM Adds Siebel CRM Promotion Names

• Setting Up BRM Invoices to Display Siebel CRM Promotion Names

• Specifying Whether BRM Displays Promotion Details on Invoices

Adding Siebel CRM Promotion Names to Invoices

Promotions are marketing bundles that contain multiple Siebel products and services, often at reduced prices. When customers order promotions, their invoices, by default, display the Siebel products and services that come with the promotion, but the invoice does not display the promotion name itself. This could be confusing to customers and make them wonder if they are being billed correctly. If your BRM system uses Siebel CRM and the Application Integration Architecture (AIA), you can set up your system to display Siebel CRM promotion names on customer invoices.

When your system is configured to display promotion names, customer invoices display all promotions that are active, were inactivated, or were canceled during the billing cycle in which the invoice is generated. For example, if a customer switched from promotion A to promotion B in January, the customer's January invoice would display both promotion A and promotion B.

To manage promotions, your customer service representatives (CSRs) must be able to perform the following tasks in Siebel CRM:

• Add a promotion to a customer's account.

• Modify a customer's existing promotion.

• Transfer an existing promotion from one account to another.

• Inactivate a customer's existing promotion.

• Cancel a customer's existing promotion.

• Apply promotions to child accounts in an account hierarchy.

  Note:

  Parent accounts can share their promotions with a child account only if the child account owns the charge offers and discount offers associated with the parent's promotion.

You implement this functionality by customizing Siebel CRM to send data through AIA to the PCM_OP_SUBSCRIPTION_SET_BUNDLE opcode. See BRM Opcode Guide.

How BRM Adds Siebel CRM Promotion Names

When a customer orders a promotion, CSRs enter information about the order in Siebel CRM, which passes the information through AIA to BRM. For each promotion ordered by an account, BRM:

• Creates a /purchased_bundle object, which stores information about the promotion, such as the promotion's name, validity dates, and status.

• Associates the promotion with the charge offers and discount offers it is bundled with by setting the PIN_FLD_PLAN_OBJ field of the account's /purchased_product and /purchased_discount objects to the /purchased_bundle POID.

When BRM generates invoices, it retrieves all of the account's purchased charge offers and discount offers (/purchased_product and /purchased_discount objects) and, if they are associated with a promotion that is active, was inactivated, or was canceled during the current billing cycle, the /purchased_bundle object as well.

Setting Up BRM Invoices to Display Siebel CRM Promotion Names

To include Siebel CRM promotion names on BRM invoices, perform these tasks:

• Make sure BRM is configured to display promotion details on invoices. It is configured to display promotion details by default. See "Specifying Whether BRM Displays Promotion Details on Invoices".

• Customize Siebel CRM to pass information to the PCM_OP_SUBSCRIPTION_SET_BUNDLE opcode. See BRM Opcode Guide.

• Use an invoice template that displays promotion names and details. See "Using Invoice Templates That Display Promotion Names".

  Note:

  If you configure BRM to exclude package, bundle, and charge offer pricing details from invoices, the invoice will not display Siebel CRM promotion names. See "Improving Performance by Removing Invoice Details You Do Not Need".

Specifying Whether BRM Displays Promotion Details on Invoices

When BRM generates invoices, it performs, by default, an additional search for any promotion details associated with each account. All promotion details that are found are stored in the account's /invoice object and displayed on the invoice.

You can enable and disable this search:

• When the search for promotion details is enabled, BRM searches for and displays on invoices details about the account's current promotions.

• When the search for promotion details is disabled, promotion details are not displayed on invoices.

To configure this feature, run the pin_bus_params utility to change the PromotionDetailDisplay business parameter. For information about this utility, see BRM Developer's Guide.

To specify whether BRM invoices displays promotion names:

1. Go to BRM_home/sys/data/config.

2. Create an XML file from the /config/business_params object:

   pin_bus_params -r BusParamsInvoicing bus_params_Invoicing.xml
   

3. In the file, change disabled to enabled:

   <PromotionDetailDisplay>enabled</PromotionDetailDisplay> 
   

4. Save the file as bus_params_Invoicing.xml.

5. Load the XML file into the BRM database:

   pin_bus_params bus_params_Invoicing.xml 
   

6. Stop and restart the CM.

7. (Multischema systems only) Run the pin_multidb script with the -R CONFIG parameter. For more information, see BRM System Administrator's Guide.

To add, modify, inactivate, or cancel promotions, you must customize Siebel CRM to accept the following information and pass it to the PCM_OP_SUBSCRIPTION_SET_BUNDLE opcode. See BRM Opcode Guide for more information.