1. Franchise User Guide
  2. Manage Franchise Customers

2 Manage Franchise Customers

Franchise Customers are typically business entities who manage branded or co-branded stores with the retailer, while retaining the retailer's business processes and value propositions. Each franchise customer can operate one or more stores for the retailer for which inventory may or may not be managed by the retailer. These franchise locations are set up as stores in Merchandising to ease the process of ordering and fulfilling of franchise orders. Merchandising maintains customer groups and customers pertaining to franchise operations as a hierarchy above the franchise locations, which are created as stores.

Franchise customer groups provide the ability to group customers owned by a larger group. If you do not have a multi-tiered structure for your franchise customers, then customer and customer groups can be created as a one-to-one relationship. Customer groups can also be used as a grouping mechanism while defining cost-build-up templates for uniformity in costing. Definition of franchise customer groups is mandatory to set up franchise customers in Merchandising.

Once a customer group is defined, customers belonging the customer group can be set up in the Merchandising system. Multiple customers can be associated under a single customer group, but a given customer can only belong to a single customer group.

Franchise customers and customer groups can be created and managed using the spreadsheet download and upload processes, which are accessed through the main Merchandising task list under Foundation Data > Download Foundation Data and Foundation Data > Upload Foundation Data respectively. Navigate to Foundation Data > Download Foundation Data, choose the Template Type of Franchise and the Template titled Franchise Customers to download existing customer data.

Add a Franchise Customer Group

To add a new franchise customer group, start in the Franchise Customer Group tab. Add a new row by selecting the action type of Create and enter the ID for the new group that you wish to add, using up to 10 numeric digits. Next proceed to enter the Franchise Customer Group Name. Translations of the Customer Group Name can be defined in the Franchise Customer Group translations tab. For each new language in which a translation is to be defined, add a row with an action type of Create, select the language code and enter the customer Group ID for which the translation is being defined together with the translated name. There are no significant validations for uploading a new Franchise Group apart from validating that the Customer Group ID is unique.

Add a Franchise Customer

To add a new franchise customer, start in the Franchise Customer tab. Add a new row by selecting the action type of Create and enter the ID for the new customer that you wish to add, using up to 10 numeric digits. Next proceed to enter the Franchise Customer Name. Other key details that you will need to enter include:

  • Credit indicator - Indicate whether the Franchise Customer has good credit. Franchise Ordering will be restricted for Customers with poor credit. Valid values are Yes and No.

  • Customer Group ID - Enter the ID of a valid Franchise Customer Group to which the customer is associated.

  • Auto Approve Indicator - Indicates if externally uploaded Franchise Orders should be automatically approved for this customer or not. Valid values are Yes and No.

Translations of the Customer Name can be defined in the Franchise Customer translations tab. For each new language in which a translation is to be defined, add a row with an action type of Create carrying the language code and the customer ID for which the translation is being defined together with the translated name. There are no significant validations for uploading a new Franchise customer apart from validating that the customer is unique and associated with a valid Franchise Customer Group.

Update Franchise Customers and Franchise Customer Groups

If you would like to update any Customer or Customer Group details, a similar process will be followed as described above for creating new Franchise Customer Groups. First, download the Franchise Customer spreadsheet, and then navigate to the tab where you would like to make your updates. The following columns can be updated in each tab:

  • Franchise Customer Groups – Customer Group Name

  • Franchise Customer Groups Translation – Customer Group Name

  • Franchise Customers – Customer Name, Credit Indicator, Customer Group ID, Auto Approve Indicator

  • Franchise Customer Translations – Customer Name

In the tab where you are going to make your updates, select the action type of Update on rows that you wish to update and then correct the value in the spreadsheet. Once your updates are complete, save and close the spreadsheet.

Delete Franchise Customers and Franchise Customer Groups

If you wish to delete a Franchise Customer Group or Franchise Customer or its associated translation record because it is not used by your business, update the action column to select Delete for those rows in each of the tabs where it occurs. This includes Franchise Customer Groups, Franchise Customers and their respective translation tables. Care should be taken before deleting a Franchise Customer or Franchise Customer group to ensure that it is not used and does not have active transactions referencing it in the system. If associated records exist then an error could be raised on upload.

Upload Changes

For all actions defined above, once all the updates have been made to the data in the spreadsheet, save the file and close it. Then, return to the Merchandising screens and select Foundation Data > Upload Foundation Data from the main task list. In this screen, you'll again select the template type Franchise and the template Franchise Customers. This will generate a process description automatically, but this can be updated if desired. Lastly, you'll select the Browse button and navigate to the directory where you saved the updated spreadsheet.

To review the status of the upload and check whether any errors occurred, select the Foundation Data > Review Status task from the main task list. For more information, see “View Data Loading Status" in the Oracle Retail Merchandising Do the Basics User Guide.