Siebel 8 Territory management

This morning a reader contacted me to ask me what exactly Territory Management is in Siebel and the difference, for example, with Assignment Manager. Unfortunately I could not answer immediately as I was on the phone with a prospect, so I am going to explain Territory Management in this post, for him and whoever might be interested. I am going to describe Territory Management as it is in the last Siebel version 8, because new features have been introduced and so I want this post to be useful also for the people that already know assignment manager rules in previuos Siebel versions.

In this first post I will limit the scope to the administration process flow and the setting up of the environment. If anyone was interested in seeing in detail some specific parts, just leave a comment and I will be glad to go deeper in that direction.

Well, first of all let me introduce some order: Territory Management is the set of Siebel functionalities to manage sales and service territories, while the assignment manager is the engine that, based on defined rules, assigns Sales Reps to account, contact or opportunity teams (in a SFA case) or assign ownership of assets to field service engineers (in a field services case).

Technically speaking, assignment manager is a Siebel Server component group dedicated to the execution of the assignment rules defined by assignment criteria.

The territory management functionality is mainly offered in order to avoid requiring developers for the modification or creation of workflow/batch assignments, while giving administrators a platform to create assignment rules (supposing that all the necessary fields to construct the filter are available).

This is quite clear if you observe the figure 1, a UML compliant Crm-Up model 2 diagram (CRM Business Analysis Model) representing a classic process flow: allmost all the activities are delegated to the Administrator. Unfortunately I had to split the image in two for dimensions reasons, but consider the second part as the continuation of the first (horizontal oriented swimlane).

Figure 1. Process Flow for territory management.

In relation to the configuration setup I am going to use, on the contrary, example diagrams belonging to the first model of the Crm-Up methodology (CRM Use Case Analysis). There are specific reasons behind this choice that are in any case out of this posts' scope and more related to the Crm-Up methodology. It's just to say that probably some UML purist could look with suspect our use case modeling approach, but this is part of the innovation in Crm-up methodology and our aim is usability and high adoption by all the stakeholders of a CRM implementation project, business users included.

Anyway, in the Figure 2 you can find a description of the first step in the configuration setup, that is the enablement of the component groups.

Figure 2. Setup - first step: enable component groups

In figure 3 you can find the third territory management setup step, that is the enablement of all the necessary Workflows.

Figure 3. Setup - second step: enable workflows

Last but not least, in figure 4 the third setup is represented, that is the load splitter configuration.

Figure 4. Setup - last step: load Splitter configuration

Well, that's pretty much all for this first post; as I said, if anyone is interested in the details of any of the described steps, feel free to contact me and I will be glad to describe them using the Crm-Up approach and MetaTools.

By the way, these diagrams are examples of available reusable patterns included in MetaTools and consider that all the object definitions (for example the represented Views and Applets) are Siebel consistent and related to the Visual representions of the Siebel repository. This means that all the elements have a unique, specific, Siebel compliant definition (e.g. you can directly retrieve all the specific View parameters directly from these diagrams!) and that, for the first time in Oracle Siebel history, you can customize your application and your Business and functional requirements/processes in one unique Tool and one unique repository.

Just to give you an idea of the advantages, if you select an element from one of the previous diagrams (e.g. a View), MetaTools offers you the possibility to be redirected to the visual diagram of the Siebel architecture definition where that element is used (so you can see all the elements associated, as the Business Object, etc.). This is a great example of communication bridge between business and IT!

Think about it ;)

Crm-Up is live!

I have worked a lot in this five years to help this project I believe it's one of the most ambitious ones since the Siebel ePlan introduction.
As I already stated in some posts years ago, ePlan has been the only real attempt by Siebel to raise the level of its implementation projects.
Siebel implementation projects, in fact, faced a difficult moment when, around 2001-2003, many customers realized that sticking to the 80% of the out-of-the-box functionalities was too strict and, going beyond that, not enough support was offered for the customization process. This often resulted in an incredible raising of costs to maintain and adapt the application to the users' requests.
Simply put, gathering requirements was delegated to business analysts without not only any strong theorical support but even without any supporting tool! So often requirements have been gathered (and sometimes it still happens) just showing the Siebel application standard Views and asking users how they would like the application to appear.
This bad practice is still bringing many problems to the Siebel applications around the globe, that now have even to face the not without hassles migration to the new version 8. How many times have you seen Views full of information and an incredible amount of columns coming from totally different contexts (e.g. Opportunities with information coming from all the Business Components possible!) so impacting not only performance but the usability itself the users requested!
The error is not on the users' side, that probably would like just to retrieve immediately all the information they had on their Excel stylesheets; at the end their real job (above all among sales people) is not using the application, but eventually receiving support in terms of organization of their activity and structure of their customer and account data.
The error has been not offering a real approach to Packaged Applications customization or adequate tools to facilitate it.
ePlan tried to make customers understand that you do not have to concentrate on how the application looks like, but on the contrary on what it offers you out-of-the-box in terms of functionalities and support to your organization's processes. So, if you want to customize the Siebel standard, it's probably because it does not reflect your way of doing business? So why have you bought it? and here we could open a long discussion about vendors choices, but it's not the scope of this post and, moreover, we have to face the fact that probably you have just to live with it and try to take out the best from your investment, right?
Oracle, with its acquisition, has taken a different approach from the ePlan one (that in fact was stopped by Oracle after its acquisition), that is introducing new functionalities that can help both the IT professionals working on a Siebel project delivery and the final users. Examples in this sense are the new business rules engine and the new Siebel field services functionalities. So, the answer has been more Technology.
But what if in some years customers will try to organize their environments trying to extricate in this technological jungle?

Crm-Up aims at offering a solution both on the technological side and on the methological one, offering the two things that Siebel projects historically have suffered: analysis tools and a structured approach. And by analysis I mean both a functional/processes one and an architectural one (we could call it IT architecture design).
MetaTools include all this in one Tool. In fact Crm-Up saying is: One Unified Process, One methodology, One Tool!
The cool thing about MetaTools and the Crm-Up inner implementation, it's that you are not forced to follow strict rules or precise phases: you can rely on the models you think are useful and relevant within your CRM implementation project and whenever you think is necessary. In this sense you are not forced to do cycles and reviews, but you are always free to change, for example, a Use Case diagram, if you think that it's not properly describing your business requirements or the way the application is supporting the users. You are perfectly allowed
even to use only the Siebel Visual modeling capabilities, in order to better design you application.
Practically you can take your Siebel repository and immediately obtain a fantastic interactive visual representation of it, so that you can have a design in a reverse engineering mode! Think about the potentialities: automatic technical documentation, global analysis overview of the entire repository, focus on specific parts of it, underlying of bottlenecks or wrong configurations that are hard to find using Siebel Tools.
For any relevant information I invite you to visit the Crm-Up website, but don't hesitate to contact me for any curiosity.