1984 - 2014: 30 years later, same threat?

30 years have passed since Apple introduced the Macintosh with what was only a decade after recognized as a masterpiece in advertisement and surely one of the most controversial in the history of IT. In this famous advertisement, Steve Jobs wanted to represent the monopoly of IBM in the computer industry as a real threat for the freedom of everyone of us, and Macintosh as a means to save humanity from "conformity". IBM was represented as the Orwellian Big Brother, an over controlling entity to which we should have revolted by... Thinking different.

Think Different

Steve Jobs never really won his battle against the compatible PC industry, partly because the hardware vendors proliferated, partly because the software by Microsoft met a wider audience expectations, by means we could discuss about, but that are out of topic for this article.

20 years later Jobs realized his dream by introducing new devices that hit the personal PC at its heart, revolutionizing the entire industry. Even if it was a change in device paradigm (from PCs to more mobile devices), Apple has succeeded in destabilizing an industry, thanks also to the wrong approach by Microsoft that this time did not have a “Big Brother” IBM hardware partner in the competition. With the iPhone Apple was the first one to enter the market with a unique combination of device and software integration: the now so common swipe movement of the fingers, everyone of us is used to, was a perfect combination of software and hardware new concept, far more successful than the use of the Xerox GUI within a personal computer.

The real Big Brother

So, was the war against the Big Brother won? Well, the real question could also be: was IBM and the compatible PCs industry the real threat? At the end of the day, I cannot help but think about Apple as a very closed ecosystem; its approach of integrated hardware and software is also a very smart approach to create a monopoly. But, at the same time, it is true that the innovative Apple products have always distinguished themselves from the conformity of the moment.

As I wrote in my last article “Are cheap marketing strategies going to dumb down all future Software?”, I have a strong feeling of an increasing impoverishment in the business software industry. For sure, with the Cloud advent in the corporate industry, we are experiencing an uncritical conformism of corporations towards a new reshaped "renting" model as an answer to the economic crisis.

As a result, in recent years we passed from over complicated and over-engineered software solutions for business to over simplified Software with limited capabilities. In order to overcome the intrinsic limits of CRM Cloud software, for example, lot of effort has been and still has to be put on the integration side of things, above all to handle data transfers from on-premises data centers to the Cloud and closing the loop of specific functional processes. As I have already said, too often the reasons of companies moving to the Cloud are not the right ones and this brings us to the idea that maybe it is time again to think different, because there seems to be a huge conformism when it comes to going to the Cloud. Thinking different does not mean refusing evolution; on the contrary, it means engaging with new trends with an open mind, with enough critical thinking to avoid simple and too straight choices; choices that bring to consequences...

The 1984 campaign promoted a specific theme: "[T]here are monster computers lurking in big business and big government that know everything from what motels you've stayed at to how much money you have in the bank. But at Apple we're trying to balance the scales by giving individuals the kind of computer power once reserved for corporations."

The real threat?

30 years later, we are facing something that is even closer to that scary idea. The real Big Brother is someone that really controls the information, the data and what you can do with it. If you really think about it, the next Big Brother could, in fact, be the Cloud.

The decision of storing our data in someone else premises in locations where you are not sure about the applied legislation is something we should always think about when it comes to going to the Cloud. Companies move their data to the Cloud, trusting their data is not actually viewed by third parties. It’s a big act of faith towards a vendor; are we sure that also moving the corporate CRM processes to someone else on-premise infrastructure is a good thing? yes, because we should understand that what they sell us as Cloud is actually their On-Premise infrastructure, so we can hope that these vendors are also fond of their on-premise solution and not only the Cloud!

The reality of things is in front of us, if we keep our eyes open; how many times, in the last years, we have heard about privacy breaches, data leaked from Corporations or institutions? In last years I have seen many kind of situations, also cases where the on-premises CRM application technical repository like the Siebel one was not actually handled by the company itself, but by some external provider, and I have seen the consequences of such approach: a total lost of control over the software development life cycle. What many businesses do not realize is that their strategic processes, their approach to customer, is actually also partially implemented in their CRM solution. Why would you want to give away your strategy and your business aprroach?

The real Big Brother could now sit on the Cloud, reading and analyzing your data, watching your private pictures (Jennifer Lawrence knows something about it...), reading the exchanged messages of your sales force, being able to contact your customers, your prospects, anticipate your leads... As the US government itself has not proven to be so respectful of our privacy, we cannot even rely on governments to protect us from such breaches.

The Big Brother has taken also control of art: U2 recently released their 13th album for free, making a pact with Big Brother, because the device (in this case a CD or a vinyl) has no value any longer. What counts now (and probably should have always been) is exclusively the sensation and the emotions that the music (or the movie) create, so why not distributing it via some proprietary cloud? That would be a good idea if you did not put yourself in the hands of a multinational company that is trying to dominate an entire industry via its channels. And the risk of precipitating into conformity has impoverished also the artistic vein of once big artists, killing the essence of art as something that should be measured on quality adjectives, not quantity ones. Bono even had to apologize last week to users who objected to receiving an automatic download of the band's latest album, after thousands complained they did not want the album and that it took up precious storage space on Apple devices...

Are you sure you are not going to be the next one? Are you sure you are not going to compromise your Software artwork u 2?

But I am not and I have never been someone that criticizes for just the pleasure of doing so, even if I admit I have always refused conformity since my childhood; you need to have in any case the moral drive to offer a different perspective on things and, with it, a better alternative, if any.

An alternative

In this sense, wouldn’t be perfect to have the possibility to simply run all kind of software directly on your PC without the need of any installation and all the related burden? One limit of Cloud applications is that they behave like they run on your PC, but they are actually running on a remote server and also the data they handle is often just in the Cloud, organized in ways and schemes you are not aware of and you can't even control.

It would be perfect if we could decide: there should be no dilemma for the users, but only the best of both worlds.

There is for sure a better way to simplify your business without over dumbing your software and giving away all your privacy at the same time. As far as I am concerned, we @ e-Up will always go in the direction we envision to be the best not only for us, but for the entire business community. I know that in times when a trend is so strong and permeates everything it is difficult to look to other possibilities... But I strongly believe it is again time to think different, really.

So, as usual...

Stay tuned,

Manuel

(https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20141023111515-4189733-1984-2014-30-years-later-same-threat?trk=prof-post)

Are cheap marketing strategies going to dumb down all future Software?

noticing the automatic addition of an advertisement at the end of the post, just before publishing it.

I was actually introducing a survey we’ve been working on, to understand the current Siebel CRM projects scenario and the opinions of people working on it.

Can you guess what the automatically added advertisement was about? Well, as soon as you put CRM in the context, you can be sure you will get a Salesforce.com advertisement.

Nothing against the guys, but what the heck had this to do with our Siebel projects' survey? Fortunately enough LinkedIn has still the decency of allowing you to cancel these automatic advertisements, but what if a less focused author does not notice this?

I actually received an update once, where a guy was promoting some Siebel positions, while at the bottom there was the same Salesforce.com advertisement. I commented on his post, underlying how hilarious this was, but I am not sure he got it...

After a certain period of time, while some comments were published on one of the posts related to the survey, a totally out of context comment arrived. A company using a Salesforce image, trying to sell Salesforce.com training? Oh man.. “Extremely affordable Salesforce/SFDC CRM hands on based training for all roles”.. I immediately thought “what the heck has this to do with our Survey? Can’t you guys use proper space to make your own advertisement?.. Ok, let’s flag this as inappropriate, I am sure LinkedIn will delete this posts as out of the contextual discussion”. You wanna bet on the result? Well, you just have to click on the link and see for yourself: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Are-you-taking-part-in-41388.S.5905974750093537283? (note how they delicately removed the Oracle Siebel keyword from the link).

Ok, so Salesforce.com is still spending a lot of money (LinkedIn thanks) to make the guerrilla marketing that characterized its first battles against the one time giant of CRM solutions (remember the fake protesters outside Siebel marketing events?) Mmm... Interesting.

But let’s now discuss about the real reasons behind this recent cloud, “light” solutions' proliferation in corporations. After having talked with an Oracle guy working on the “new” Sales Cloud application, I have a personal confirmation and a wider awareness of the reasons behind a potential impoverishment of the IT business solutions. This guy mentioned that he recently attended a training but I could not understand exactly about what, until he said he wanted to improve his selling skills, in order to be able to better promote the Cloud solutions. When I heard him playing the part of the seller: “because software is for you, sales people, you are the king, you should be the ones deciding what you get: do you want this crap, slow solution, or you want this fancy and easy to use interface?”.

Ah, now I see.. .So, “cloud” solutions are winning because the perception (easily sold) is that cloud applications are more user friendly and you can tweet and post on Facebook with them? You can bet on it.

But what has this to do with the Cloud paradigm? A company should abandon years of on-premise investment because ferocious assault of cheap marketing strategy of IT corporations? Show me the ROI man! Are you sure we cannot get a cool user interface and mobile application that synchronize with your on-premise servers? You might want to check better the latest solutions.

I see the added value of cloud based applications in the case some information is meant to be directly transferred from a sales rep and his/her manager, for example: in such a case, it absolutely makes sense to make use of the widespread cloud services, rather than burden the company server infrastructure. At the end of the day the goal of IT has always been that of simplifying our lives and tasks as workers. But... wait a minute, didn’t we say - in the glorious CRM propaganda days - that CRM is about business and not the technology? Do CRM applications (or CX, as now they like to call them) really need to be on the cloud to be easy to use? For sure I challenge that an application has to be in the cloud to be well engineered. But there’s food for thought.

One thing companies should be aware of, above all in the IT departments, is that with a cloud solution you will 100% lose control of the data layer of your application: every vendor in the market has locked up the data schemes and layer of their cloud solutions; you can add the fields, some out of the box relations, but don’t think to get deeper than that - optimization, partitioning, denormalization and database maintenance (just to name a few) will be history.

An added value for some companies for sure, it’s anyway a dangerous track to follow, in my opinion, even if Larry Ellison says you can now simply push a button to put your on-Prem solution in the Cloud.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing bad with the current trends, if the reasons companies are making strategic decisions are the correct ones. It’s actually a certain part of IT’s fault if business users were so frustrated by very poor and too heavy applications if now we are in this situation. As for marketing strategies, they have always been and they will always be where the money is flowing. But innovation is usually a disruptive element in the status quo and I have a huge sense of innovation lack in business software nowadays.

Am I the only one having this bitter sensation that all these cheap marketing strategies are going to dumb down the entire business software production, completely abandoning professional software engineering?

P.S. The images were taken from RugRag, but I like them as a metaphor for companies going to the cloud: it works, but it’s not for everyone.

Are you planning to leave Siebel for some other technology? .. Think twice...

As e-Up is attending the Oracle Open World 2014, today I attended the “Siebel CRM - the future of Siebel, Strategy and Roadmap for the World’s most complete CRM” session.

I have to say that after years of frustration, now Siebel customers could relax about the future of their multi-years investment, if Oracle keeps its promises.

As I have had the opportunity to underline in other occasions, the strategy towards what they now define as the most complete CRM solution in the World, has been ambiguous - to say the least.

During these days, I have met Siebel customers really expressing years of frustration towards a non clear statement of direction, making confusion even between going to Open UI or Oracle Cloud (by the way - someone still talks about Oracle Fusion applications and you would be surprised by who is doing so..).

What we have been experiencing in these years is a constant and continuous penetration of the cloud buzzword in the business applications scenario. Cloud is cool, On-Prem is obsolete... Or so they say.

So we have seen Siebel customers abandon their investment for other technologies, quite always towards cloud based ones as Salesforce.com or Sugar CRM (as in the famous IBM case). But are we really sure they did the best long-term decision?

Siebel customers are still very concerned about their commitment to their Siebel solutions and they are not sure if continuing investing in it is a winning strategy.

If until today I had my own idea about the right choice for big corporations, but I could not reassure them (at the end of the day, we do not own the future of Siebel as a technology) now I can honestly say those customers that they should be relaxed and not too much worried about the future of their CRM platform.

What really changes between Cloud and On-Prem solutions is the commitment you are giving to handling your own data and servers. If taking care of your servers and data is more a burden than an advantage, then you should probably think about a strategy to get rid of it and find someone to take care in your place or change the entire application paradigm and move everything to the cloud.

If you are not part of this group, then I don’t think you should be concerned about not being yet on the cloud. As technology is improving, as network speed and bandwidth are increasing, the difference among the different paradigms is really more and more a keyword, marketing one. But I will return on this in the future, discussing how we simply deliver to you new solutions like e-Tools for Siebel.

What I want to give you is really my impression about the market and my opinion about the most intelligent way to face the future.

My impression is that someone has tried to put on-prem solutions as Siebel apart, but customers were not ready or not willing to follow the flow.

The consequent lack of customers satisfaction and the evolution of technologies I mentioned before brought us where we stand today, with Oracle telling us they are going to commit to Siebel for the most foreseeable future with a bunch of new implementations I am going to list.

Again, if you are not in the group of customers that consider handling data and application servers a burden, you should not really worry about not being on the Cloud. Why? Because it will come, step by step, and I think you should let Oracle worry about that, not yourself.

A first example is the integration of the new Oracle Cloud solutions with Siebel, that will extend your on-prem CRM features with cloud based ones, without the need for you to completely disrupt years of implementation.

This is part of the Oracle CX strategy, that is offering you the possibility of choosing new cloud solutions such as Oracle Marketing, Oracle Sales, CPQ, Commerce, Service and Social to be integrated with the Siebel core.

Numbers show us today that 84% of Siebel customers are either on 8.1 or 8.2 version; that means that - from now on - things should be much simpler in terms of innovation and upgrades and the official roadmap now clearly shows 2022 in the time line. So commitment is there... As for the quality of the products, I cannot really say and I don’t want to make everything appear so easy as it has not been in the past years for many upgrades (really painful for many customers).

Open UI, firstly release 2 years ago, is now not just a reshaping of the user interface; it is really a change of technology, making sure that the Siebel application is not only more likable for the users, but ready to be run on all the latest devices. IP 2014 will make sure that there will be a complete responsive design UI, so that no development is needed to adapt the user interface to different devices. Using both tablets and smart phones? Then the UI will automatically shrink or expand to fit to your device screen.

The third part representing an update and new life to Siebel is represented by mobile solutions: there will be now the possibility to directly download the mobile application from the App Store and the synchronization famous pain points will be approached (and hopefully solved) with 3 different options (complete synchronization, upload or download). The disconnected application will therefore see new life with an enhanced solution, together with a new version of CRM desktop, completely integrated with Outlook 2013 and Lotus Notes 8.5.3.

Together with the standard mobile application, new ad-hoc vertical mobile solutions (phone or tablet) have been introduced: for the moment Communication, Life Sciences (particularly for e-detailing) and Financial Services will have completely dedicate mobile applications that will be integrated with Siebel (Open UI, of course).

The fourth pillar of a potential Siebel renaissance (as our friend Bruce Daley has referred to at the beginning of this year -http://www.brucedaley.com/siebelobserver/2014/01/2014-the-year-of-a-siebel-renaissance.html) - and from my point of view the real indication that the Siebel team in Oracle is taking this seriously - is the introduction of a complete SRF and web templates free deployment (also called Run-time configuration) and a web version of the Siebel Tools that should allow you to do some basic customization of Siebel directly on the web browser, something similar to what you can do nowadays with Cloud platforms such as Salesforce.com. This is not something that will be available in the coming IP-2014 anyway, but should come from 2015 on. Of course this is a big change and will be released step by step, also because I am not totally convinced that you can successfully deploy all the current powerful Siebel configuration possibilities into a web browser: one of the limits of customization possibilities for cloud packaged applications (if we can define them so) relies exactly on this, in fact.

Oracle future strategy aims at a so called Single Unified Tools on the web (weirdly very similar to our Unified Perspective approach) so that changes can be applied on an environment that is very similar to the end-user one.

This unification should also bring new Optimized Testing capabilities for Siebel applications (Packaged Siebel Test Automation Interfaces and Objects).

As you can see, lots of new developments should arrive to completely refresh the Siebel technology and this reinforces my point of view that on-prem or on the cloud, it is just a question of the technical evolution that an application is going through. Once your user interface is HTML5 compatible, your tools are web compatible, and you can rely on standard integration interfaces, the real difference between Cloud or On-Prem relies on the fact that data is on your own servers or on third-parties’. That’s really it!

As for the timing for the commitment to do such changes, well... That’s a completely different story, and we could write an entire new article and discuss for days... My personal opinion is that these changes are at least 6 years late and that I am quite sure that around half of the lost Siebel customers in these years would still be on Siebel, if such changes would have been applied in a coherent time frame.

I just want to finish this long post reinforcing the fact that this just represents my point of view on the current scenario and it is particularly referred to the long list of Siebel customers I talked with that are worried about the future of their CRM platform. As I mentioned, going to the Cloud could be the right decision for some, but for others I would say that right now they can look at their years of investment as an asset and not any longer as a liability. Above all, I always invite everyone to critically analyse what "cloud" really means, because at the end of the day the real important thing is that your piece of software is up to date with the recent technologies and the possibilities they offer, not where you store your data.

Personally, I can say that we at e-Up will still commit with strategic and technical consultancy and innovative new software for Siebel, together with other technologies... but that’s another story...

So, as usual, stay tuned...

Manuel

e-Up new website is live

Dear,

I have abandoned this blog long time ago and for good.. I am sorry for the amount of readers that regularly checked this blog for some news.
The recent 5 years long financial crisis has impacted everyone and everything and so the publishers I was collaborating for to write my articles. Additionally, the attitude of corporations towards consultancy has changed, also due to the lack of quality of many providers, guilty of overpricing very bad quality services.
But they say during crisis the most innovative ideas take place. I hope this is the same in our case, as we dedicated time to hard work and research and started a company based in Dublin in 2012: e-Up Unified Perspective.
We just launched our new website and the new software at the same time.
e-Tools is the result of advanced research and consultancy, and its aim is supporting the implementation and above all the analysis of all existing Siebel applications that are still out there, despite the slow reduction of implementations due to the competition, above all versus Salesforce.com, as prefered CRM platform.
To be honest the first competitor of Siebel has been been its new owner: Oracle. It's their policy towards the one time first CRM platform in the world, that has actually killed it.
As I will attend next Oracle Open World and the Siebel 2014 IP will be presented, I am really curious about the way Oracle will promote its strategy.
Despite some employees still insist on the fact that Siebel is not dead and that new functionalities will be presented towards next years, the market seems to have less and less interest on this technology, even after the advent of Open UI.
Siebel implementations failed and continue to fail because the lack of best practices and tools that support this. Business analysis, for example, has never been supported or "educated" by Oracle, leaving it to the disorganization of Organizations. or to the trends of too heavy and too generic methodologies.
e-Tools will allow the modelling of visual artefacts for all the phases of a typical Siebel implementation, easing the adoption of best practices.
I refer to Siebel Tools as an old punch cards machine, with its old-fashioned parametrization approach, without mentioning the lack of support for anything else (requirements gathering, modelling, application design, etc.). Have a look at the first video about e-Tools and let me know if you realize the difference with the standard Siebel Tools:

Having worked with Cloud platforms such as Salesforce.com, I cannot be good with new available tools as well. On the contrary, while Siebel was a greatly engineered piece of software, recent trends tend to bring us back, rather than forward. I cannot think any longer about any valid packaged application in the market, simply because the tendency is that of returning to custom development, despite the fact you use an old programming language or a "cool" new one. Some technical solutions for corporations are simply embarrassing; customers have to be lighten from the burden of over-engineered and not useful technologies, but this does not mean solutions have to be technically crap.
If cloud is now so trendy, be sure you will soon find silos also in the sky, not only on your premises...

But I have probably taken too much time and too much space for the initial intention of this post, therefore I end simply simply inviting you to visit our new website www.e-up.pro.
We shall probably introduce a blog section on the website, therefore I might continue posting some articles there... stay tuned!

Asset-based ordering

As part of the Order Management module, Asset-based ordering needs to be activated separately, allowing customization of workflows and business services.
Asset-based ordering bases on a prior order by the customer, thus on the fact that the customer already owns (or uses) a product (service) provided by the company or a partner. A customer that has acquired telecommunications services, providing the organization with a phone line and a phone number, owns, from the provider’s perspective, a valuable Asset on which building on future activities (a key strategy CRM point is in fact maintaining existing customers, before acquiring new ones). The client could, for example, decide to request other phone numbers on the same line, or to split existing numbers on different lines.
Asset-based ordering leverages the order management process as it supports the creation and management of complex orders (containing complex pricing, combined billing types, combinations of services, multiple suppliers, etc.). In the example given above, the phone line could be the property of a partner (as the distributor in an Energy business scenario), while even the service could be provided by another one; nevertheless, the client receives one bill containing the information for the various services, as well as segmented prices based on consumption.
After the first negotiation and order with the client, the sales worker can generate an Asset directly from the order. Starting from this Asset, new quotes and orders can be generated, or changes can be done to existing quotes orders. If the client changes the initial order, changes can be accepted (based on company’s policies) and implemented. It is easier as well managing subscriptions as the Asset management allows suspending, discontinuing or resuming the service provided. If the client does not pay the bill, the provider can decide to act by suspending the service until the payment is realized, so resuming the existing service. A household might request the provider to interrupt the service over a period of time (when they go on vacation for 3 months they do not need the home phone). In this case the provider stops the service and resumes it again at the client’s request. Figure 1 shows a Crm-UP, UML compliant, description of the functional cases managed by Siebel Asset-based ordering module (the module is depicted as the blue cube, reconnecting the business scenario to technical aspects of the Siebel architecture – as a specific case study).

Figure 1. Asset-based ordering – overview use-cases model describing the main actions supported for a sales worker, interacting with the system.

The Assets owned by the customer are registered in a service profile, indicating the installed assets. It is easily accessed from the Account Screen, Installed Assets view, and allows the customization of specific automated workflows to reduce the amount of time to create quotes, orders and assets.
There are three scenarios for initiating Asset ordering. The client can ask for a revision of an existing order (not yet passed over the point of no return). In this case, after negotiating the quote and starting the order process, the client decides to change something (a product/service, or conditions of the order, etc.). Depending on the organizational policies, the order might still be changed, unless is has reached a point when the changing costs are too high (the point of no return for order execution).
A second scenario envisions the client as owner of an Asset, but wishing to modify it. It is the case, for example, of a telco company’s client that wants to change from one type of contract to another, because her/his needs have changed, so that less free minutes are required (a down-grade of contract).
The last scenario envisions the modification of the prior order by adding a new item. The client might want a new phone line and number to be added to the prior subscription. The basic conditions are not modified in this case, just new items are added and might have an impact on the general order (on the sum, etc.).

Figure 2. General flow of Asset-based ordering following three initialization scenarios.

The three scenarios have different evolutions, depicted in figure 2. When modifying an existing Asset, the Sales Worker has to start from the Assets screen and fill in the details as required. Afterwards it is possible to generate a new quote and transform it in an order (following internal processes) with the help of automated workflows (like automatic generation of Quote from Asset, and of Order from Quote). When adding a new item, the Sales Worker starts from the Quotes screen, creating the Quote and filing in its details. If the change regards an existing Order, following organizational policies, the Sales Worker accesses directly the Order and performs the modifications. The execution of the order and its monitoring is facilitated by the integration with back-office systems.
Businesses that combine products and services, such as Telecommunication and Energy industry, can take advantage of the facilities offered by Asset-based ordering, reducing client-service time and improving overall monitoring of customer and service.

About Oracle CRM On Demand and Analytics

Some days ago I have been challenged in relation to the problems a company is facing in the management of their Siebel Oracle CRM On Demand system, above basing on the intrinsic technical limits of such a solution in the Analytics field, in comparison with the classic on premises solution.
It is a matter of fact that the Software as a Service model is finally spreading and taking the ownership of some previosuly unreachable market niches; the help, in my opinion, has arrived from the economic crisis.
Anyway since 2006, when I was called to bring on a functional comparison between the Siebel PRM solution and Salesforce.com, I have been really interested in the on demand concept and it's approach to business. I believe moreover that the web 2.0 technology can overcome many of the initial development limits of on demand applications; But it's true, there are still some limitations, above all when we talk about Analytics (they are technical for the cusomer, but I don't feel them as a technology limitation, but more as a specific marketing strategy - usually who buys such solutions does not want to be involved in complex cutomizations and so their development is not economically advantegeous).
Starting from a strong knowledge of Siebel Analytics (on physical, business, presentation/Answers layers and also ETL), in 2007 I have attended also the Siebel CRM On Demand courses from Oracle to get the solutions peculiarities, basing also on my consultancy background with the most famous on-demand application: Salesforce.com.
Based on this I have helped some partners in delivering tailored reports on an off-shore model, helping them understanding the gap between an on-premises solution and an on-demand one.
The Siebel CRM On Demand Data Warehouse is updated nightly so the reports always reflect quite recent information, but for sure not the one that “today” has been inserted by the company users in the OLTP, Transactional database. Moreover you are restricted to the Analytics subject areas to report on information that is refreshed daily.
Basically where is the limit in comparison with a “standard” version? We can individuate 2 parts:
1> the ETL part is fundamentally an Oracle responsibility, so you cannot bring data that is out of Siebel. Only Siebel OLTP fields will be mapped to the OLAP by Oracle.
2> You cannot create new star or snowflakes schemas, so you have to rely on the OLAP structure that Oracle maintains. Basically no new Facts or Dimensions: you can only add additional information but based on the existing relationships.
The advantages are performance and complexity wise , as no ETL is necessary on the client side.

Once you use your On Demand solution you have to be very carefull on the difference between the Reporting and te analytics sections.
Understanding the difference between an OLAP and an OLTP is fundamental: these DBs are not only different for the data that is inside (at maximum the OLAP is updated to the last upload of information from the OLTP or other connected transactional or even analytical databases) but for the schema structure itself. The first one is in fact optimized to establish relations between objects that are apparently (at least from a transactional standpoint) separate, but that need to construct the knowledge you want to highlight in a report/dashboard: from this the grouping in Fact tables, containing the information you want to measure, and the Dimension ones, containing the data that is used to calculate the facts (usually organized in Star schemas or Snowflakes).
Siebel CRM on demand clearly structure this concept in Analytics subject areas and Reporting sections (from Create New Analysis window): the last ones have to be used to report on information that is currently in the database (OLTP). Usually is used for simple list-type reports. For more complex reports you have to refer to the Analytics part where, changing the columns’ order, for example, you can group reports’ data based on the first column information (e.g. Sales Stage).
At least, it's always possible to do a little bit more direclty observing the resulting SQL query from the created report and adapting it to your needs.

Order Management – General introduction

Among the other Oracle Siebel CRM modules, Order Management is one of the most used and requested. This is due to its employment in the sales process, across quote and order management processes. The advantages offered by Siebel CRM are the integration with back-office applications (for products, availability, orders, credit check, taxation, etc.) and automation (through various customizable workflows), as well as flexible support throughout the sales process.
Before getting to use it in the Sales process, it is important to prepare the grounds for Order Management usage. As a first step, it is necessary to set up a series of elements and their characteristics (not all of the following are mandatory): Accounts and Contacts, Salespeople, Products, Pricing and Catalogs, Shipping Information, Tax Calculations, Payment Terms, Inventory Locations, Order Types, Order Statuses, Product Selection Favorites, Activity Plan Tempaltes, Availability to Promise, Asset-Based Ordering.

There are also several changes to perform in the application such as Activating Workflows, customizing the Sales, Quote and Order processes, customizing the List of Values, etc.
Integrations with the Back-Office applications could be necessary as well, depending on the infrastructure. Among them:

• Quote and Order process integration assures correct quote/order status and communication among front and back-office departments;
• Product Availability - information is retrieved from third party applications;
• Credit-Check – indicates if the customer has enough credit for purchasing the product ;
• Taxation – facilitates tax calculation based on organization and customer location (taxation legislations).

Creating and managing the catalog establishes the structure of products and services in order to facilitate access definition and navigation. It employs Catalog, Category, Subcategory and Product elements to establish hierarchies.

Presentations can be adapted by customizing the Display Templates and attribute search can be implemented to facilitate finding of products based on their characteristics.
For facilitated products up and cross-selling, the Product Recommendations need to be set in place. Messages are created and related to products in order to indicate to the salesperson possible up-sell and cross-sell products. A score is used for categorizing recommendations based on their importance in comparison with other recommendations, facilitating viewing and decision of what recommendation to make.
One of the competitive characteristics of a company is its approach to the sales process. Oracle Siebel CRM supports variations in the quotes and order processes facilitating flexible adaptation thus the creation of competitive advantages. As part of the Order Management implementation process it is necessary to define and map such processes in order to construct the best application support. In this step it is also very important to take into consideration the company strategy, the difference between it and the “real” selling process carried on by the employees, and decide the best way to suit both, assuring change management and user-acceptance.

A special type of approach to ordering is the asset-based ordering process. It allows companies to create assets from client’s orders, to create quotes for new products and services based on existing assets, create quotes to modify existing products and services, modify existing open orders, manage an existing service and gain visibility into the asset life cycle.
Order Management is a complex Oracle Siebel CRM module.

Dear friend, communicating means responsibility

Hi all, for the second time I am posting about a non-CRM related argument. Yes, because at the end some principles are universal and involve everything, CRM as well.
I am just going to put a comment I made on a video by Anthony Robbins, a guru in so called "inspirational life coaching" ( http://tonyrobbinstraining.com/46/tiny-changes-mean-huge-results) and a person that in any case I admire for the results he achieved and still helps the others achieving.
He's trying to raise up the spirit of people in this moment of crisis. The intention is good and at the beginning I even appreaciated it, but maybe for the first time, thanks to the crisis itself, I am realizing how dangerous certain approaches can be if they are not correclty driven. By a matter of fact, my comment to the video has been "censored". Fortunately we live in an almost free world, so I decided to post it here...

Hi Tony,
this time I wanna play the devil's advocate. Why? Because I am afraid the situation requires different models (whatever the field) and critic analysis about past 20 years. Moreover because we need to challenge ourselves and this requires not always saying "yes!".
First example: in the golf game case, few millimeters do the difference if you're putting a lot of energy in your shot, as the target is far away. But what about if you give a soft shot as you're close to the hole? Surely the difference is smaller, as your shot is not amplified by the long distance. For sure if you hit softer you are more precise, right? well, paradoxically, it could be that a player making soft shots arrives
first to the target than another one hitting the ball like a mad, considering they have the same low preciseness, no? Same rules, “strange” winner.
Why there's the need, above all for the first shots, to strike hard?
Because the golf game rules tell you that if you arrive before you win. Well,
what if the rules were different?
Second example: it's true, few millimeters make the difference between a beautiful and an ugly face, but.. did I say beautiful and ugly? what am I basing on to state this? on commonly accepted parameters.

What if these parameters were different? And, above all, should I put all this attention to these few millimeters doing the difference for the commonly accepted CURRENT trend?
I got where you wanna point but please understand my argument. Little daily applied changes and "corrections" make the life trip go in the direction we pursue, yes. But it depends on HOW you do it, on some FUNDAMENTALS you should have and on the MODELS the society is basing on.
Many financial and economic crashes have been driven by people that certainly applied strong believes, strong self-motivation, auto-determination and focus. Much focus.
But on what? And on which basis? I think too much on pure “success”, money and with very weak basis. What I am saying it’s that maybe it’s no more time for such kind of approaches if not driven by a good method, strong fundamentals and new models.

Maybe people are unmotivated and with the “head down” for good reasons, because they don’t like what they see and how they live, or the society tells them they have to live if they want to be “accepted” or be cool. Maybe it’s some society rules that should change and not people keep smiling and pushing on things, whatever it takes and, above all, driven by the same hidden interests?
There’s so much responsibility in communicating.

Doing some analysis, all this is probably true also for what CRM is facing as a corporate initiative, in this crisis situation.

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, the model 2 diagram 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.

Think about it ;)

This is the 3rd world war

Yes, I know, apparently the current economic crisis (just to use an euphemism) has nothing to do with this blog, but who can ignore its impacts now? The panic is spreading and melting with the entire economy, once left the golden financial world. And now what? what should we expect, why there is such a collapse in such a short time frame?
Well, as I like challenges, I recently specialized myself also on trading, following some courses by Forbes, even because my consultancy role and my professional attitude push me to excellence and trying to master all the possible industrial or economic fields that CRM and associated Business Analysis can involve.
This was last summer, when the economy was not in any case at its best and we all waited for a raising; even if the market was very nervous, I succeeded in making good investments and good suggestions for friends and clients.
Then, suddenly, an unimaginable collapse, and all theories and studies have become just a theory for kids. My belief? That all this has been planned and forecasted by few entities that will take a new control back to their hands.
Unfortunately masses usually follow the wind imposed by few, and lots of people have lost most of their savings. Nothing new really, as the common understanding of things is not so critical, but follow, for example, the mood established by the newspapers, almost all of which are controlled.
Do you really believe that the entire economy is going to collapse? I firmly believe that U.S. know what is doing, more than we expect and for sure more than Europe has understood. This is a contemporary global war, where old assets and columns are going to change; at some extents, this was also necessary.
Everyone has already forgotten what Russia did in Georgia and how the climate was returning to a cold war one kind? Now what has been demonstrated? that this kind of approach is old-fashioned and that their power show was not only despicable, as the common opinion already stated, but above all not useful at all (not intelligent?). Look where Russia is now: it's financial structure is collapsing more than other countries and they hope themselves that U.S. will defeat this crisis. Where are the tanks now?
Other important reference point are moving and new strategies coming with them, and it's not important if many people completely burn their savings, because things have to change for someone.
First of all in one month time U.S. will face a new election. While just a couple of weeks ago McCain and Obama were incredibly at the same popularity level (what? Who talked about McCain before? Wasn’t it just the Obama election?), now Obama has again more points versus his competitor. Personally I am not taking any part in this, above all because the only certain thing is that, despite recent comments by intellectual people, the most important and influent country are and will be the United States of America. And whoever smiling face you put on it, the real powerful institutions behind it are more or less the same… included their goals.
U.S. are showing the world that, if they go down, they will bring all the world with them, included great new emerging economies that seemed to preoccupy and revolutionize the entire world asset.
I understand the fact that many investors from China, Russia and Middle East are investing in US bonds, but this does not mean that these countries will take the control, but on the contrary that U.S. needs new friends across their boarders, and the result will be on the contrary an expansion of U.S. commerce and way of thinking around the globe.. without any military war. In this picture, for sure great U.S. speculators are not useful to anyone anymore, even to U.S. itself, so they have basically been "fired".
The funny thing is that, as in a war, the alliances emerge, together with the will or not to collaborate together. The result is that Europe has shown its pure abstraction, with each country acting separately and with personal local interests.
And please, let's not define the different coordinated rate cuts as an harmonious action of European States. First of all because also other countries such as Japan etc. have shown their support on the same direction, second because the consequences on European different markets is visible to everyone: DAX, CAC, MIB - all markets have closed today negative with more than 6% loss.
Who is going to benefit from this, together with the Paulson plan? Yes, you know it, and let's wait this evening for Wally... for the moment it is losing much less than Europe and Japan and let's see how it will close. I would not be surprised to see some + (really? How can it be??), except going down to the end, trying to make us europeans go down the day after.
Do you want other confirmations? The value of U.S. dollar has increased versus the euro after a long time where the American dollar was losing steps every week in an uncontrolled way. Maybe it's just a coincidence that soon the amero will see its birth?
This morning Toyota, big Japanese automotive competitor for U.S. companies, has been declassed by Nikko Citi, an American Bank, indicating the target price from 6.340 to 3.520 yen...
Do we have to talk then about the oil price? Did you think that the answer about global warming would have been immediate change of direction, both from Republicans or Democratics? The main concern for U.S. has always been the dependency from foreign oil. Now, with the incredible price fall, U.S. is also saying to the international foreign oil powers: "hey, if we go down, you can burn your oil just for your fun, man. So let's talk differently in the future, ok?"
What will save us really? Apart from the correct re-dimension of the money cost (for many this is becoming unbearable) the answer is just one: Quality.
And here we arrive at the point I was targeting for our usual scope: the current situation is surely preoccupying, but I believe as well it is somehow the beginning of a new phase. I believe the entire CRM sector will be affected by this crisis too and I think it will be somehow justified, as too many wastes have involved CRM Projects implementations. There is too much speculation around this business, the recruitment part just to start mentioning some. The quality level of the consultancy as well is absolutely not at the level that is requested by the market, not only on the freelance market, but also on the Big consultancy names. What I am working on is based on Quality, included the management of the LinkedIn group CRM Project Managers: as this crisis is doing, we have to extirpate once forever the weeds from our glorious CRM field, if we want to progress, maintain a high credibility and come to the market in a productive way, with good implemented ideas and not the usual old services.
In this sense the idea of an open community can help CRM: but in a controlled and severe way, as it will have to be for the new trading rules.
Together with some partners I am also working on a new tool and a new methodology that will be presented to the public soon to the CRM community. Many of you already contacted me to ask for the new Crm-Up methodology and the new tool: I am sorry for the delay, but I am working in order to make it real and available for the end of this year, crisis permitting :). With this tool and methodology we are aiming at stopping all the wastes around the CRM implementations projects as well as poor consultancy without any added value.

Ah, If you want to invest money? well, if you still have some but you want to be sure, just wait for the new president election. If you want to risk in these days, doing some speculation, then it's quite easy: on the European market buy good titles (with good news) around 11-12 AM and sell at 14AM. If you are in the U.S., then buy in the middle of the day and sell before the end. Now it’s almost 6:00PM CET and DJ is down of 2 points.. let’s see the closure, I am curious...
In the next days, in any case, it will be better.
Are you looking for patterns? ;)