Oracle Sales Cloud Partner Relationship Management (PRM) – Configuration considerations

The Partner Relationship Management (PRM) component of Oracle Sales Cloud focuses on process automation between companies (brand owners) and channel partners. It allows companies to coordinate business planning activities, share information, and conduct commerce across the channel. Processes, Objects, and Roles are various setup considerations for Sales Cloud PRM. This article shall provide the required inputs for a quick out-of-the-box PRM implementation.

Processes:

Following are the processes supported by Sales Cloud PRM
1. Channel Type identification
2. Lead distribution to partners
3. Lead registration by partners
4. Lead > Opportunity > Quote
5. Account & Contact Management

Objects:

PRM uses the same business objects (e.g., Lead, Opportunity, Account, Contact) of CRM for channel sales along with Partner Accounts and Partner Contacts.

Towards configuration of these objects, while ‘Application composure’ allows configuring additional fields, page layouts, business rules, etc., the page composer tool under the ‘Customize User Interface’ option allows configuring saved lists (criteria and columns).

Under Application Composer,
-> Partner configuration is handled under the ‘Sales’ application area.
-> Partner Contact configuration is handled under the ‘Common’ application area through the standard ‘Contact’ object.
-> Lead configuration is handled under the ‘Marketing’ application area and called ‘Sales Lead.’
-> Opportunity configuration is handled under the ‘Sales’ application area.
-> Account & Contact configuration is handled under the ‘Common’ application area.

Roles:
From the perspective of a role, the following are the roles provisioned out of the box.

PRM’s role reporting hierarchy on both sides is

Brand Owner’s side:

Partner’s side: While setting up users, it is better to define role provisioning rules. This would automatically assign all relevant Job roles based on the resource role selected for the user.

Data Security:

a) For Partner Account records,

1. On Brand Owner’s side:
Sales reps, Sales Managers could view all Partner Account records.
Channel Account Manager can View and Edit partner account records if
–they are on the partner account team
–they are a member/owner of a territory associated with the partner account
Channel Sales Manager can View and Edit all partner account records.
Channel Operations Manager can View and Edit all partner account records.

2. On Partner’s side:
Partner Administrator can View and Edit the partner account records (s)he belongs to.
Other partner users would not be able to access a partner account record.

b) For Lead records,

1. On Brand Owner’s side:
Channel Account Manager can View, and Edit lead records if
–they are the owner of the lead, or they are on the lead team
–they are a member/owner of a territory associated to lead
Note: Channel Account Manager can update owner only if they own a lead
Channel Sales Manager can View lead records if a Channel Account Manager reporting to him/her owns a lead or in the leadership team or lead is associated with a territory in his/her territory hierarchy.
Sales representatives and Sales managers’ access are controlled the same as Channel Account Manager’s and Channel Sales Manager’s accesses respectively.

2. On Partner’s side:
Partner Sales Representative can View and Edit lead records if
–they are the owner of a lead, or they are on the lead team
–they are a member/owner of a territory associated to lead
Partner Sales Manager can View Lead records if a Partner Sales Representative reporting to him/her owns a Lead or in the Lead team or Lead is associated with a territory in his/her territory hierarchy.
Partner Administrator can View and Edit all the leads under partner account records (s)he belongs to.

c) For Opportunity records,

1. On Brand Owner’s side:
Channel Account Manager can View and Edit opportunity records if
–they are a member of the account team of a partner organization on the opportunity
–they are the owner of the opportunity, or they are on the opportunity team
–they are a member/owner of a territory associated with the opportunity
Channel Sales Manager can View opportunity records if a Channel Account Manager reporting to her own opportunity or in the opportunity team or opportunity is associated with a territory in his/her territory hierarchy.
Sales representatives and Sales managers’ access are controlled the same as Channel Account Manager’s and Channel Sales Manager’s accesses respectively.

2. On Partner’s side:
Partner Sales Representative can View and Edit opportunity records if
–they are the owner of the opportunity, or they are on the opportunity team
Partner Sales Manager can View opportunity records if a Partner Sales Representative reporting to her owns an opportunity or in the opportunity team or opportunity is associated with a territory in his/her territory hierarchy.
Partner Administrator can View and Edit all the opportunities under partner account records (s)he belongs to.

d) For Account records,

1. On Brand Owner’s side:
Channel Account Manager can View and Edit account records if
–they are on the account team
–they are a member/owner of a territory associated with an account
Channel Sales Manager can View and Edit account records if Channel Account Manager reporting to him/her has access to the account via the team or via territory.

2. On Partner’s side:
Partner Sales Representative can View and Edit account records if
–they are on the account team
–they are a member/owner of a territory associated with an account
Partner Sales Manager can View and Edit account records if Partner Sales Representative reporting to her has access to the account via team or territory.

e) For Contact records,
Partner users can view and create contacts for accounts that they can view
Partner users with Edit or Full access to the account can edit or delete the account’s contacts
Partner users with Read, Edit, or Full access on the account can view, edit or delete associated common component transactions in which they participated. e.g., appointments and tasks partner users participated

Other PRM setup tasks could be performed through the “Define Sales Partners” task under Setup and maintenance.