Let's Give Incentive Compensation a HUG

This humble writer is currently in the student seat and enriching his training portfolio with Oracle Sales Cloud: Incentive Compensation (formerly known as Fusion Incentive Compensation).

As usual, I like to start a learning path with a H.U.G. (Hopefully Useful Graphic). Here it is without further ado.

In the diagram we can discern many entities which compose the data model for Oracle Sales Cloud Incentive Compensation. Let's quickly describe each of them:

Compensation Plan: This is the overall container. Most importantly, we assign participants (commission/bonus recipients) directly or indirectly - using roles - to the compensation plan.

Plan Component: A compensation plan contains at least one plan component. This reusable entity defines the overall logic of the calculation. The logic is defined within the following reusable entities.

• Performance Measure: This reusable entity allows us to define the basis for the bonus or commission payment. For example, this is where we define the attainment goals for each period and the credit categories which are used to classify transaction for a specific payment.
  
• Rate Table: The other main building block of a plan component are rate tables. Imagine rate tables as lookup tables. For example, when a salesperson has achieved 70% of the sales quota in the period, the rate table defines how many percent (or total pay) the sales rep will receive in commission or bonus.

The following screenshot shows an example performance measure and its goal definitions for each period.

Click to enlarge.

Expression: Calculations for Incentive Compensation can become quite complex. The Expression entity allows compensation plan admins to define a formula once and reuse it across the data model.

Classification Rule: When a revenue transaction is processed, it needs to be "classified" in order to determine whether the transaction will incur additional payments for the salesperson. This logic is stored in the classification rules.

User Interface and Oracle BI Integration

The compensation plan administration is implemented in a nicely structured work area in Oracle Sales Cloud (see above screenshot).

End users - individual salespersons and their managers - can view information about their and their team's compensation using dashboards which are driven by Oracle Business Intelligence.

The above screenshot shows the 'My Team's Compensation' dashboard which nicely demonstrates the data visualization prowess of Oracle BI within Fusion Applications *err* Sales Cloud.

Extensibility

Oracle Sales Cloud Incentive Compensation cannot deny its ERP heritage. Stemming from the Oracle eBusiness Suite offering, it has found its place in the Sales Cloud (former Fusion CRM) product line. Regarding extensibility, Flexfields (the extensibility vehicle for all non-CRM product lines) are used rather than Application Composer.

More Information 

For more information on Oracle Sales Cloud Incentive Compensation, here are some resources:

• YouTube introduction (FastCast) on Fusion Incentive Compensation by Apex IT. This one demonstrates the end user (sales manager) perspective nicely.
• Oracle Sales Cloud Incentive Compensation Guide

have a nice day

@lex

Oracle Launches Customer 2 Cloud Program

In his Siebel Observer publication, Bruce Daley informs us that Oracle changes its policies to allow Siebel support fees to be applied to Cloud products.

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Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL)  has announced new licensing policies that make it easier to exchange Siebel shelf ware for other CX products. Called the Customer 2 Cloud program, the new policies hope to overcome some of the common financial and technical problems Oracle customers experience in transitioning from Oracle on-premise software to Oracle software-as-a-service Cloud products. The Customer 2 Cloud program allows Oracle HCM and CRM customers to exchange some of their on-premise support budget for new Oracle Cloud products.

"The Customer 2 Cloud program helps organizations get their hands on the latest technology," says Rod Johnson, group vice president, Oracle Applications and Industries Solutions Group. "This program aims to remove the financial and integration challenges that can impact a company's adoption."

Oracle Customer 2 Cloud program is open to Oracle CRM and Oracle HCM customers that are running Oracle's Siebel, Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle's PeopleSoft and Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne solutions on-premise. Oracle customers also have the flexibility to shift to a hybrid model with both on-premise and cloud applications.

Customers can convert their existing on-premise support budget to subscribe to Oracle Customer Experience Cloud and Oracle Human Capital Management Cloud services within the same product family. For example, a customer with on-premise seats for Oracle Siebel eService can transfer those seats to Oracle Marketing Cloud.

For more information about the details of the program see http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/customer2cloud/index.html

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This article was originally published on the Siebel Observer web site.

have a nice day

@lex

New Features in Oracle Fusion/Cloud Applications Release 8

As announced a few days ago, Oracle has published a new release of its Fusion Applications (ERP, HCM, CRM) product line, namely Release 8.

For on-premise deployments, this means that the installers as well as the new documentation set are now available on Oracle servers.

For cloud customers which have signed up for the Oracle-hosted versions of Fusion Applications (aka Cloud Applications) such as Sales Cloud, Oracle is probably rolling out upgrades already.

The new release brings hundreds of features, with the following (personal) list of highlights:

New Skyros Theme

With release 8, Oracle ships a new skin named "Skyros" (probably inspired by the blue sky and white houses on the Greek island of Skyros).

New Skyros skin in Fusion Release 8

The new skin provides a more "flat" look and feel and will also be available for the accompanying middleware products such as Identity Management or Oracle BI.

Oracle has announced a skin editor for release 9 so customers can create custom skins more easily.

Redesigned Global Header

In addition to the new style, the global header has been redesigned. For example, the Navigator menu is now represented by a compass icon and most administrative links have made it to the menu which opens when you click the user name on the top left.

The new Navigator menu in Release 8.

User Interface Text Editor

For developers, there are many new features, including a UI Text Editor (its place in the Navigator is highlighted in the above screenshot) which allows to search and replace user interface text elements such as labels quickly.

Application Composer

As of release 8, the Application Composer for Sales Cloud/Fusion CRM has a lot of new features including a new Record Type field which allows to filter list of values by application role (any similarities with Siebel state model are purely coincidental).

Fellow blogger and author Richard Bingham has published a very nice series on release 8 features and he also has some references to videos in his post about Application Composer.

Other Enhancements

Among other areas that have been enhanced with release 8 are flexfields (used in ERP and HCM but not Sales Cloud/CRM), the BPM Composer, Auditing and the Simplified UI which is quickly becoming the UI of choice for many users. Developers will be pleased to hear that there is now better support for customizing the Simplified UI via Application Composer.

have a nice day

@lex