Oracle SellingPoint Developer 4.

Oracle SellingPoint Developer is an intuitive, drag-and-drop configuration modeling environment that gives product specialists the range and flexibility to model all products, services and systems, from simple to complex. Oracle SellingPoint Developers breadth of modeling capabilities enables companies with multiple product lines and global sales forces to effectively sell their full range of products.

Today, companies that sell complex and custom products are recognizing that in order to meet sales objectives, they must rapidly implement sales solutions with guided selling and configuration capabilities. To leverage the Internet as a viable sales channel, companies must also be able to deploy these solutions over the Web. Traditionally, client-server based enterprise-selling systems have taken 6-12 months to implement. In addition, web-based configurators have required companies to develop custom user interfaces that add time and cost to the overall project. To increase top line growth without significantly adding to the cost of ownership, these solutions need to work from existing ERP data, provide rich configuration modeling capabilities that can be use by business managers and generate dynamic user interfaces without custom programming. Oracle SellingPoint Developer allows business managers to quickly represent both what and how they sell in a unified configuration model. Oracle SellingPoint Developer streamlines the process of building and maintaining Oracle SellingPoint applications, delivering solutions in time to impact sales results in the following quarter. The integrated rapid development functions in Oracle SellingPoint Developer, combined with Oracle SellingPoints multitiered deployment architecture, lower the overall cost of application ownership by significantly reducing application development and maintenance costs, and by delivering sales configuration solutions to all selling channels from a centrally maintained configuration model. Oracle SellingPoint Developer is a member of the Oracle SellingPoint family. The Oracle SellingPoint family includes:

Oracle SellingPoint provides guided selling and configuration capabilities for selling complex and custom products and services.

Oracle SellingPoint Internet Edition provides guided buying and configuration capabilities for selling complex and custom products and services over the Internet. Oracle SellingPoint Developer the graphical development environment for building and maintaining Oracle SellingPoint applications.

ORACLE SELLINGPOINT DEVELOPER CAPABILITIES

Oracle SellingPoint is the only solution that is scaleable to a companys needs as the product line, sales force and business grow. Oracle SellingPoint Developer models individually configured units as readily as it models the interaction of multiple units within networks or assemblies. Oracle SellingPoint Developers breadth of modeling capabilities enables companies with multiple product lines, product/service packaging, ranges of product complexity and diverse selling channels to more effectively sell their entire range of offerings. Oracle SellingPoint Developer was designed to reinforce a rapid application implementation process and contains integrated functions for quickly deploying complete, high-impact selling systems, which include:

Utilizing product data from ERP or other enterprise systems Modeling configurations and product, service, and system relationships Applying business rules to product data Specifying customized user-interface layouts Testing and debugging Oracle SellingPoint applications

Oracle SellingPoint Database

Oracle SellingPoint applications rely on a standard schema for configuration data referred to as the Oracle SellingPoint Database. The Oracle SellingPoint Database stores customer information and all information required to support the configuration model product data, project structure, configuration rules and user interface layouts. The following customer and product data from Oracle Manufacturing and Oracle Financials can be integrated directly with the Oracle SellingPoint Database:

Bills of Material (BOM) structure Associated Item Master data Contact/Customer Addresses Price List Ids

Integrated Data Schemas - Oracle SellingPoint and Oracle Applications

A generic import mechanism is also provided for legacy data residing in nonOracle databases or Oracle data beyond that cited previously. This generic import mechanism utilizes a set of import tables to load enterprise data into the following Oracle SellingPoint Database tables:

Item Master Contact/Customer Sales Reps List Price

Product data, contact/customer information, sales representative data, and pricing are extracted from legacy data according to queries the DBA writes to satisfy the format requirements of the import tables.

Model Structure

The Model structure is built up from Item Master data stored in Oracle SellingPoint tables. The Model structure is specified in the form of a hierarchical tree made up of products, components, features and options. When BOM data is integrated directly from Oracle Bills of Material, all items in the Oracle Item Master associated with the Oracle BOM are automatically added to the Oracle SellingPoint Database Item Master table. A default Model structure tree, which mirrors the Oracle BOM structure, is generated. This portion of the Model structure cannot be modified within Oracle SellingPoint Developer, however additional structure may be added around it. Generically imported Item Master data from legacy or other ERP systems can be manually built up into a Model structure by dragging and dropping components, features and options into hierarchies that represent product and service offerings.
Guided Buying / Guided Selling

Guided buying is an essential part of customer-facing sales applications particularly for organizations that want to sell complex or custom products and services. To be successful in e-business, web-based sales applications have to guide customers to the exact product or service that meets their unique requirements regardless of the complexity involved. Similarly, guided selling provides the same level of functionality in selling-centric applications, where the end users of the configurator are sales representatives. Oracle SellingPoint Developer allows Product Specialists to model exactly how their products are sold, producing Oracle SellingPoint applications that guide customers or sales representatives through the buying experience. To incorporate guided buying/selling into an Oracle SellingPoint application, the qualifying questions that a knowledgeable salesperson would ask a customer are added to the Model structure. Then, business rules are defined that correlate the answers to the qualifying questions to a particular subset of components, features and options. The end result is an Oracle SellingPoint application that guides the user to an optimal solution.

Oracle SellingPoint Developer allows product specialists to add guided buying/guided selling questions to their applications. This allows selling applications to guide a user to an optimal solution, based on their requirements.
Populators
Populators can be used to automatically populate and refresh features and options in the Model structure from Item Master data.

Features and options that reside in the Item Master data can be linked to the Model structure using Oracle SellingPoint Developers populators. Populators create a direct link between Item Master data and the Model structure. Whenever data is added to the Item Master through import, refresh or manual addition, populators automatically populate and refresh the features and options in the Model structure, reducing maintenance and avoiding data redundancy and synchronization issues.

Building Model structure using a populator. This populator creates a link between the Television options in the Item Master and the Television options in the Model structure.

Configuration Rules

Once an initial Model structure has been constructed, constraints can be applied between and among its elements. Configuration rules are constraints that preserve product and service relationships during configuration. Constraintbased reasoning ensures that the solution will meet the customers requirements, that the configuration is complete, and that orders are valid and manufacturable. Oracle SellingPoint Developer offers four basic types of constraints for building configuration rules. These four categories allow customers to articulate configuration models for the majority of simple to complex products, services and systems:

Logic Rules Numeric Rules Explicit Compatibility Rules / Property-based Compatibility Rules Design Chart Rules

Logic Rules

The four primary Logic Rules are: implies, requires, excludes and negates. Logic Rules determine the logical state of the objects specified. Rules can be applied to features and options, and are created by dragging and dropping objects from the Model structure tree into the graphical rule authoring window and assigning the pertinent logic type.

Product packaging and service options like this extended warranty package can be defined through simple logic rules, as in this example, where the extended warranty requires independent dealer service.

In addition to the four primary Logic Rules, default truth states can be specified. Defaults allow a set of product selections to be recommended that are set on initialization. These defaults guide the customer, but can be overridden during feature and option selection as the customer makes more refined choices. More complex combinations of these rules can be articulated through an advanced expression editor. Oracle SellingPoint Developers advanced expression editor provides a drag-and-drop interface for constructing complex expressions built from logical relationships.

Generating a more complex rule using the advanced expression editor

Numeric Rules

Numeric Rules set and maintain the quantitative modeling parameters specified in the Model structure. Numeric Rules can be assigned to features and options that accumulate a value contributing to a total such as weight, or to suppliers or consumers of resources such as card bays and the peripherals that require slots in them. It is possible to associate two quantitative attributes with Model structure items: totals and resources. Totals are either constants or are set as a result of option selections. A typical example would be total weight. As an option is selected, the property value for the elements weight is added to the total weight in the configuration. Resources are often used to ensure conservation of a quantity

through the course of the configuration. For example, computer configurations have a card cage with a limited number of card slots for hardware and peripherals. The card cage is a resource that supplies a distinct number of card slots. During configuration, as hardware and peripheral options are selected, they will consume one or more card slots. Resources are assigned to both the card cage and each add-on element so that an appropriate balance can be maintained, ensuring valid configuration results.

This numeric rule uses a contributes to function associated with system quality level to specify the components quality rating in a high-performance system. Features such as this facilitate up-selling in the features & options screens during product selection.

Numeric Rules are specified by dragging and dropping objects from the Model structure tree into the graphical rule authoring window, assigning the Numeric Rule type and the associated value.
Compatibility Rules

Product compatibility relationships can be specified explicitly, in a table-like format, or implicitly by referencing the property values for the options that share a compatibility relationship. Property-based and explicit compatibility relationships are articulated by selecting the features that participate in the compatibility rule, then defining the relationships between the options.

A property-based compatibility rule ensures that the television screen size meets the viewing requirements for the room in which the home theater will be installed.

Design Chart Rules

A Design Chart is a means of expressing complex explicit compatibility relationships that are often used in industries where products are defined with required and optional features, or where multiple product models are defined. It provides the ability to graphically specify the relationship between a model's primary and secondary features. For example, in the design chart rule below, five speaker packages are defined. The primary, defining feature for each package is the Center Channel Speaker. Each package also has a number of optional Subwoofers defined. In the runtime application, when an end-user selects a particular Center Channel Speaker, he will then be presented with a list of the compatible Subwoofers that are defined for each package.

Design Chart rules provide a graphical way to define product and service models. In this example, speaker packages are defined. The defining feature of each package is designated with an M and optional features for each package are designated with Xs.

BOM Structure Rules

When integrating with Oracle Manufacturing Applications, configuration rules inherent in the Oracle BOM structures are applied automatically in Oracle SellingPoint Developer. These configuration rules include required and mutually excludes options, and quantity cascade computations. Additional configuration rules can be applied to the nodes of the imported Oracle BOM structure, as well as to any manually built Model structure. Item Master data imported from legacy databases or non-Oracle ERP systems have no prior configuration rules associated with the data and Model structure.
Model-Driven User Interface

The user interface, referred to as the Active User Interface, is dynamically generated from the configuration model using a default layout template. The default layout template is represented as a tree structure, with each screen corresponding to a node of the associated configuration Model structure tree. A screen is generated for each component in the Model structure, with each screens structure being determined by the number and type of features associated with the component. The display control for each feature is driven by the rules associated with the feature. This allows the user interface to be generated automatically from the model. For example, if a component has four features, four feature selection areas will be generated on the screen. A feature that has only one valid option available from a list of options will be displayed

as a dropdown box while a feature with more than one selectable option will be displayed as a selection list.
Customizable User Interface

Oracle SellingPoint Developer allows customers to create sales-centric user interfaces that are customized to meet the unique needs of multiple selling channels. The default user interface layout can be customized, giving each user type an appropriate view of the configuration model. Adding graphics, tailoring the style of display for each feature, or altering the graphical layout of the features on the screen can customize individual screen layouts. Companies can incorporate corporate branding elements through the use of logos, colors and typefaces so that their sales applications reinforce brand identity to the consumer. For example, a different user interface may be required for each of a companys selling channels: one for their web-based, self-service customers; one for their sales representatives; and yet another for their in-house call-center representatives. Oracle SellingPoints use of a single configuration model throughout the enterprise, ensures that timely and accurate data are being used during the sales, order management, and support processes - regardless of the user interface in use.

Customizing the user interface in the UI Editor View allows developers to add product graphics, logos and other sales-centric elements to their application.

Test / Debug

The automatically generated user interface allows developers to observe runtime behaviors as the model is executed. The user has the option of launching either the SellingPoint client/server application or the DHTML configuration window for testing. Configuration rules are organized in folders by rule type (i.e., logic rules, numeric rules, etc.) or in user-defined folders. To facilitate model testing, Oracle SellingPoint provides the ability to disable rules. Rules can be disabled individually, or as a group when saved in user-defined folders.
Extensible Development Environment via Functional Companions

Oracle SellingPoint Developer provides a mechanism to extend its out-of-thebox functionality through the use of Functional Companions. Functional Companions are used to create customer-centric extensions that supplement the standard feature and option-based product selection screens of an Oracle SellingPoint application. Functional Companions are written in Java and extend the logical configuration model capabilities to provide:

1. Validation a Functional Companion that validates or verifies the configuration selections. For example, validation may be performed to ensure that the configured system meets the users desired performance requirements. 2. Auto-configuration a Functional Companion that sets configuration options based on the results of a function or procedure that is executed. 3. Output a Functional Companion used to produce a configuration result through an embedded or standalone third-party application. Configuration outputs may be solid models, sketches, drawings, schematics, performance graphs or any other mechanism that provides an active view of the model. Because the Functional Companion links these outputs directly to the configuration model, the third-party application can receive and send information to the model resulting in smart outputs with which the user can interact. For example, if a user deletes a component from a drawing, the component will be deleted from the configuration. Specification of customer-centric rules is driven off the Model structure via Functional Companions in a manner similar to defining configuration logic rules. Any component in the Model structure can have associated auto-configuration, validation or specialized outputs. Auto-configuration and validation Functional Companions are specified as functions that either set feature values or perform a validation function. The inputs for both are specified in terms of features of the model. The outputs for the auto-configuration rules are options that are set to true. The result of a

validation function is an assertion object that contains the resultant state (succeeded or failed) and a reason.

Integrating a Functional Companion to the Model structure in Oracle SellingPoint Developer

KEY FEATURES
Data Import

Import utilities support item master, BOM, pricing and customer data import from Oracle Mfg. and Oracle Financials into standard configuration data schema Generic import from legacy or other ERP systems Import utilities support seamless data refreshes and updates into standard configuration data schema

Design Chart Rules provide a way of expressing complex explicit compatibility relationships in an intuitive design chart format

User Interface Layouts

Model Structuring

Model structure generated automatically from BOM structure Simple, intuitive graphical interface allows business managers to create and augment model structure elements

Default user interface templates speed application development and facilitate automatically generated user interfaces from configuration events and data User interface templates can be customized with graphics, font styles and colors to create salescentric look and feel that reinforces corporate or product branding Multiple interfaces can be run from the same model to support the needs of different user types (e.g., inside sales, field sales, call center, distributors, etc.)

Configuration Rules

Testing & Debugging

Flexible rule authoring supports explicit or tabular relationships Simple, intuitive graphical interface and robust range of configuration logic types allows business managers to rapidly define configuration rules by dragging & dropping components and selecting pertinent logic Advanced expression editor allows business managers to construct complex logical relationships among components Simple, intuitive graphical interface allows business managers to write guided selling rules for customer-centric selling functionality Numeric rules and Boolean logic allow business managers to easily articulate business rules

Automatically generated user interface allows developers to execute the model & observe behaviors on the fly Ability to disable rules individually, or by user-defined rule folder

Leverage Oracle Applications

Oracle Order Entry Oracle Bills of Material Oracle Inventory

System Requirements

Pentium 200Mhz or equivalent 96Mb Ram minimum, 128Mb or higher recommended 40MB Disk Space Oracle Client Oracle8i

Data Server

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