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Multiple offers in sales lead

  • 1.  Multiple offers in sales lead

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 27, 2021 03:09
    Does anyone manage to extend the Sale Management (TMF699) lead api to  support multiple offers or products selected by Consumer.
    POST /salesLead

    I am trying to implement usecase where customer can select some of Value added Services or Products along with primary offer. However, api seems to support single object of productOffering or product.

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    sourabh shrivastava
    Architect
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    All the opinion are my personal, not a reperesentation of my organization or TM Forum
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  • 2.  RE: Multiple offers in sales lead

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 27, 2021 04:39
    Hi Sourabh
    This API is being enhanced by @Gregoire Laurent for a future version - he may be able to assist you in evaluating the enhancement you have suggested here.
    Hope it helps​

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    Jonathan Goldberg
    Amdocs Management Limited
    Any opinions and statements made by me on this forum are purely personal, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the TM Forum or my employer.
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  • 3.  RE: Multiple offers in sales lead

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 28, 2021 04:26
    Edited by Steve Ranford-Bragg Oct 28, 2021 04:38
    Hi,

    We're looking at the same API at the moment and would support the idea of multiple offers per sales lead, would be happy to be involved in any discussions too. One other additional suggestion I was thinking was the ability to assign a place to a lead as a better way to give address details.

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    Steve Ranford-Bragg
    BT Group plc
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  • 4.  RE: Multiple offers in sales lead

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 29, 2021 03:59
    Hello Sourabh and Steve, 

    I understand the need of having more than one productOffering related to the same SalesLead. This can be used when a prospect shows interest in several different offers. However, due to backward compatibility issues, this request can only be taken into account in the V5 version of this API. Therefore, I will create a new JIRA to log this proposal.

    Moreover, as you are working on the TMF699 Sales Management API, I avail this thread to inform you that we're currently working on a new resource for this API : the salesOpportunity.  Definition from Open API Map : "Sales Opportunity is an 'opportunity' to generate revenue from a Sales Account or Sales Lead. Opportunities are the pending deals that need to be tracked and on which Sales Team plans and executes Sales Activities (Events and Tasks). Opportunities build the "pipeline" that will contribute to sales forecasts and planning."

    Hope it helps.


    ------------------------------
    Gregoire Laurent
    Orange
    My answer are my own & don't represent necessarily my company or the TMF.
    ------------------------------



  • 5.  RE: Multiple offers in sales lead

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 29, 2021 04:07
    Hi Gregoire,

    Thanks, are the details of the new entity shared anywhere and when it might be live, it would be good to take a look to see and how if it's worth altering our approach to what we're planning to do?


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    Steve Ranford-Bragg
    BT Group plc
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  • 6.  RE: Multiple offers in sales lead

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 29, 2021 04:32
    Hi,

    The carefull reader will note that the TMF699 intended to introduce two entities SalesLead and SalesOpportunity. The currently published version only managed to publish the SalesLead and not the SalesOpportunity.
    A SalesLead is in contact with the marketing or businessDevelopment department. Once they feel the SalesLead is ready to buy it is eventually handed over to the Sales department that will transform it in a SalesOpportunity.

    We developed a SalesOpportunity Data Model for internal use. This contains links to ShoppingCarts and Quotes. You can use this as a startingpoint until TM Forum publishes an official version of SalesOpportunity.

    This is not an TM Forum approved model


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    Koen Peeters
    Ciminko Luxembourg
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  • 7.  RE: Multiple offers in sales lead

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 29, 2021 07:11
    Hi Koen,

    Thanks, that looks like it covers the couple of queries I had but is there any confirmation @Gregoire Laurent if that is the planned model for the next version of the API? If it is then I think we'd look to adopt this instead of the current version for our upcoming work.​

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    Steve Ranford-Bragg
    BT Group plc
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  • 8.  RE: Multiple offers in sales lead

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 29, 2021 09:06
    Hi,

    @Gregoire Laurent​: feel free to use my input for the next version and I am happy to present it in one your following meetings.

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    Koen Peeters
    Ciminko Luxembourg
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  • 9.  RE: Multiple offers in sales lead

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 29, 2021 10:14
    Hi Steve and Koen, 

    First, thank you Koen for sharing your work.

    Please, find here (in the comment part) a link to the slides shared during the "development and tooling meeting" that took place in october 18th. I presented our proposal for the salesOpportunity resource (as a part of the Sales Lead Management API). You'll find in slide 6 the proposal for salesOpportunity resource.
    As you can see, both of our representation are quite similar and this is really good news. However, I notice the following differences :
    • We choose to add an item level (salesOpportunityItem) to take into account the fact that an opportunity can target different productOfferings. This has been done according to a request from the SID Team. Please, notice that a similar representation can be considered to take account the original request of this thread for the salesLead (salesLead -> salesLeadItem).
    • The link between quote and salesOpportunity is proposed at the quote level (impact for V5 version). This seems to be more logical because a quote can be calculated in a salesOpportunity context but the reverse is not true.
    • We did not consider using shoppingCart. From my perspective, a shoppingCart is an object managed by the customer while an opportunity is managed by a sales Team. Both of these objects can lead to a productOrder, but not in the same process (here again, this is my point of view).
    Thank you for this valuable exchange.


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    Gregoire Laurent
    Orange
    My answer are my own & don't represent necessarily my company or the TMF.
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  • 10.  RE: Multiple offers in sales lead

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 30, 2021 02:45
    Hi Gregoire,

    Indeed good to see that our proposals for salesOpportunity resource are quite similar.
    We decided not to use items on the salesOpportunity itself because salesOpportunity is derived from PartyRole and not from BusinessInteraction according to SID, That quickly leads to the conclusion that one needs a businessInteraction like shoppingCart to contain the items and like quote to contain the approval process.
    ShoppingCart works just as well for customer facing portals as for sales Team facing CRM UI. We already succesfully implemented this at one of my customers.

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    Koen Peeters
    Ciminko Luxembourg
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  • 11.  RE: Multiple offers in sales lead

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 29, 2021 10:25
    Hi,

    regarding Steve's last post, please consider the following : 

    in V4.0 : TMF699 only contains salesLead resource
    In V4.1 (in study) : TMF699 will contain salesLead and salesOpportunity.
    • salesLead represents and interest in a productOffering (or even just an interest in a specific category of your catalog)
    • a salesOpportunity is created once a salesLead is considered as relevant by the sales team. In this case, the lead is qualified and an opportunity is qualified. Some sales tasks can be done by sales members (calls, quote, ...)
    In V5 (not planned yet) : Both salesLead and SalesOpportunity will be modified to take into account some side effects that could not be be appliend in v4.1 due to backward compatibility reasons.

    ------------------------------
    Gregoire Laurent
    Orange
    My answer are my own & don't represent necessarily my company or the TMF.
    ------------------------------



  • 12.  RE: Multiple offers in sales lead

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 01, 2021 12:50
    Apologies, just reading this again I missed that the marketing campaign was not included in the model shared by Koen but (while absolutely not an expert at all in sales) I would have thought it would be a good idea to be able to identify an opportunity back to a campaign it might have been generated from?

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    Steve Ranford-Bragg
    BT Group plc
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  • 13.  RE: Multiple offers in sales lead

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 01, 2021 16:04
    Hi,

    I did not add a link from SalesOpportunity to SalesLead, because the currently published SalesLead has a link to SalesOpportunity.
    TMF OpenAPI typically don't have bidirectional links.

    @Gregoire Laurent: It does make more sense though to have the link from SalesOpportunity to SalesLead than doing it the opposite way.
    A SalesOpportunity references then a SalesLead and there is no need to update the SalesLead when a SalesOpportunity is created.

    Regards


    ------------------------------
    Koen Peeters
    Ciminko Luxembourg
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  • 14.  RE: Multiple offers in sales lead

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 02, 2021 04:38
    Hi,

    I agree with you, @Koen Peeters : "A SalesOpportunity references then a SalesLead and there is no need to update the SalesLead when a SalesOpportunity is created".
    This is why in V5 we proposed to remove the reference to a salesOpportunity from a salesLead (see right side of slide 7).

    Regards.
    ​​

    ------------------------------
    Gregoire Laurent
    Orange
    My answer are my own & don't represent necessarily my company or the TMF.
    ------------------------------



  • 15.  RE: Multiple offers in sales lead

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 05, 2021 11:02
    Hi,

    Apologies but I've been guilty of reading what I expected to be there rather than what you actually described in the diagram of the new proposal! In the current specification it has links for both Product and ProductOffering but in your version it only has a ProductOfferingQualificationRef which I'd like to understand the reasoning for removing products.

    I would prefer to have the option of an offering or product rather than just a product qualification as that implies we have created and persisted a potentially very large number (in the case say of potential new FTTP customers for the UK roll out programme) of qualifications, but also I could imagine a situation where a company might be investigating the potential market for a product and so it wouldn't actually currently be available to be qualified until that happens.

    I would suggest having a product offering as an alternate entity to give details of product the sales lead contains would offer better flexibility if this is adopted into the next version of the API.

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    Steve Ranford-Bragg
    BT Group plc
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  • 16.  RE: Multiple offers in sales lead

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 10, 2021 10:20
    Hello Steve, 

    I apologize for this late response. Why do you mention here the ProductOfferingQualification ? In our current proposal, this attribute is not present.
    Every salesOpportunityItem can contain one product which in this case is a link to gather the catalog objects that are the sale's target (productOffering and productSpecification). In this case, the product doesn't has an id. It must be considered as a shell which groups productOffering, productSpecification and productCharacteristic.

    Hope it's clear.

    Kind regards.

    ------------------------------
    Gregoire Laurent
    Orange
    My answer are my own & don't represent necessarily my company or the TMF.
    ------------------------------



  • 17.  RE: Multiple offers in sales lead

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 11, 2021 07:04
    Edited by Matthieu Hattab Nov 12, 2021 06:45
    @Gregoire Laurent

    If TMF is going to implement Sales Opportunities, I would recommend you involve sales methodology specialist​s. for decades, there has been some de facto "standards" in this field and most CRM with a Sales Opportunity component have implemented sales methodologies. The best known and used are TAS (Target Account Selling) and ABM (Account-Based Marketing).

    From an API perspective, this means that you probably should include 3 additional attributes to define these key concepts for Sales Opportunities:
    Sales Methodology
          1 ...* Sales Method
                    1 ...* Sales Stage
                              1 ...* Sales Opportunities
                                        1 ...* Activities

    These are important attributes on the Opportunity record are they are critical for revenue forecasting, sales pipeline and win probability. 
    it means that the Opportunity record in the API would have 3 extra attributes: 
    Sales Methodology
    Sales Method
    Sales Stage
    the last one (Stage) would often change as the sale process progresses over time. Most of the time, the Stage replaces any need of an Opportunity  status.

    you could also add a sub-object for activities.
    Indeed, to assist/guide the sales person, each Sales Stage could generate a list of pre-defined of activities that are associated to the Opportunity. (such a list is sometime called Activity Plan, Activity Deck)
    As the sales person progresses through each stage of the sales process, different sets of activities must be performed before moving to the next stage.
    (This is mostly relevant to B2B and/or for complex and/or very long sales process)

    Is TMF also considering developing a Sales Opportunity ABE?

    My 2 cents

    Matthieu

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    Matthieu Hattab
    Altibox AS
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  • 18.  RE: Multiple offers in sales lead

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 11, 2021 11:04
    Hi Matthieu,

    I believe the sales Stages should no be represented as sub objects but as a lifecycleStatus: "qualification", "informing", "Offering", "negotiation", "won", "lost"

    Regards

    ------------------------------
    Koen Peeters
    Ciminko Luxembourg
    ------------------------------



  • 19.  RE: Multiple offers in sales lead

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 12, 2021 06:35
    Edited by Matthieu Hattab Nov 12, 2021 06:47
    @Koen Peeters
    I agree with you. That's what I also meant by suggesting 3 additional attributes (and not resources/sub-objects) on the sales opportunity record.
    I see that I may have confused you by showing the relationships between Sales Methodology/​Methods/Stage, which are parent entities of the sales opportunity and should therefore not be in the API as entities. I clarified my previous post.

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    Matthieu Hattab
    Altibox AS
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  • 20.  RE: Multiple offers in sales lead

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 16, 2021 05:05
    Hello Matthieu Hattab,

    thank you for your proposal to improve the Sales Opportunity resource.
    For the moment, as you can see, TMF699 sales Management  API only manages the sales process (based on the SPANCO process). From my perspective, it would be valuable to take your suggestion into account in a next version of this API, once the sales Lead and Opportunity ABE will be provided by the SID.

    Best regards.





    ------------------------------
    Gregoire Laurent
    Orange
    My answer are my own & don't represent necessarily my company or the TMF.
    ------------------------------



  • 21.  RE: Multiple offers in sales lead

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 11, 2021 08:25
    Hi Gregoire,

    Yes, I would agree but if you look at the proposed model which Koen offered in message #6 it mentioned product offering qualification​​ rather than product offering? Like you I would have thought that would have been a product offering.

    ------------------------------
    Steve Ranford-Bragg
    BT Group plc
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  • 22.  RE: Multiple offers in sales lead

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 12, 2021 07:09
    Edited by Matthieu Hattab Nov 12, 2021 07:09
    Hi @Koen Peeters
    I was just going through some very old requirements​ from a previous project and we had this requirement that I believe you already cover with RelatedParty:
    each sales opportunity needs to be associated with several persons representing the client/lead and describing their job title and their interest/role on the sales opportunity.
    Real life example:
    Company Contact Job Title Role
    ABC Company Maria A. CEO Decision Maker
    KYC Consulting Francisco C. Consultant Technical Adviser
    ABC Company Kies de F. CFO Treasurer
    ABC Company Wopke W. Lead Architect Strong Influencer
    ABC Company Carola van B. Lead Developer Ally

    Is this what you meant with the PartyRole entity?

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    Matthieu Hattab
    Altibox AS
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  • 23.  RE: Multiple offers in sales lead

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 12, 2021 07:29
    Hi Matthieu,

    I agree with you completely. The role is already part of the relatedParty array. Each of these roles refers to an Individual and in CRM individuals typically have their own relatedParty e.g. "employedBy" to the organisation (company).

    Typically you will also extend your table with internal roles in the bid team: salesManager, salesEngineer, legalAdvisor, CustomerAccountAdmin, ...

    Regards

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    Koen Peeters
    Ciminko Luxembourg
    ------------------------------