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Siebel Configuration – A day in life

by Nitin Jain

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Consider this article as a simple overview of Siebel Configuration. We will cover how a typical day in the life of a Siebel Configurator is most likely to be like.

Siebel is a Tool in itself. It is a Customer Relationship Management system, which Oracle has kept as close to the global standards as it could, and it has done a good job at that, I must say. In most cases, it is similar to any customized CRM software you may come across, just that most of the views, and Data Organization that you would yearn for, would be available Out of the Box when you install Siebel CRM.

However, just like no two people in the world are the same, no two organizations in the world are the same. The Business Requirements vary with every Corporate Group in the world. Though Oracle’s Siebel CRM is as close to the global standards as possible, yet there is ample room where you feel it is either too heavy for your needs, or too light. I have come across both ends of the extreme in my career, and so can safely say that both of these exist.

Along with different requirements come the difference in approach, what the Orders screen should look like, and which all fields must be required when creating an Opportunity in the system, for example. It could also be as complex as changing the functional process in Siebel itself. For eg. Siebel supports the concept of both Leads and Opportunities, while many Business Practices in the world don’t have both of them together. When you begin to modify an existing Asset, Siebel by itself creates a Quote first. Many businesses prefer going to the Order in the cycle altogether.

Here comes Siebel Configuration. It refers to modifying Siebel Out of the Box, or the Vanilla features as they are popularly called, and to customize them as per the Business Requirement. Joins, Links, MVGs, Business Components, Workflows, Scripts, User Properties and many more are popular terms associated with the Siebel Domain. The modifications to the Siebel Applications are done more in Siebel Tools than in a Siebel Web Client.

Major Pain Areas:
1) Quite Common skill in Siebel Community.

Advantages of being a Siebel Configuration Expert:
1) The level of expertise you can gain is immense. There are too many things that Siebel provides OOB for which we may customize. Good Siebel Configurators really help improve Siebel Performance which actually define success of Siebel CRM Implementations.
2) All Siebel projects need this skill, and in quite a large numbers. So, you can rest assured, recession or no recession, you will never be out of job.
3) Exposes most of Siebel OOB functionality, such that you get accustomed to the global standards in any process, be it Order Management, or Campaign Handling.
4) Generally, no late working hours. At least not as much in modules like Server Admin, or Siebel EIM.
5) Siebel always pays well.
6) Extremely high team involvement. Everybody would be buddies with you.

This is the most popular Siebel domain, and skills are in need in any Siebel project. This could be a nice thing to settle down in the later years of your life.

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