TCA Logic to CRM Magic

Presenters:

Bhanu Chepur – Hitachi Consulting Corporation

Lakshmi Sampath – Stone Blue Technologies
 Bhanu Chepur
Radisson Bellevue
9:45 am – 10:45 am
Tuesday
Presenter's) Information
Bhanu Chepur
• Senior Consultant at Hitachi Consulting Corporation.
• Expertise in implementing CRM, and Distribution modules in
ERP.

Lakshmi Sampath
• Principal Consultant at Stone Blue Technologies.
• Presented several papers at the OAUG, Oracle Open World,
Austin Oracle Users Group etc
• Board member of Austin Oracle Users Group
• ENCORE Presenter @ COLLABORATE-2006
Agenda
• Introduction – Hitachi Consulting; Stone Blue Technologies.
• What is TCA? Key Components of TCA.
• TCA Architectural Changes between 11i &11.0.3
• Impact of TCA on CRM
• Tools to Manage TCA Data
• Roadmap for Upgrade - Challenges
• Impact of TCA on Receivables
• Impact of TCA on IStore ,ISupplier & OM
• Customer Data Conversions –Recommendations
What is TCA?
• Trading Community Architecture
• Model which defines the components involve in
trading within in E-business Suite. E.g.: Customers,
Suppliers, Employees, Partners etc.
• Central repository of customer data across E-
Business Suite and consistent with D&B
• 360O view of customer data includes addresses,
contacts, roles, relationships.
Entities of TCA
• Party
• Party-site
• Party Relationship
• Account
• Party Role
• Contact Point
• Account Site
 Party
Location 1 Organization
Party Site Or
Bill to Person
Ship to

Division of
Party Party
Location 2 Organization or Organization or Location 6
Party Site Person Person Party Site Bill to
Bill to
Ship to Ship to

Account Account Account

Acct Site Acct Site Acct Site

Location 3 Location 4 Location 5

TCA Architectural Changes
1. Benefits of TCA
2. 11.0.3 vs 11.5.10
What is different or Can we say what is not
different??
3. TCA – Trading Community Architecture or
Totally Confusing Architecture??!
4. RA Tables to HZ Tables
5. Business Process Design - Challenges
Benefits of TCA

• Single Source of Information/Record

• Models Complex Relationships
• Integrated Solution for the Entire EBS
• Ease of Data Maintenance and Consistency
• Provides APIs to establish a single database of
organizations, people, addresses and their
relationships
• D&B Integration
11.0.3 vs. 11i Table Changes

• RA_CUSTOMERS is now a view

• RA_ADDRESSES_ALL is now a view
• RA_SITE_USES_ALL is now a view

RA_CUSTOMERS =>
HZ_PARTIES, HZ_CUST_ACCOUNTS
11.0.3 vs 11i Table Changes

RA_ADDRESSES_ALL=>
HZ_PARTY_SITES, HZ_LOC_ASSIGNMENTS,
HZ_LOCATIONS, HZ_CUST_ACCT_SITES_ALL

RA_CONTACTS =>
HZ_CUST_ACCCOUNT_ROLES, HZ_PARTIES,
HZ_RELATIONSHIPS, HZ_ORG_CONTACTS,
HZ_PARTIES, HZ_CUST_ACCOUNTS
RA_PHONES =>
HZ_CONTACT_POINTS,
HZ_CUST_ACCOUNT_ROLES

RA_SITE_USES_ALL =>
HZ_CUST_SITE_USES_ALL

RA_CONTACT_ROLES =>
HZ_ROLE_RESPONSIBILITY
11.0.3 vs 11i Table Changes

RA_CUSTOMER_RELATIONSHIPS_ALL=>
HZ_CUST_ACCT_RELATE_ALL

AR_CUSTOMER_PROFILE_CLASSES =>
HZ_CUSTOMER_PROFILE_CLASSES

AR_CUSTOMER_PROFILES =>
HZ_CUSTOMER_PROFILES

For comprehensive list drop me an email

Architectural change example
Creating an Address in 11.0.3

1) Insert a row in ra_addresses_all

2) Insert a row in ra_site_uses_all
Creating Address in 11.5.10.2 (11i)

1. Create location (HZ_LOCATIONS) using

hz_location_v2pub.create_location
2. Create party_site using
hz_party_site_v2pub.create_party_site
3. Create Account site using
hz_cust_account_site_v2pub.create_cust_acct_site
4. Create Cust Site Use using
hz_cust_account_site_v2pub.create_cust_site_use
API vs Interface
• Interface can insert payment methods/bank accounts
information whereas API’s cannot insert/update
payment methods or bank accounts
• Customer interface can handle account related
information whereas TCA-APIs are used to handle
party and account related information
• API’s are more efficient and allow update/insert of
many more columns compared to Interfaces.
• API’s are available to retrieve and format information
like addresses and Phone numbers etc.
Business Process Design - Challenges

• Consider Custom Code while designing Business

Process
Like changing the name at the Account/Party Level
and training the users to do it accordingly
• Use Standard Naming Conventions for
Parties/Customers/Addresses
• Capturing various information in the form of DFF
should be thought over to be captured at the
appropriate level.
Impact of TCA on CRM

• Oracle Data Librarian (DL)

• Oracle Customers Online
• Data Quality Management (DQM)
Impact on CRM
• Different Applications may show different data
elements of TCA depending upon the context of their
functionality.
• In TCA a party is usually created in CRM and
account associated with the party in ERP or CRM.
• Marketing Activities: Campaigns events, collateral
etc are all associated with parties.
• Lead to Opportunity: All leads generated by the
campaigns or marketing are assigned to a party.
Resources, Sales groups are assigned to this Lead.
Impact on CRM contd.

• Quote to Order: A quote is created for a prospect

(no account) a.k.a Party.
• Contracts: Access customer information includes
Party, party sites, account info, Locations, addresses
and contact points.
• Service: Service request created at the party level.
Access party information.
• Notes & Tasks: Captured under parties and tasks
are assigned to employees and resources.
Customer Data Maintenance
• After Converting the data, issues like duplicate
Customers, contacts, addresses etc are raised.
• ODL, Oracle Data Librarian provides tools to maintain
the cleanliness, complete and consolidated customer
data with TCA.
• These tools enable the organization to clean the data
and evolve as a data rich class organization enabling
to smoothly transact and make efficient business
decisions.
Oracle Customers Online

• Customers Online lets a user view, create and

manage their customer data.
• Dependent on TCA architecture
• Is part of ODL, Oracle Data Librarian.
Oracle Customers Online – key features

• Efficiently create customers in TCA

• Create & Associate party relationships
• Complete 3600 visual to the customer and its party
relationships.
• Security and Roles
Oracle Data Librarian

• Helps in importing customer data from external data bases.

• Features include:
• Efficiently create customers in TCA
• Create & Associate party relationships
• Complete 3600 visual to the customer and its party relationships.
• Data Quality Management
• Security and Roles
• Import data
Data Quality Management

• Helps maintain TCA with clean and rich data

• Identify duplicate data based on rules defined
• Merge parties into single Party
• Merge TCA entities like addresses
• Create certification for better handling of Customer
data
• Import customer data.
Roadmap to Upgrade – challenges

• Analyze client customer base – How complex is the

structure?
• Analyze customers relationships internally and
externally
• Analyze managing Roles and responsibilities
• Analyze Customer Addresses, Sites and Locations
• Analyze contact points.
• Import into HZ Tables using API’s.
Impact of TCA on Receivables

• Flexfields (Customer, Site, Address etc.)

• Address Issues
• Invoicing Changes
• Dunning Letters/Consolidated Billing
• Aging Reports
• Customer Profile Changes
Impact of TCA on IStore, PO, Isupplier &
OM
• User Conversion issues
• Shopping List Conversion
• Shopping Cart Conversion
• Supplier Data Conversion
• Multi-Account Users Conversion
• Existing Users Migration into IStore due to TCA
TCA Data Migration Issues

Duplication of Addresses in IStore at Party Sites

Duplication of Customers and Parties
Spot-Buy Conversion (Special Purchase Items)
Service Providers Conversion (Party, Customer, Users)
Duplication of Shipping and Billing Addresses
Customer Data Conversion -
Recommendations
• Cleanup the customer/address data before upgrade
• Involve business users in design reviews
• Understand/Document the various processing rules
• Use Oracle’s Standard API’s to import data
• Allocate sufficient training time for the end-users.
Epilogue

• TCA is a very powerful and flexible feature that can

add significant value to your organization.
• Understanding the TCA structure and architecture
thoroughly will help design the customer structure
effectively.
• All it takes is TCA logic to make CRM Magic
Acknowledgements

• Thanks to Ram Ganapathy (Dell Inc.) for his help with

this topic selection and presentation.
Q&A

• Thanks to everyone for attending!!

Contact Information
Bhanu Chepur – bchepur@hitachiconsulting.com
Lakshmi Sampath – lakshmi@stonebluetech.com