Are you getting the most out of Siebel Open UI ?

Are you getting the most out of Siebel Open UI ?

Sure, you can upgrade to Siebel Open UI, activate it and let your users pick their browser of choice to access Siebel (and for some clients this in itself is one major roadblock that has been successfully removed!)…but now that you have Open UI, take a moment to think about what else it can do and the benefits it can bring.

By utilising the Siebel Open UI infrastructure we have been able to make huge improvements to the User Experience for Internal users, Channel Partners and Self-Service Consumers alike.

Since we first got our hands on Siebel OpenUI in 2012, we have been finding new and inventive ways to help customers dramatically improve their Siebel deployments.  If you’d like to know more about our unique approach to a Siebel Open UI project take a look here at CADD

With the release of Siebel Open UI we took the opportunity to fill the gap that had always existed in Siebel – namely a process-centric user experience.  We have always found the lack of processes to be the #1 reason behind poor usability of Siebel.

By defining and ‘baking in’ these processes we have seen major improvements in,

·      User Adoption

·      Reduced training needs

·      Increased productivity

·      And user happiness !!

As well as

·      Total Cost of Ownership reduced as old technology (ActiveX) is removed and alternative browsers deployed.

·      Lower development costs by using industry standard JavaScript libraries to rapidly develop new functionality, as well as HTML5 and CSS – Skills that are readily available in the market.

·      Easily use the new UI across browsers and devices (Mac, Windows, Android, Linux, iOS)

To help us fast track these projects we have built a library of Processes and Templates that are ready to be used, adapted and deployed – there is now no need to start from a blank page !!

We have seen how consolidating the right information on one page can have a major positive impact on productivity – no more jumping around Siebel to find that important piece of information.  Fewer clicks, means less time wasted, means a more productive user !

InterACT Dynamic Screen Framework (DSF)

With InterACT DSF we have taken Siebel Open UI and made it even better.  One common request we had from our clients was to be able to have a finer level of control over the UI, to allow them to dramatically reduce field ‘clutter’ and improve usability.

We took on that challenge and designed InterACT Dynamic Screen Framework.  It allows rules to be defined that determine which fields and applets are shown to which users or user-groups.  It means that one common, “global” page can be created and fields managed by exception, without the need to create dozens of slightly different pages that have to be maintained individually and assigned to different users.

Other typical issues and our solutions are :-  

UI Issue	Our Open UI Improvements
Hard to find important info	Information displayed on hover-over
Excessive Scrolling	Expand views on click and mouse wheel scrolling
Only common views, but diverse users	InterACT Dynamic Screen Framework
Complex flows with no process	Process-based UI (For Example InterACT CPQ)
No 360° view	Dynamic 360° views

Now is the perfect time to grasp the UX bull by the horns and start to make some huge improvements for your users – you have the tools !

Take a look out our website for more info - Siebel Open UI

If you want to know more get in touch,

david.moorman@crmantra.com

It’s Open Season on Open UI

It’s Open Season on Open UI

Siebel Open UI – Are you excited by the possibilities, but daunted by the challenges?

We can help.  CRMantra’s Open UI Assessment has increased the ROI from Open UI deployments for many Siebel customers. Here’s how.

·    Laser focus.  Why waste development time and resources on views no users visit. Siebel deployments use less than 5% of available views. CRMantra Open UI Assessment identifies which views your users visit.

·   Rolling Thunder.  Reduce the Open UI deployment risk through a phased roll out.  CRMantra Open UI Assessment will provide the breakdown of views visited by each subset of users.

·   Eyes Wide Open.  Know the technical issues and challenges before you start.  Open UI Assessment will analyze of your Siebel repository for technical issues and provide an estimate for resources required to address each technical issue.

Contact us to schedule your Open UI Assessment.    Results in weeks and at a fixed price.  Open UI Assessment does not require any software purchase or licensing followed by lengthy implementations. We stand behind the estimates to address the technical risks.  You will know upfront what it would cost to deploy Open UI if you use us!

The methodology for CRMantra’s Open UI Assessment has been validated and approved by Oracle – (See My Oracle Support - Doc 1626424.1).

Read more about our approach on our website Siebel Open UI

Or get in touch with me at
David.Moorman@crmantra.com

 

Siebel OpenUI - "Process is the key to Success"

Siebel OpenUI - "Process is the key to Success"

Siebel Open UI Project - Checklist

• ·      Upgrade to Siebel 8.1.1.11 - ✓
• ·      Start-up new Object Manager for OpenUI - ✓
• ·      Send out new URL to Siebel users - ✓
• ·      Tell users they can use the browser of their choice - ✓

So you’ve spent time, effort and money on upgrading Siebel to the latest version because… (And this is where it gets tricky!),

(a) The users disliked IE7/8 and wanted the option to use their favourite browser. (Good luck with supporting that!)

(b) Siebel OpenUI looked cool and promised a much-improved UI, (“But it looks the same”)

(c) The business wanted corporate colours and fonts applied to Siebel and you know all about CSS files and a bit of JavaScript.

(d) This is just the first step in a long-term plan to improve the User Experience (UX) for the end user. We have plans to map the key business processes to improve usability and user adoption.  We have hired experienced web designers to ensure we are building a world-class user experience.  We are enlarging our Siebel team to ensure that we have the necessary Web developers and JavaScript skills to build the new UI.

Of course, no one would ever answer a, b or c …would they?  Well yes, my colleagues and I have heard these (and more) reasons for going ahead with a Siebel OpenUI upgrade.  To the Siebel users, who have been yearning for years to be able to upgrade the UI, any reason will do, but unless you can answer (d), then what value is this bringing, what problem is being solved and what reaction are you expecting from the users?

Siebel OpenUI is just the tool, the catalyst, the means to be able to re-design Siebel for your company’s specific needs.  It can now become tailored to your business processes, perfected for different lines of business, or for different business roles.  It can become totally unrecognisable as Siebel.

But here’s the kicker, it can also end up worse. UI designed by developers who think they know the business, implemented by the Siebel team who know a bit about CSS and are reading up on JavaScript programming.  We are already seeing the consequences.

Siebel OpenUI has unleashed a huge amount of potential, but it needs to be used wisely.

Let me give you an example;

A Siebel customer has major problems with their Product Models. They are very large, very complex and hard for even the most experienced sales rep to use.  So we get engaged to try to improve the models, simplify them and improve the usability. 

As always with this type of engagement we are tightly bound by the terms of reference and it’s hard to ask ‘why?’.  ‘Why are we doing this?’, ‘Why does it have to work like this?’, why?, why?, why?.  With some persistence we managed to get in front of the Sales Director, a couple of Sales Reps, and call centre staff in the service centre, to take us through their processes.  As it turned out, the Siebel Open UI Quote is only a small step in the sales process.   Their sales engineers use a drawing package to layout and design the solution, export the images and build a proposal document, and then enter the solution into Siebel with the Siebel product configurator after the customer has signed-off on designs and what they would need installed. Three very time consuming steps, especially if the Siebel product configuration rules says ‘no’ and the design has to be changed.

We recommended combining these 3 steps into one visually configured quote.

We developed a visual product configurator for Siebel, utilising the rules within Siebel, providing drag-and-drop features to place components within the solution, creating the proposal document from those designs and creating the quote automatically within Siebel. 

The visual product configurator has been built using Responsive Design principles and works well inside Siebel Open UI, Siebel HI UI, mobile devices, and web portals.  This has yielded significant other benefits such as supporting the web self-channel, especially MACD operations.  The cost savings on the self-service side are very substantial.  (Please get in touch if you would like to a demo)

This process wasn’t going to be fixed with pre-built UI templates; it had to be a custom design specific to their business needs.  

That’s how you improve the User Experience.

Read more about CADD - Our Approach to Open UI

www.crmantra.com