Using Siebel’s new Usage Pattern Tracking

Using Siebel’s new Usage Pattern Tracking (UPT).

With Siebel 15.5 came the new Usage Pattern Tracking; an improved way to get usage statistics out of Siebel.  Siebel has always had the ability (though little known) to provide usage statistics based on providing a time stamp for every view that a user visits.

We have been using this method for many years to provide in-depth analysis of user behaviour within Siebel.

With the new Usage Pattern Tracking we are now seeing additional events that can be tracked.  Before UPT we could only monitor view visits and had to extrapolate the Application, Business Component or Applet from that.  With UPT this has now been made a lot easier for us to get that information.

UPT will now also provide information on events associated with client scripts, for example Browser Scripts, JavaScripts and Server Scripts. This adds a lot of value to information that can be gathered.

So all in all UPT brings a lot of additional information that can be analysed, but what it doesn't do is perform the analysis.

I can see that the Usage Pattern Tracking view within Siebel may be of use if a specific view or script is being closely monitored - maybe there is a performance problem within a view or a script is causing issues - it's like a mini SARM.  But I can’t see that it would be of any use for one of our typical engagements that require us to analyse millions of records.

And that for me is the missing piece. After a quick Google it’s obvious that I wasn’t the only one hoping that UPT would provide the capability to analyse the data that has been captured – but sadly no – that task is still left to the Administrator.

Siebel Usage Analytics from CRMantra

As I mentioned earlier, we have been performing Siebel Usage Analytics for a long time now – and we always had, and still do, have the same ‘knee jerk’ reaction to our solution.  That it was very easy for the Siebel Administrator to turn on the usage service and do the analysis by themselves.  I agree with the first part, yes it’s very easy to turn on – but the second part? Absolutely not.  I’ve lost count of the number of Siebel Administrators who came back after a few weeks and asked for help to analyse the enormous amount of data that had been captured.

So whilst turning on the Usage logging and capturing the data is easy – actually analysing the data and turning it into actionable insights is no trivial task.

This is how we typically work on one of these engagements.

1 – Work with the business and the Siebel team to discover what is the key aim for this analysis.

For example; Is it to find our who is or is not using Siebel and overcome user adoption issues?  Is it to find out which parts of Siebel are heavily used – or never used?  Is it to find out what are the common paths users use to traverse the application and improve training?

2 – Turn on the Usage logging (that’s about a 10 minute job!)

3 – Work with the business to gather additional user demographic information.

What’s a user’s role, their skill level, their job title, their location, their business unit – everything we need to further enrich the data.

4 – We leave the logging to run for around 2-3 weeks and then get to work on the analysis.

5 – We merge in the user demographic profiles and start running through our standard set of analyses.

6 – We run any additional analyses that the client has asked for and pull together a full set of reports.

7 – We then look for actionable insights within the results.

Are there 8 heavily used Views that could do with some UI improvements? Are there a set of users in a remote locale that just aren’t using Siebel?  Is their a Siebel ‘SuperStar’ that is using Siebel more than anyone else – what can we learn from them?

8 – Finally we package up the analysis, generate the necessary graphics and charts and present our findings back to the client, with clear action statements that we gathered from the analysis.

Typically, projects would then be kicked off based on these findings – which aren’t always Siebel based, it could be new training material or a re-training programme.

But, most importantly is the need to re-analyse Siebel once any improvement measures have been put into place – without that there is no way of knowing if the actions that were taken had any effect!

So, hopefully it’s now clear that whilst turning on the Usage logging has to be done, it is only a very small part of the process.

Get in touch if you’d like to run one for your organisation!

read about some of our findings in this blog post > Siebel-usage-analytics

Or read more about all our Services - Improving Siebel Usability

David Moorman

David.moorman@crmantra.com

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