Never fear vendor audits. Be ready with data and defense.
Why do you need to be always audit ready?
- New customers are not implementing Siebel.
- Customers are, mostly, migrating out of Siebel to non-Oracle CRM solutions.
- These two reasons are making Siebel audits more common.
This has been Oracle very hungry for revenue from their Siebel installed base of customers – either through formal audits or through informal ‘soft’ audits.
It is crucial that customers know what they are using and their potential commercial exposure before Oracle comes knocking on the door.
What are audit rights?
Siebel CRM is a suite of software programs that organizations can use to manage:
- Customer information,
- Sales by processing orders and payment
- Service by processing service requests,
- Marketing through setting up and carrying out campaigns.
How to be Audit Ready
Siebel CRM is licensed by categories of applications:
- Siebel Base Applications
- These are horizontal applications that cut across all industry types and generally store all customer interactions and provide base functionality for Sales, Service and Marketing functions.
- Every Siebel customer must license, at a minimum, one Siebel CRM Base Application.
- The Siebel Base applications are required by employee users of a customer.
- Industry Applications
- These are modules targeted to specific industry verticals and fulfil the functional demands of that industry.
- The industry specific applications are available for:
- Automotive
- Communications
- Consumer Goods
- Energy
- Healthcare
- Financial Services
- Pharma
What are the first steps after receiving an audit notice?
An added complexity, Siebel CRM is licensed by categories of user types. This has implications during compliance reviews:
Siebel License Compliance Reviews are Complex
There are different kinds of license compliance issues related to Siebel CRM:
- Installation of non-licensed modules
- Installation of incorrect edition of Siebel CRM
- Mixing legacy and new license metrics
- Inactive Users continuing to have access.
- Incorrect Assignment of Responsibilities
- Non-employee users accessing employee applications.
- Development of custom views.
And, most importantly, the architecture of Siebel does not allow the easy classification of users and license consumption. A thorough understanding of the the dependence of consumption calculations on Siebel Screens, Views and Responsibilities is essential to get to the correct compliance numbers.
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