TCA Architecture/Customer conversion

TCA Architecture

TCA: - Trading Community Architecture

Ø  Oracle Trading Community Architecture (TCA) is a data model that allows you to manage complex information about the parties, or customers.

Ø  Trading Community Architecture is the implementation of technology and applications to allow users to create and maintain relationships among entities. It is a way to understand who your customer interacts with inside and outside the enterprise.

 Terminologies used in TCA include

Ø  Parties: Entities of type Person or Organization that can enter into business relationships. Parties can also be of type Relationship. For example, Joe as himself is a party of type Person, but Joe as a contact for Vision Corporation is a party of type Relationship. Every party in the TCA Registry has a unique Registry ID.
TCA includes an extensive variety of information for parties, for example party name, addresses, contacts, and contact points. Joe as a person can have a personal phone number that differs from the phone number for the relationship of Joe as a contact.

Ø  Party sites: Addresses that parties use for specific purposes, or uses.

Ø  Customers: Parties with whom you have a selling relationship.

Ø  Customer accounts: The business relationships between you and your customers.

Ø  Customer account sites: Party sites used in the context of customer accounts for specific purposes, or uses, for example ship-to and bill-to account sites.

Ø  Locations: Geospatial points, usually defined by an address.

Ø  Contacts: People who have a contact or employment relationship with an organization or person.

Ø  Contact points: Means of contact, for example, phone and e-mail address.

Reason behind introduction of TCA

Ø  There are multiple customer definitions across the enterprise.

Ø  It was very difficult to track current and historical information about the customers.

Ø  There was a lack of support for mixed business.

Ø  It was quite tough to understand relationships between customers and others (suppliers, partners, competitors).

Ø  The static and independent customer and supplier models typical of other ERP and CRM applications cover only a limited slice of the trading community and cannot adequately represent the reality of today’s complex business communities and its relationships. The TCA architecture was designed to address these gaps and provide a flexible architecture that can accommodate stakeholders in a trading community and the complicated relationships among them.

What is Trading Community?

Ø  Trading community may be anything with whom we use to do business with. It might be  person, supplier, organization.

Trading Community Architecture

Trading Community Architecture is the implementation of technology and applications to allow users to create and maintain relationships among entities. It is a way to understand who your customer interacts with inside and outside the enterprise.

What could be difference between customer and party? Give some examples.

You go to Diamond Electronics shop and ask for some information about an electronic item. You are interested to buy, but first you want to get information and decide later. They will show you the item and explain the details and after that they take your personal details, so that they contact you later or it would be easy when you buy later. That’s part of Customer Relationship Management. When they enter in Oracle ERP, you become a party in TCA, not customer because you have not yet decided to purchase.

The same case happens, if somebody from orchid hotel goes to them and tells them that, he is representing orchid hotel and they are planning to buy lot of electronic items to their new hotel. Here, 3 things are entered in Oracle TCA. orchid hotels information, the person (ex: XYZ) who is representative of orchid hotels, and the relationship between that person and the orchid hotels. Here orchid hotels is a party, JOHN is party contact and the relationship is AGENT.

Parties vs. Accounts

Ø  From an application perspective, one of the most important things to understand about the TCA model is that the concept of “customer” is separated into two layers: The Party layer and the Account layer. 

Ø  When CRM applications refer to “Customer” they are referring to the Party Layer.

Ø  On the other hand, when ERP applications refer to “Customer” they are referring to the Account Layer. 

After some time, you or orchid hotel decided to buy electronics and you go again and make a purchase. That time, you become customer.

What could be difference between customer accounts and customer account sites?

You are buying 2 items, but you want them to go to different places and billing address is also different. This way, it is easier for your financial consolidation. So, you give them different credit cards and different shipping and billing addresses. That time, they would create 2 customer accounts for you.

The same case may happen to orchid hotel, they may have Corporate Hotel Address, but they want to these expenses to be calculated at their new hotel. So they create a new account based on this new hotel address.

Generally, site is logical representation of the location. Their new hotel physical address is location and it can be represented as site. Now, depending on the use it can be BILL-TO or SHIP-TO. The site use determines where the items to be shipped physically and where the invoice should go.

What could be difference between site and location?

Location is the physical address which needs to be created first. Then attach account site to the address based on the usage. Usage is at the site level and not at the location level. One physical address can be site for COMMUINCATION, CORPORATE, BILL-TO , SHIP-TO etc. I would say, site determines the purpose of the physical location.

What could be difference between contacts and contact points?

In the above case, XYZ is the Contact of orchid hotel.

Contact Points are ways to reach that person. Like his phone numbers, email address etc. They also take phone numbers of orchid hotel.

These contact points applicable to you also. When you give them your phone numbers while buying the item, they are attached to your party record as contact points.

TCA Setup Considerations

When you are doing TCA customer Modelling, keep these things in mind;

Ø  Party is real Person or Organization.

Ø  Party sites are locations for Party or Organization.

Ø  Relationships are generally used to construct hierarchical structure of Organizations.

Ø  Party becomes a Customer/Account, once a selling relationship is established.

Ø  An account should typically have at least one active ‘bill_to’ site. It helps for accounting and          reporting purposes.

Ø  When creating Parties, what all party sites can be or should be created as Parties.

Ø  Generally, if you want to see activities for site level separately from your parent level party, you should create that Site as a separate Party/Entity.

Ø  An account is a separate entity. Create account only where you have selling relationship i.e. only for customers. It identifies selling attributes e.g.payment terms, shipping and billing preferences etc. of the relationship.

11i TO R12 Replaced tables for customers.

RA_CUSTOMERS

The table below lists the corresponding HZ table and column for various columns in the current RA_CUSTOMERS view

Column in RA_CUSTOMERS	Corresponding Table	Column
customer_name	hz_parties	party_name,
customer_id	hz_cust_accounts	cust_account_id
customer_number	hz_cust_accounts	account_number
status	hz_cust_accounts	status

Join Conditions:

HZ_CUST_ACCOUNTS..Party_Id = HZ_PARTIES.Party_Id

RA_ADDRESSES

Column in RA_ADDRESSES	Corresponding Table	Column
address_id	hz_cust_acct_sites_all	cust_acct_site_id
status	hz_cust_acct_sites_all	status
address1	hz_locations	address1
address2	hz_locations	address2
address3	hz_locations	address3
address4	hz_locations	address4
city	hz_locations	city
state	hz_locations	state
postal_code	hz_locations	postal_code
county	hz_locations	county
country	hz_locations	country
language	hz_locations	language

Join Conditions:

HZ_CUST_ACCT_SITES_ALL.party_site_id = HZ_PARTY_SITES.party_site_id

HZ_LOCATIONS.location_id = HZ_PARTY_SITES.location_id

RA_SITE_USES

The table below lists the corresponding HZ table and column for various columns in the current RA_SITE_USES view

Column in RA_SITE_USES	Corresponding Table	Column
site_use_id	hz_cust_site_uses	site_use_id
site_use_code	hz_cust_site_uses	site_use_code
status	hz_cust_site_uses	status
address_id	hz_cust_site_uses	cust_acct_site_id

RA_CONTACTS

Column in RA_CONTACTS	Corresponding Table	Column
contact_id	hz_cust_account_roles	cust_account_role_id
customer_id	hz_cust_account_roles	cust_account_id
address_id	hz_cust_account_roles	cust_acct_site_id
first_name	hz_parties	person_first_name
last_name	hz_parties	person_last_name

Join Conditions:

HZ_CUST_ACCOUNT_ROLES.party_id = HZ_PARTY_RELATIONSHIPS.party_id

HZ_CUST_ACCOUNT_ROLES.role_type = 'CONTACT'

HZ_PARTIES.party_id = HZ_PARTY_RELATIONSHIPS.subject_id

RA_CONTACT_ROLES

Column in RA_CONTACT_ROLES	Corresponding Table	Column
contact_id	hz_role_responsibility	cust_account_role_id
usage_code	hz_role_responsibility	responsibility_type
primary_flag	hz_role_responsibility	primary_flag

API’s Used for customer conversion….