A J C B P A R T N E R S

S O L U T I O N S T O R Y

The Sales OrgChallenge

Who is JCB Partners?

Who is JCB Partners?

key stats

• Founded in 2001 by industry experts with a heritage from PWC, EDS, Andersen, boutiques & industry

• 100% employee owned, we set the vision and are accountable for the results

• 80+ experienced salaried consultants

• Regional offices: Denver (HQ), Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas

• International experience: Canada, UK, Germany, China, Mexico, Brazil

award winning

• North American Consulting Services Partner of the Year – for 2 Consecutive Years

• Best Industry Solution Award – 3 consecutive years

trusted partnerships

• Small footprints

• Strategic relationships

• Accelerated results

The Challenge

The Challenge

• The Client

About the Client

National print/broadcast media

Sales organizations that vary in structure, pattern and depth throughout the US

Frequent changes to all aspects of the sales organization

Needed a unified method of navigating the sales organization in the BI solution

The Challenge

• Business Rules and Requirements

Typical Requirements

Must maintain sales org history (despite frequent changes)

Employees can have multiple sales rep IDs

Employees can have sales rep IDs at multiple properties (locations)

Sales reps should only be able to see and drill “down” the sales org

Some employees are not in the sales org (i.e. CEO, VPs, etc.) and should still be able to navigate freely

The Challenge

• Business Rules and Requirements (cont.)

Complex Requirements

Different properties have different numbers of sales org levels (unbalanced hierarchy)

Open sales rep positions exist at all times (ragged hierarchy)

Sales reps can have multiple supervisors (abnormal hierarchy)

Employees can report to themselves (if they have a unique sales rep ID at each level)

P A R T 1 – D A T A

The Solution

The Solution

• Data

The sales org is a type 2 slowly-changing dimension

Holds current and historical structure

Typical parenting is not enforced

Allows members (sales reps) to have multiple parents (supervisors)

Two stored procedures were created to facilitate drilling (more on this later)

Get_Sales_Rep_Supervisors

Get_Sales_Rep_Direct_Reports

P A R T 2 – S E C U R I T Y

The Solution

The Solution

• Security

LDAP is used for authentication and provides the employee id of the current user

Users are placed in one of three Cognos groups:

Administrators

Employees who are not in the sales org

Executives

Higher-ranking employees who are in the sales org

Sales Team Members

Lower-ranking employees who are in the sales org

P A R T 3 – C O G N O S W I Z A R D

The Solution

The Solution

• Cognos Wizard

Created wizards using Cognos prompt pages to allow each type of user to select a “starting point” in the sales organization

Cognos groups and report variables are used to determine which wizard should be displayed for the user

The following slides show one path that can be followed by a Multi-Market Administrator (an Administrator who can see data for all properties)

The Solution

• Cognos Wizard (cont.)

Step 1 of 3 – The user selects a property (location) and a method of employee selection.

The Solution

• Cognos Wizard (cont.)

Step 2 of 3 – Per the selection in the prior step, the user searches for and selects an employee.

The Solution

• Cognos Wizard (cont.)

Step 3 of 3 – The user selects one of the sales rep IDs assigned to the selected employee.

P A R T 4 – C U S T O M D R I L L I N G M E C H A N I S M

The Solution

The Solution

• Custom Drilling Mechanism

Traditional drilling is not possible with multiple parents (supervisors)

Client wanted to see a subset of the sales organization on every report (supervisors, self, and direct reports)

The Solution

• Custom Drilling Mechanism (cont.)

Designed a custom navigation control using:

Stored procedures (mentioned earlier)

Repeater tables

Displaying multiple supervisors

Displaying multiple direct reports

Report variable

Determining whether a user can drill up from the current view

Conditional formatting

Show/hide the drill link for supervisors based on the value of the report variable

Margins and existing CSS classes

The Solution

• Custom Drilling Mechanism (cont.)

Last step of the wizard. Note that the selected employee has two sales rep IDs – 0476 is selected.

The Solution

• Custom Drilling Mechanism (cont.)

Navigation for rep 0476.

Points of interest:

Open positions are not an issue.

The user can not drill up.

The employee reports to herself (yes, that actually occurs in this structure).

The Solution

• Custom Drilling Mechanism (cont.)

Last step of the wizard (again). This time rep 0982 is selected.

The Solution

• Custom Drilling Mechanism (cont.) Navigation for rep 0982.

Points of interest:

Navigation now starts one level higher than before (rep 0476 reports to rep 0982; it just so happens that the same employee is assigned both rep IDs).

The user still can not drill up from their starting point.

The Solution

• Custom Drilling Mechanism (cont.)

Question: What if the user searches for rep 0989 and drills down to rep 0982?

Answer: If rep 0982 is below the user’s entry point into the sales org, they can now drill up.

before

after

The Solution

• Custom Drilling Mechanism (cont.) One last example – rep 0218.

Points of interest:

This rep has no direct reports.

N O T E S

The Solution

The Solution

• Notes

This presentation did not include an example of a sales rep with multiple parents. The referenced project is ongoing and the data was in flux.

A J C B P A R T N E R S

S O L U T I O N S T O R Y

The Sales OrgChallenge