OASIS Open

Describes the Field Force Management Integration Interface (FFMII). FFMII provides a flexible interface between Enterprise Resource Management System (ERMS) and Field Force Management System (FFMS). The role of ERMS is to take a holistic view at work scheduling and resource allocation from the corporate point of view. For this purpose it needs to manage individual units of work performed without strong supervisory guidance (Field Work) in a way aligned with the business objectives of the company. The role of FFMS is to communicate with available set of workers (Field Force) and to provide individual workers (Assignees) performing Field Work with technical means of accessing information about and sending feedback on work assigned to them. While ERMS defines the structure, content and resource allocation of dispatched work, FFMS is responsible for communicating that information to the field and enforcing any specified constraints on user provided feedback. For facilitating structured communication between ERMS and FFMS in heterogeneous scenarios, FFMII defines flexible mechanisms that enable Work Request modeling (data content, workflow), exchange, work history collection, and collection of data from the field. Information carried with work requests, work request structure (work-flow, schedule) and data to be collected can all be defined dynamically ‘as data’. This data driven architecture makes FFMII very flexible and adaptable to numerous industries. Additional FFMII capabilities include Field-Initiated Requests that facilitate structured requests and reporting information outside the usual work flow, such as reporting absence, requesting additional work, or providing a sales lead. Reference Data Management provides means to establish custom data repositories with arbitrary content. This enables e.g. input value selection, content validation, or delivery of documents to Field Force. Furthermore, flexible Integration Topologies are supported. Further flexibility is provided by scalability of FFMII itself: Basic features of FFMII are mandatory, and some features are optional. This allows both simple basic implementations and a range of more complete implementations.