The Central Administration module provides access to tasks that let you set up application security, define basic components, and maintain the BRMS application. This module controls the administration of licensees and BRMS users. New licensees and their employees who will be using the system are added through this interface. Licensors have access to this module only in order to add new licensees, or edit existing licensee information. BRMS also contains functionality that is batch-process oriented. Operations like nightly sales uploads and OLAP cube updates can be scheduled to run from this module.
The Central Administration module provides a comprehensive interface for administering the application. In the Central Administration, specific user information is set up, and then accessed by other modules, to automate vital functions like secure user access. Included in Central Administration functionality are workflow and approval routing via e-mail and the capability to create and modify user and group attributes. You can easily create and modify user group attributes, manage individual user profiles, and change passwords. This module lets you specify which individual users have access to modules and tasks. Security requirements can be modified to reflect any particular requirements and infrastructure.
Workflow and approval routing through e-mail notification is one of the module's most useful features. With the e-mail router, you can ensure that your business partners are prompted automatically via e-mail regarding any significant milestones, like submission dates, design modifications, etc. The e-mail router uses information stored in the Central Administration to deliver e-mail prompts according to group attributes and the profiles of individual users. All e-mail generated by the system is logged for future reference.
The Security task involves defining the users of the application and specifying their access rights to different modules and tasks. You need to define users for your own licensor organization, and you need to define the user company and its individual users, for each of your licensee client companies. Defining the users of BRMS means creating both individual users and user groups. Creating individual users is a straightforward process of identifying individuals by name, e-mail address, and other data. Defining user groups is also a straightforward process in which you name the group, assign security keys, and assign individual member users.
The concept of user groups is based on security keys; these provide access to specific BRMS modules and to module tasks. These keys are assigned to user groups as part of the group creation process. This means that any member of the user group "inherits" the security keys of the group, and thus has access to the modules and tasks controlled by those security keys. This affords both flexibility and simplicity in setting up your security configuration. For mainstream users, you can create groups with access to individual modules, to a combination of modules, or to a combination of tasks within modules. Similarly, for an individual user who needs specialized access to a an unusual combination of modules and tasks, you can create a user group with the required access rights and assign it a single member.
The Setup task lets you define and implement two key components: e-mail and data trees. The e-mail component handles the automatic generation and routing of notification messages to a customized list of recipients. These messages are triggered by specified events that occur within different modules and tasks. Setting up e-mail involves two things. First, it involves defining individual licensor and licensee users, and their e-mail addresses, to the application. And second, it involves linking specific application processing events with these e-mail addresses, as a means to automatically notify these individuals that an event has taken place. This automatic e-mail notification. is transmitted to the designated recipient automatically, when certain key tasks are executed within the application. No one has to remember to generate the e-mail; it is automatically sent to provide critical information in real-time.
Automatic e-mail notification is used with all modules and most tasks. In fact, if your name is provided as the contact person for your licensor organization, you will automatically receive an e-mail when your licensor organization is defined to the application. Your first task is to respond to this notification e-mail by clicking the link, which takes you to the BRMS Logon page. You can then verify your logon name and password, as included in the e-mail. When you in turn define licensee organizations and contacts, they too will be automatically notified by e-mail.
The task of setting up data trees involves creating a hierarchical representation of products, distribution channels, territories, and time periods. The data trees define both the licensor's business, and the business relationship with a given licensee. The licensor grants the licensee the rights to use a particular trademark entity, and the licensee applies it to the sale of particular products in different territories, in which the products are distributed through different distribution channels. The data tree hierarchy depicts the items that form the basis of this agreement.
The Tools task enables you to schedule the automatic execution of selected application tasks on a regular, recurring basis or as a one-time instance. These tasks are pre-defined and additional tasks may be created and implemented over time. The Sales Analysis cube update is part of the Sales Reporting and Sales Analysis processing. This task automatically takes the sales data reported from a licensee by means of a flat file upload and merges it into the analytic reporting capabilities of Sales Analysis.
With this task, you can create report groups and individual reports for the BRMS modules. These report groups and reports will then be available for use by licensor and licensee users throughout the various modules.