- SAP Managed Tags
Two weeks ago, SAP released its FP20 for Customer Checkout. To give you a brief glimpse into current developments within the CCO world, I’d like to share my thoughts on the new application within the gift card section (see figure 1), called “Gift Card Configuration”.
Figure 1: SAP CCO-Manager - Gift Cards section
On the surface, it looks like this app provides users with the possibility to preconfigure gift card settings. Selecting the corresponding configuration ID during gift card creation places the configuration values of the chosen ID into attribute cells (see figure 2).
Figure 2: SAP CCO-Manager - Gift card creation
This feature is very useful, as organizations can now define specific attribute sets that they can quickly apply during gift card creation. It’s a huge plus in terms of standardization.
If we delve a little deeper, we discover the “Instances” function within the gift card configuration app. This isn't really a new process. Previous FPs before FP20 also offered the possibility to create entire sets of gift cards through the gift card generation application in CCOM (see figure 1). One issue that comes to mind in this context is that we can call up configurations via their ID when creating gift cards manually through the gift cards application, but the same workaround is not available if we choose to generate gift cards (potentially with multiple instances) using the “generate gift cards” application (see figure 3). Does anyone have any idea why?
Figure 3: SAP CCO-manager - Gift card generation
Let’s not dwell on this matter, as the real improvements this section saw with FP20 are found in the next configuration section: 'Rule Conditions' (see figure 4).
Figure 4: SAP CCO-manager - Rule conditions
The “Rule Conditions” enhance the configuration possibilities within gift card creation in a manner similar to coupon creation. We can define acceptance conditions based on the categories listed in the dropdown menu shown in figure 4.
From my own experience, I have to express my delight at this new feature. Gift cards, like coupons, are payment objects that require situational adjustability, which was missing until FP20. For example, consider a large company with many branches that do not accept each other’s gift cards. The administrative separation between these branches could lead to considerable effort in the installation and configuration of the CCO-Managers, simply due to gift card matters.
Finally, we have the configuration section for 'Rule Actions' (see figure 5). Here, you can set rules regarding article quantity limits for acceptance or price options, which apply the gift cards to either the most expensive or the least expensive items.
Figure 5: SAP CCO Manager – Rule actions
To be honest, the only benefit I see in this feature is the limitation of gift cards per receipt. However, if that’s the case, I don’t understand the necessity of the “Price Option” field, as gift cards are typically applied at the receipt level and not per item (in contrast to coupons, for example). If anyone knows why, I’d be very interested in your insights.
All in all, gift cards have seen significant improvements throughout the recent FP releases. The number of CCO standard scenarios that can be built is constantly increasing, much to the delight of us CCO consultants, and keeps us curious about future CCO releases.
Thank you for reading my blog. If you’d like to share your thoughts, I’d be very interested to read about your take on the matter.
Best regards
Arssalan Hosseini
