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This blog post covers the basic part of Functional and Technical aspects while doing the first setup as CPQ administrator with configuration access.
I will be highlighting few very important aspects which you have to decide while trying to setup CPQ system with basic configuration without using much advanced features. This blog is targeted especially for “Pre-Sales” phase where you want to show the quick setup and functionality of CPQ as part of Sales Cloud part within a short time/notice for configuration.
In the part 1 of this blog series, I have used following basic features of CPQ:
In the upcoming part 2 of this blog , I will be explaining following two features:
Below I will be touching some details of above points mainly from troubleshooting point of view which will also help to design the quote in desired requirement while explaining the possible options available as standard part of CPQ.
In general scenario as a CPQ consultant, you most probably like to start setting up “Configurable product” as that is what Client is more interested to see. In this case, you would like to skip setting up “Simple product” in the system.
But, best option to start with is; start setting up all products (whatsoever could be part of Quotation) as “Simple Product”. The only reason of doing this is; instead of defining multiple Attributes, You can use all newly defined Simple Products as Product Attribute in “Configurable Product”. This way you save efforts to cover a scenario where the Sales Agent is handling a Customer who do not want to purchase the whole unit but some add-on or Sub-product which is used with Main product unit.
For e.g Customer is looking for top up of Printer Cartridges instead of buying a complete new Printer; considering a scenario of Client selling Customized High End Printers. If you have Cartridges defined as Simple Product, You can simple use all variety of Cartridges in one Attribute “Cartridge” instead of multiple ones.
Steps:1 :Define Product as “XYZ Printers”:
Steps 2 : Define one Attribute as “Cartridges” instead of all variety of Cartridges:
Step 3: Select Add New Attribute:
Step 4: Click on Define New Attributes:
Step 5: Go To Values Section; Please note at-least defining one Attribute Value is mandatory to save newly defined Attribute.
Step 6: Here select “Add Products as Values” in stead of defining the whole variety of Cartridges manually.
Step 7: Add them using Radio Button
and Save the data.
Outcome: Now you can see all those products to be selected as values/drop down in Attribute “Cartridges” while Configuring the XYZ Printer under as well as You can simple find the individual Cartridges in the Product Catalog as well as Simple product with complete detail which can be added to Quotation as additional product or top-up required by Customer.
2. Product Attributes setup along with multiple display option:
This is a very tricky functionality where You want the Sales Agent to see the pricing of the Attribute vales available to be selected; before adding it to Quotation. In our considered scenario, You are able to only see the variety of Cartridge option but not the price.
To enable this, You must ENSURE that the main attribute (e.g Cartridges) setup has following two option:
3. Pricing Setup: Price-book Lookup vs Custom Pricing:
Setting up Pricing for Configurable data can be tougher as required especially when the configurable product output is not using CTX tagging and does not results into unique PART NUMBER.
As you are aware the pricing is mostly handled by Price-book defined for individual market and ultimately “Part Number” is used by system to determine the price to be updated in defined Quotation.
In simple product it is easy to have unique Part Number of every product and define entry in Pricebook against that Part Number LIKE:
That ensure that whenever Cartridge Variety “Catr_var” will be added price AUD1703.65 (Sample List Price) will be fetched per unit.
The above defined entry will be shown when you click on “View Price” by going in product details:
But in Configurable Product if CTX tagging which is advance feature is not used, your final configured product will not have unique Part Number which make it tough to determine final price of configured product.
For that reason, You can use Custom Pricing (screen for making it as default option- you can choose the same to individual products too) as another option as below:
The difference in terms of setup is to select Pricing Source as “Custom Pricing” and use Pricing Formula while defining the Configurable Product.
Step1: select Pricing mechanism as Custom Pricing during product configuration.
Step2: Build the Formula to be used for pricing based on Attributes selection.
Please note “Formula Builder” is a very simple and highly flexible tool that can be used to have a detailed customized calculation including all attributes and mathematical expressions.
For quick setup without much efforts to understand Custom Pricing; use Price-book method to define pricing. For that follow the basic steps:
This conclude the blog post part 1 here, I will be adding more functionality used in Quotation for e.g Template (Customized as per Client requirement- Company Specific); Status and Action profiles, Workflow etc in next part 2.
Many Thanks, please share your comment, feedback, suggestion.
Best Regards,
Mukesh Kumar
I will be highlighting few very important aspects which you have to decide while trying to setup CPQ system with basic configuration without using much advanced features. This blog is targeted especially for “Pre-Sales” phase where you want to show the quick setup and functionality of CPQ as part of Sales Cloud part within a short time/notice for configuration.
In the part 1 of this blog series, I have used following basic features of CPQ:
- Product Configuration: Simple/Configurable
- Product Attributes setup along with multiple display option
- Pricing Setup: Price-book Lookup vs Custom Pricing
In the upcoming part 2 of this blog , I will be explaining following two features:
- Client specific Quotation Document Generation Template (Simple/Multiple Section)
- Status and Approval process along with Post Action
Below I will be touching some details of above points mainly from troubleshooting point of view which will also help to design the quote in desired requirement while explaining the possible options available as standard part of CPQ.
- Choosing between Simple/Configurable product:
In general scenario as a CPQ consultant, you most probably like to start setting up “Configurable product” as that is what Client is more interested to see. In this case, you would like to skip setting up “Simple product” in the system.
But, best option to start with is; start setting up all products (whatsoever could be part of Quotation) as “Simple Product”. The only reason of doing this is; instead of defining multiple Attributes, You can use all newly defined Simple Products as Product Attribute in “Configurable Product”. This way you save efforts to cover a scenario where the Sales Agent is handling a Customer who do not want to purchase the whole unit but some add-on or Sub-product which is used with Main product unit.
For e.g Customer is looking for top up of Printer Cartridges instead of buying a complete new Printer; considering a scenario of Client selling Customized High End Printers. If you have Cartridges defined as Simple Product, You can simple use all variety of Cartridges in one Attribute “Cartridge” instead of multiple ones.
Steps:1 :Define Product as “XYZ Printers”:
Steps 2 : Define one Attribute as “Cartridges” instead of all variety of Cartridges:
Step 3: Select Add New Attribute:
Step 4: Click on Define New Attributes:
Step 5: Go To Values Section; Please note at-least defining one Attribute Value is mandatory to save newly defined Attribute.
Step 6: Here select “Add Products as Values” in stead of defining the whole variety of Cartridges manually.
Step 7: Add them using Radio Button
and Save the data.Outcome: Now you can see all those products to be selected as values/drop down in Attribute “Cartridges” while Configuring the XYZ Printer under as well as You can simple find the individual Cartridges in the Product Catalog as well as Simple product with complete detail which can be added to Quotation as additional product or top-up required by Customer.
2. Product Attributes setup along with multiple display option:
This is a very tricky functionality where You want the Sales Agent to see the pricing of the Attribute vales available to be selected; before adding it to Quotation. In our considered scenario, You are able to only see the variety of Cartridge option but not the price.
To enable this, You must ENSURE that the main attribute (e.g Cartridges) setup has following two option:
- Step1: Display Type= Drop Down
- Which will be like below:
- Step 2: While adding values of attribute (either adding simple product or manually defining it) Attribute Type as:
Other available/used options are:
- If you want to give option of adding multiple quantity of selected Cartridge variety displayed as Drop Down, select “User Selection w/ Quantity Inputs for each Attribute Value” which will ultimately result as below option of adding desired quantity of selected Cartridge variety.
- However, if you have marked defined Attribute as “List as Line Item”; i.e
- for two attribute types (User Selection w/ Quantity Inputs for each Attribute Value and User Selection w/ Attribute Quantity Input) added as line items to products, the quantity box will display automatically in the configurator.
3. Pricing Setup: Price-book Lookup vs Custom Pricing:
Setting up Pricing for Configurable data can be tougher as required especially when the configurable product output is not using CTX tagging and does not results into unique PART NUMBER.
As you are aware the pricing is mostly handled by Price-book defined for individual market and ultimately “Part Number” is used by system to determine the price to be updated in defined Quotation.
In simple product it is easy to have unique Part Number of every product and define entry in Pricebook against that Part Number LIKE:
That ensure that whenever Cartridge Variety “Catr_var” will be added price AUD1703.65 (Sample List Price) will be fetched per unit.
The above defined entry will be shown when you click on “View Price” by going in product details:
But in Configurable Product if CTX tagging which is advance feature is not used, your final configured product will not have unique Part Number which make it tough to determine final price of configured product.
For that reason, You can use Custom Pricing (screen for making it as default option- you can choose the same to individual products too) as another option as below:
The difference in terms of setup is to select Pricing Source as “Custom Pricing” and use Pricing Formula while defining the Configurable Product.
Step1: select Pricing mechanism as Custom Pricing during product configuration.
Step2: Build the Formula to be used for pricing based on Attributes selection.
Please note “Formula Builder” is a very simple and highly flexible tool that can be used to have a detailed customized calculation including all attributes and mathematical expressions.
For quick setup without much efforts to understand Custom Pricing; use Price-book method to define pricing. For that follow the basic steps:
- Define Simple Products with PART NUMBER
- Define one price-book and make multiple entries of pricing data along with Part Number
- Define a configured product with no entry in field “Part Number” for the Configured Product and pricing mechanism as “Pricebook lookup”
- Add previously defined Simple Products as “Attributes Values” in above configured product (This way you will be able to link pricing data defined for those products and you will not need to have Part Number of your configured product
- Troubleshoot Note: If you are getting Price of your Configured Product as “Zero” please check if the Base Price is set as “0.0000” which is ultimately calculating Quotation value as Zero in Responder area. You must have some Base Price maintained instead of 0.
This conclude the blog post part 1 here, I will be adding more functionality used in Quotation for e.g Template (Customized as per Client requirement- Company Specific); Status and Action profiles, Workflow etc in next part 2.
Many Thanks, please share your comment, feedback, suggestion.
Best Regards,
Mukesh Kumar
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