The Performance Quoting module of Smart CPQ is a central piece of the PROS platform. Once you have defined your products, organized them in catalogs, bundled them, and configured them in the configuration processes, the Performance Quoting service will tie all the pieces together.

From a very high-level perspective the Performance Quoting service assists a sales rep (or reseller or buyer) when configuring / negotiating / ordering products and services. The selling process can be optimized to present relevant data for your current quoting step. Data is presented in widgets (grids, fields, charts, etc.) that organize data in each page.

The entire user experience as well as the negotiation rules and pricing logic is flexible and can be defined by an administrator using the Performance Quoting - Quote Designer.

The complete end-user experience provided by the Performance Quoting service is flexible and made of:

A global spreadsheet with quote lines and fields.

• The spreadsheet holds the quoting, negotiation, pricing rules, and logic.
• This spreadsheet is populated with data coming from other systems (data providers):
• CRM
• Catalog, whether from "Add to quote" actions, import actions
• API calls
• Lines or folders created on the fly by the user

Data Providers are responsible for populating data coming from multiple data sources (lines and line properties/information as well as fields) in the spreadsheet.

A quoting process made of steps, each step contains pages.

• Each page is built to display only relevant info for the current step. Widgets are used to display this information.
• Field Widgets define which fields to display.
• Grid Widgets define which lines and columns to display. Views are used to define the lines, while Components define the columns or fields.
• Chart widgets define which totals to display.
• Etc.

FIELDS - QUOTE PROPERTIES, HEADER TERMS AND TOTAL AGGREGATIONS

A Field is a global quote variable, It is used to:

• Define quote-level information (Quote account, effective date, price book, etc.),
• Allow the configuration of high level terms applied to the entire scope of line items,
• Compute and surface total values, aggregated information or scores.

It carries a name, description, type, and advanced parameters (formula, user input, etc.). Fields can be displayed in field widgets and synchronized to CRM.

QUOTE LINES

Performance quoting allows an end user to add products to the quote and create specific lines for them, and adjust their quantities, configuration, and pricing.

We can consider 4 main families of lines in the quote:

• Product
• Specific
• Bundles
• Folders

ABOUT PRODUCTS

Products are finished goods, spare parts, services, or solutions that can be quoted and sold (/purchased) leveraging Smart CPQ.

Performance quoting service supports all types of products that are managed by the PROS Catalog service. It includes:

• Standard Items (SI) - i.e. standard products, finished goods, most of the time assigned to an SKU (e.g.: a computer monitor).
• Configured Products (CP) - i.e. sophisticated products or solutions/services configured by the end

user to output a multi-level Sales Bill Of Material (i.e. the Sales breakdown / SBL) ending up in the quote and proposal.

• Configurable Bundles (CB) - The components and options of bundles need to comply with sophisticated business rules. The content of the bundle is configured at the time of quoting by the end-user, leveraging the "Fast configuration" service.

About Bundles

Bundles are a way to group items/products - the Bundle constituents - sold as a whole. A bundle can be:

• Predefined - The bundle components are predefined in the catalog (Components of the bundle are linked to the root Bundle product by leveraging the 'Bundle' type of Product link).
• Created for and inside a specific quote - Most of the time, this type of bundle is used to group products to be sold as a whole, for presentation/proposal purposes. This type of bundle is not embedded into a product catalog but is created directly in the quote by expert users, who assemble options/standard items together to form a new offer.

About Specific Lines

Specific lines are used to represent information in the quote and proposal that are not products. Specific types of lines can be used to capture any type of information that needs to be part of the quotation. Typical examples of specific line type usage include:

• Capturing and negotiating high-level terms and conditions
• Capturing rebate information
• Etc.

About Folders

A folder is a construct that is mainly used in a quote as:

• An aid for negotiation - by aggregating some information, grouping products and facilitating updates
• A way to organize the generated proposal - to group items in a logical way

About Aggregation Lines

The aggregation lines let you automatically generate summary rows in a quote. These rows group together existing quote lines that share common characteristics - such as brand, color, or category - and display consolidated totals for each group.

Aggregation lines are read-only and fully managed by the system. They are refreshed automatically as the quote changes.

Line Types and Templates

Each type of line in the quote corresponds to a Line Type:

PRODUCT

• Corresponds to Standard Items (SI) or an element of a Configured Product - Sales Bill of Material (SBL) or returned by a Fast Configuration / Configured Bundle (CB).

SPECIFIC

• A generic line that doesn't correspond to an actual SKU from a catalog. They are created on the fly by users.
• BUNDLE_PRODUCT
• Corresponds to Fixed Bundles (SI whose components are linked to the root Bundle product by leveraging the 'Bundle' type of Product link).
• BUNDLE_SPECIFIC
• Corresponds to bundles created on the fly in the quote and for this specific quote.

FOLDER

• Allows the user to define a hierarchy in the grid.

SUBSCRIPTION

• A root line for a product added from a catalog, and identified as a subscription product.

CHARGE

• Sub-lines of a subscription line, The charges of the subscription Rate Plan.
• GENERATED_FOLDER

• • A generated folder automatically creates a hierarchy in the quote by replicating the product catalog's hierarchy.
• AGGREGATION_LINE
  • A line automatically generated by the system that groups quote rows by a common characteristic. It can have other AGGREGATION_LINE rows as children.

Each line of a particular type can be associated with a specific behavior that is defined by using a Line Template.

In this example, one PRODUCT line of the quote has an Eco-Tax value while the other doesn't. Another Line Template for Food was defined that doesn't have a value for Eco Tax.

Behavior variations may be:

• Different Computation Rules
• Different rules on user input or access rights
• Different Domains of Values

A Line Template is made of:

• A list of Cells (including the calculation formulas)
• A Matching Rule to determine what Line Template to assign to new lines (example, those added from the Catalog) and sub-lines (in the case of Complex Products, Bundles, Configured Products,

etc.)

• A Functional Primary Key (FPK) - The FPK is made of a list of columns allowing to identify the quote line. Optionally, the hierarchy of the FPKs (FPKs of the parent line items) can be used to identify the line item as well.

Defining a FPK allows to control if a line can be present multiple times in a

quote. See Understanding the Functional Primary Key (FPK) in the quote for more details.

• A list of Authorized Children
  • Type of children may vary depending on the type of line template

Below, is an example of a Line Template:

Columns

Columns are very generic. They only carry a name, description, and type. They are displayed in grids and can be synchronized to CRM.

Cells

A Cell is the intersection of a Column and a Line Template. It carries a concrete behavior:

• Formula
• User Input or not
• Domain of values
• Selector

QUOTE VIEWS AND COMPONENTS

Views are used to show different lines in different grids for a same quote. Below is an illustration: View of all products

View of Consumables only

A view is a subset of lines for the overall quote. Views are associated with a component. The component is then assigned to a widget to fully specify the scope of data for the widget (remember, you usually don't want a widget to display the entire global spreadsheet).

Components are used to set the scope of data visible through widgets. Here is an example of a grid widget:

Component for the Consumable view

Component for the Terms & Conditions view

These two grids each have their own component. Each component has a list of columns and a view (line scope):

The first one (Pricing Management - Consumables):

• Volume, Currency, List Price, etc. columns
• Consumable items

The second one (Terms & Conditions):

• Volume, Net Price, Minimum Quantity / Order, Committed Revenue/Year, Comments, etc.
• Minimum Quantity / Order, Committed Revenue/Year, Comments

Each component is assigned to its widget - one for the Products grid and one for the Terms & Conditions grid.

For more information, see Quote Designer - User Interface.

Performance Quoting relies on a behind-the-scene global spreadsheet. Various views of the spreadsheet are then presented to users through pages and widgets which format and narrow down the scope of lines / fields.

How is that spreadsheet populated ?

• Either by data provided by the end user (user inputs and SPECIFIC or FOLDER lines)
• Or by data and quote lines provided by multiple data sources upon specific user interaction (product catalogs, pricing engines, external data providers, etc.)

Data Providers are responsible for populating the spreadsheet from outside systems. The following table shows the data sources that Performance Quoting is able to connect and what each data source provides:

External Data Sources

External data sources can provide data to the quote and populate the spreadsheet. This allows PROS Smart CPQ to easily connect to system external to the PROS platform but also extend standard capabilities of the product

In the Quote model, the administrator will define a mapping between quote elements (columns/fields) and external data. The quote will send some information to the external system and will retrieve some data (for example, to get a product inventory, the quote will send a location and a product name and will receive the number of products available for this given location).

Performance Quoting allows the administrator to trigger some external processes from the quote - Custom Process.

In the Quote Model, the administrator will define a custom process (with a name to identify it and some settings) and the quote will be able to call an external system. No data related to the quote will be sent during this request but the external system will receive the row ids of the selected lines. It will allow the external system to leverage these IDs to perform some updates in the quote through APIs.

The quote model allows an admin user to define the quotation user interface and rules that will be executed during a quotation process. It is defined with a self-service back-end user interface - the Quote Designer - see dedicated Quote Designer section for more details.