Concept
The process “Design Configuration Processes” is used to create products and/or services that contain multiple features or options that must be specified during the sales process. Projects implemented using this process are called “Configuration Processes”.
Definition: A Configuration Process (CP) is composed of a certain number of sales scripts, allowing the vendor (a sales representative, an e-commerce site, etc.) to ask questions to a prospect or customer.
These questions are typically presented in a customer-friendly way, in order to hide any non-essential complexity, such as technical product information (bill of material, costing), commercial rules (discounting issues, reporting issues) and marketing constraints (market segmentation, legal issues).
A Configuration Process is composed of:
- A sales script structure which represents the customer dialog
- A sales breakdown structure which represents the resulting quote
The sales script structure is a tree-structure starting at the root Configuration Process (= the project). This root Configuration Process is composed of forms which hold form properties. The forms can be organized in intermediate or node Configuration Processes.
The root Configuration Process can also contain a Configurable Bundle. Configuration processes which are not used as the root CP can’t contain any Confiburable Bundle.
Definition: A Form Property represents a piece of information which is necessary to customize the product or service you want to sell. It can be represented as a question, which is to be answered by the end-user, or as a calculation, which means that it will automatically deduct the information based on previously answered questions.
Definition: A Form is a logical grouping of form properties which treat the same subject. This subject can take different forms: a specific option, a variant, a function, a component or even a promotion.
The following actions can be conducted to in order to define the sales script structure:
Structure / Build
- The step “Structure / Build” is used to design the structure of the Configuration Process and to define the properties associated to the CP, Forms and FP objects.
Structure / Controls
- The structural links will be customized via the “Structure / Controls” step which will define the existence rules, nesting/looping rules, etc.
Structure / Constraints
- In addition to the structural links, the user can refine controls across the objects via the
“Constraints” step; for example to control the compatibility of a combination of questions/answers between 2 Forms.
Rich Media
- The step “Rich Media” manages the association between the elements of the Configuration Process and multi-media content such as images, plug-ins, files, etc.
In addition to defining the sales script structure, you will be able to define and control how you will display and sell the result of the configuration, typically referred to as a quote. This is done by the sales breakdown structure:
The following actions can be conducted to define the sales breakdown:
Sales & Pricing / Sales Method
- In the “Sales Method” step, you build the structure (lines and sub-lines) of what will be quoted and displayed to the end-user once he has completed his configuration. For each line you will be able to indicate what type of information needs to be generated/calculated.
Sales & Pricing / Codification
- In the “Codification” step, for the lines identified as candidates in the “Sales Method” step, you will give the rules for Codification: Which codification (E.g. Name – Description) needs to be computed for the breakdown line.
Sales & Pricing / Complete
- In the “Complete” step, for the lines identified as candidates in the “Sales Method” step, you will give the rules for Complete Matching: Which products (from a repository, a catalog) correspond to the breakdown line.
Sales & Pricing / Partial
- In the “Partial” step, for the lines identified as candidates in the “Sales Method” step, you will give the rules for Partial Matching: Which products (from a repository, a catalog) correspond to the breakdown line
Sales & Pricing / Pricing Method
- In the “Pricing Method” step, you define the way the price corresponding to each line of the breakdown will be calculated (via a Pricing Matrix). E.g. the root line price will equal the sum of the sub-line prices.
Drawing Method
- In the “Drawing Method” step, the graphical representation for a Configuration Process can be defined.
Access Rights
- The step “Access Rights” is used to create high level restrictions and/or override (under certain conditions) the controls specified in the other steps
Once both the Sales Script and Breakdown structures are defined, you will be able to specify additional rules to dynamically control the way your configuration runs.
In the ‘Event Logic’ step you will be able to specify which end-user event or CPQ engine event will trigger a given action.
E.g. for a nested Form, you will be able to dynamically create a new instance of this Form once the preceding one has been completed.
Throughout the entire modeling process for the Configuration Process, whichever step you are working on, most of the properties (domain valuations of Form Properties, existence rules, constraints, sales and pricing rules, etc.) can be defined and controlled using Business Rules & Constraints (BRCs).
Reference: For more details please see Business Rules and Constraints (BRC).
Via the ‘Translate’ step you can customize the translation of your model and its associated data into
all needed languages.
Finally, via the ‘Runtime’ step, you can define the frame size in which the Configuration Process will run, launch it from within a Catalog or even access server files in order to verify or change the settings.
The following paragraphs explain how to use each step.
Your current environment in the Designer is correctly set (Team/Workspace/Release/Language)
Ensure that a “Configuration Process” project has been created on the dashboard.
Ensure that you have sufficient access rights to enter and work on the Configuration Process.
Ensure that you have the necessary team assignment to work on Configuration Processes.
Check that at least a Sales Method and a Pricing Method have been created in the working workspace (if these are necessary).
On the dashboard, click on the name or on the description of the “Configuration Process” you would like to open.