Pricing Scheme Determination Guide

Introduction

A global organization needs a differentiated costing and pricing approach across regions or sales channels. To better support, our customers, In Mind Cloud supports internal and external pricing engines. Pricing schemes/procedures help determine customer-specific cost/price based as well as based on attributes (i.e. sales organization, distribution channel, division, and document type). This has significantly enabled our customers to have much more flexibility to implement various pricing strategies.

Before 1908 release, Digital Sales Platform supports only one pricing procedure for SSC Engine and only one active pricing scheme for the internal price engine. Price calculation can be different according to different customers, different sales areas, etc. In this case, one pricing scheme approach is insufficient and requires multiple active pricing procedures/schemes at the same time to fulfill the needs of different customers. From 1908 release, Digital Sales Platform supports pricing scheme determination for SSC price engine and internal price engine.

Changes and Enhancements

Here are some process changes and enhancements for SSC engine in 1908r.

• Even though several pricing procedures existed in ERP, Digital Sales Platform only loads and supports pricing procedure(s) which is maintained in the pricing procedure white list. This pricing procedure white list has been moved to setting.
• To support legacy quotes, the application uses the default pricing procedure to open the quote. In SSC engine, default pricing procedure is the first available pricing procedure in SSC white list.
• The quote is not allowed to open unless pricing procedure is ready. This will introduce the sequence of loading.
• Pricing procedure refresh can be done via UI, previously it can only be done from JMX console. This refresh will also clear the SSC cache for pricing procedure and pricing condition types.
• All active pricing schemes can be seen in UI easily.

Below is changes for Internal Pricing Engine (IPE)’s user：

• To support legacy quotes, the application uses the default pricing procedure to open the quote. In IPE, it is the only one active pricing scheme or explicitly set as default one.
• User can define the default pricing scheme if more than one active pricing schemes existed.

Default pricing procedure/pricing scheme is the fallback pricing procedure/pricing scheme if active pricing procedure/scheme is not found for given quotation.

Maintain Multiple Pricing Procedures

Before 1908 release, SSC pricing procedure white list is maintained in “application.properties” via com.imc.webapp.app.ssc.ppwhitelist. Starting from 1908 release, the SSC pricing procedure white list is maintained as a setting string named “Available SSC pricing procedure names maintained in comma separated format”. The whitelist in “application.properties” is no longer used. By moving pricing procedure white list from properties file to setting, the user can modify the white list without the need of server restart. User can maintain multiple pricing procedures in this setting as comma separated form.

If pricing procedure white list setting is not maintained yet,

• Maintain the current pricing procedure used in “application.properties” to setting value
• Refresh pricing procedure from UI or wait until next pricing procedure refresh interval.

Maintain Multiple Pricing Schemes

Pricing Scheme Determination Methods

Two types of determination methods are used:

• Lookup table-based determination, and
• BAPI based determination

Depending on the determination methods, the number of data points to maintain in the Digital Sales Platform are different.

A Boolean setting called “Determine SSC Pricing Procedure with the use of BAPI” is used to decide which method will be used. The lookup table-based determination method is used by default. The following table shows the determination logic supported in different price engines.

Determination using Lookup Table

Lookup table-based pricing scheme determination logic is based on five data points.

• Sales Organization
• Distribution Channel
• Division
• Customer Pricing Procedure
• Document Pricing Procedure

In Digital Sales Platform, a lookup table with name “T683V” is maintained to hold the pricing scheme determination logic. This lookup table needs to be synced from ERP for SSC engine. But for IPE, users must maintain that table according to their needs. The exact match is used to find the pricing procedure with above data points. For example, the quote has only sales org, distribution channel and division and does not have document type pricing procedure indicator and customer pricing procedure indicator, the record will retrieve only with these three data points (sales org, distribution channel and division).

The following screenshot shows the T683V table. The contents of the table are subject to user’s maintenance.

Note that the pricing procedure is the pricing scheme name for IPE.

Document pricing procedure is also a new data point introduced in 1908 release. It needs to maintain as master data of Digital Sales Platform. The user can go and maintain document pricing procedure from “Master Data Management: SalesDocumentType”.

Customer pricing procedure is a new data point introduced in 1908 release. If the customer (account in Digital Sales Platform) is synchronized from ERP directly, this data point will be synchronized together with other sales area information. To maintain customer pricing procedure, open the selected account, go to “Sales Info” tab.

Pricing Procedure = Sales Organization + Distribution Channel + Division + Customer Pricing Procedure + Document Pricing Procedure

Determination using BAPI

“ISA_FIND_PRICING_PROCEDURE” BAPI is used to find applicable pricing procedure name for given data.

Five data points are used for BAPI input. These are

• Sales Organization
• Distribution Channel
• Division
• Customer which is account ERP ID
• Sales Document Type ERP ID

BAPI output is the pricing procedure name. In this approach, no additional data need to be maintained in the Digital Sales Platform system.

Pricing Scheme Usage

The determined pricing scheme is assigned to quote at the time of creation. The related pricing scheme/procedure can be found in “Overview” tab.