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📽️ Check out a video demonstration for this use case, here.

Use Case Situation Description

In this use case, pricing practitioners have the ability to load and configure their Pricefx master data in their system. The master data is considered to be the core of our pricing application and refers to basic data; product and customer master data, transactional history, currency and units of measurement.

Additionally, we will need to perform some standard administrative, security and integration setup for our application.

 User Role(s) and Business Objective

Pricing or Product Manager or Sales Rep

Our objective can be categorized into three areas; First, use of the Data Readiness Methodology to identify all of the minimally required inbound information, within the realm of product, customer, transactions, units of measurement and currency, that will be needed for this chemical use case. Second, the definition of the security roles and entitlements for business roles and groups will need to be established and SSO accessibility will be configured. Third, establishing the integration with Pricefx Plasma package and deployment of the associated dashboards.

LEARN MORE: For more information on Data Readiness Methodology, click here. To learn more about Pricefx Plasma, click here.

 Complication
  • Identification and importing of all necessary master data:

    • Product

    • Customer

    • Product Cost

    • Units of Measure

    • Transaction/Invoice Line Items

    • Currency

  • Identification of inbound data values required for our analytical dashboards

  • Define and administer security considerations:

    • Identify user permissions required

    • Define out-of-the-box user roles, business roles and business groups

    • Enablement of SSO configuration

 Benefit(s)
  • Design and development of an integration plan that migrates required data from customer’s environment into Pricefx flexible data model.

  • Precise separation of required data into data configurations that optimize performance.

  • Establishment of user access and security controls

  • Access to a set of 25 pricing performance benchmarks, delivered in intuitive visual outputs that are designed to answer the most important pricing analytical questions.

  • Access to reliable quantitative benchmarks so they can objectively measure and compare their performance to their industry.

 KPIs

The Key Performance Indicators from this use case can be categorized into these areas:

  • PLAN

    • Plasma-Executive Summary, consolidates some of the most important KPIs

    • Plasma-Comparison Waterfall, visual representation that allows the display of two sets of data, namely KPI Data and Company Data, side by side.

    • Plasma-Percentage of Accounts with Negative Margin, KPI showcasing three separate bars on the X-axis representing the bottom quartile, median, and upper quartile.

    • Plasma-Percentage of Transactions with Negative Margin, KPI specifically focusing on the percentage of transactions with a negative margin.

    • Plasma-TTM per Unit Realized Price Percent Increase, provides valuable insights into the performance of the company's pricing strategy.

    • Plasma-Percentage of Deals Outside Guidelines, measure the percentage of deals that fall outside guidelines. Deals are considered outside guidelines when the InvoicePrice is less than or equal to the TargetPrice.

    • Plasma-Deal Velocity for Deals Needing Approval, display the average number of days it takes for deals requiring approval to move from creation to approval.

    • Plasma-Average Number of Steps in Approval Process, providing valuable insights into the performance and behavior of customer by displaying the average number of steps a quote goes through during the approval process.

    • Plasma-Company Waterfall, provides ability to analyze company waterfall in aggregate mode or drill-down mode for more detailed analysis.

    • Plasma-Percentage of Products to Reach Revenue Deciles, visualize the percentage of products required to cover a specific percentage of revenue within each decile, presenting a cumulative contribution.

    • Plasma-Percentage of Customers to Reach Revenue Deciles, visualize percentage of customers needed to cover a certain percentage of revenue across different deciles.

    • Plasma-Total Revenue, illustrate the sum of revenue and provide insights into the company's position within the industry.

    • Plasma-Number of Product TTM, displays the number of unique products that have generated some revenue in the period.

    • Plasma-Number of Accounts TTM, umber of unique products that have generated some revenue in the period.

    • Plasma-Number of Sales People TTM, the number of unique people who managed transactions in the period.

  • PRICE

    • Plasma-Number of List Price Increases per Product, shows average number of times a list price is increased per product and provides valuable insights into how effectively benchmarked companies manage their price increases.

    • Plasma-Number of List Price Changes per Product, displays your place among industry peers in the frequency of changing your prices per product. This allows you to understand to which extent prices are volatile within the industry or to which extent peers are managing their prices.

    • Plasma-TTM per Unit Realized Price Percent Increase, displays the actual average percentage increase of the realized price in the period, enables companies to analyze whether the realized price has increased in the last trailing twelve months.

    • Plasma-Price Increase Realization Waterfall, illustrating the price increase leakage and serves as a benchmarking tool for evaluating the effectiveness of price increases compared to other companies.

  • PROFIT

    • Plasma-Percentage of Deals Needing Approval, shows the percentage of deals that are required to go through an approval process with the aim to identify opportunities for optimizing processes.

    • Plasma-Number of Deals, displays the number of deals created in the selected period.

    • Plasma-Average Deal Size, display and benchmark the average deal size managed during the specified period in terms of revenue.

    • Plasma-Deal Velocity for All Deals, displays the average number of days that passed between the creation date and the submitted date, enables measuring processes effectiveness compared to the industry’s standards.


Prescriptive Design Requirements

As a [Pricing Manager/Sales Rep], I want to have basic master data in my system, like product master,

customer master, transaction data, currency data and Product Unit of Measure data. Also I want to have

roles and entitlements, SSO and Plasma set up.

The overall design requirements are summarized in these articles:

 Functional and Non-functional Requirements

This use case of CHEM00 covers all basic inbound data that are needed to implement every use case in the Chemical Industry Catalog. It incorporates the following:

  • Inbound data:

    • Product Master

    • Customer Master

    • Product Unit of Measure

    • Customer Master

    • Transactional Data/Invoice Line Items

    • Currency data

  • Roles and Entitlements

  • Single Sign-On

  • Pricefx Plasma

Non-Functional Requirements

For this use case, there are no non-functional requirements since it is considered foundational in its support of all other use cases in the Chemical Industry Catalog.

 Measures, Calculation and Decision-making KPIs

For the inbound data aspects of this use case there are no calculations that are in scope. However, the required inbound data supporting this use case must be delivered in a format that aligns with project requirements of cleanliness, completeness, accuracy and timeliness.

NOTE: Pricefx uses the Data Readiness Methodology to identify and prepare customer data for our pricing implementations. Learn more about DRM here.

With those attributes in mind, the inbound data should fulfill these data parameters:

  • Identification

    • Uniqueness

    • Granularity

    • Consistency

    • Scalability

    • Integration

    • Traceability

    • Flexibility

LEARN MORE: For more information on Data Identification, click here.

  • Quality

    • Accuracy

    • Completeness

    • Consistency

    • Integrity

    • Timeliness

    • Relevance

    • Accessibility

LEARN MORE: For more information on Data Quality, click here.

  • Availability

    • Reliability

    • Redundancy

    • Security

    • Integration

LEARN MORE: For more information on Data Availability, click here.

 Reporting and Dashboards

This use case has no reports or dashboards that are build directly with the exception of those dashboards that are implemented as part of the Pricefx Plasma implementation and these are separated into Plan, Price and Profit categories.

LEARN MORE: For more information on Plasma dashboards, click here.

NOTE: Commonly asked questions on Pricefx Plasma about data confidentiality and sharing can be found here.

  • PLAN

    • Plasma-Executive Summary, consolidates some of the most important KPIs

    • Plasma-Comparison Waterfall, visual representation that allows the display of two sets of data, namely KPI Data and Company Data, side by side.

    • Plasma-Percentage of Accounts with Negative Margin, KPI showcasing three separate bars on the X-axis representing the bottom quartile, median, and upper quartile.

    • Plasma-Percentage of Transactions with Negative Margin, KPI specifically focusing on the percentage of transactions with a negative margin.

    • Plasma-TTM per Unit Realized Price Percent Increase, provides valuable insights into the performance of the company's pricing strategy.

    • Plasma-Percentage of Deals Outside Guidelines, measure the percentage of deals that fall outside guidelines. Deals are considered outside guidelines when the InvoicePrice is less than or equal to the TargetPrice.

    • Plasma-Deal Velocity for Deals Needing Approval, display the average number of days it takes for deals requiring approval to move from creation to approval.

    • Plasma-Average Number of Steps in Approval Process, providing valuable insights into the performance and behavior of customer by displaying the average number of steps a quote goes through during the approval process.

    • Plasma-Company Waterfall, provides ability to analyze company waterfall in aggregate mode or drill-down mode for more detailed analysis.

    • Plasma-Percentage of Products to Reach Revenue Deciles, visualize the percentage of products required to cover a specific percentage of revenue within each decile, presenting a cumulative contribution.

    • Plasma-Percentage of Customers to Reach Revenue Deciles, visualize percentage of customers needed to cover a certain percentage of revenue across different deciles.

    • Plasma-Total Revenue, illustrate the sum of revenue and provide insights into the company's position within the industry.

    • Plasma-Number of Product TTM, displays the number of unique products that have generated some revenue in the period.

    • Plasma-Number of Accounts TTM, umber of unique products that have generated some revenue in the period.

    • Plasma-Number of Sales People TTM, the number of unique people who managed transactions in the period.

  • PRICE

    • Plasma-Number of List Price Increases per Product, shows average number of times a list price is increased per product and provides valuable insights into how effectively benchmarked companies manage their price increases.

    • Plasma-Number of List Price Changes per Product, displays your place among industry peers in the frequency of changing your prices per product. This allows you to understand to which extent prices are volatile within the industry or to which extent peers are managing their prices.

    • Plasma-TTM per Unit Realized Price Percent Increase, displays the actual average percentage increase of the realized price in the period, enables companies to analyze whether the realized price has increased in the last trailing twelve months.

    • Plasma-Price Increase Realization Waterfall, illustrating the price increase leakage and serves as a benchmarking tool for evaluating the effectiveness of price increases compared to other companies.

  • PROFIT

    • Plasms-Percentage of Deals Needing Approval, shows the percentage of deals that are required to go through an approval process with the aim to identify opportunities for optimizing processes.

    • Plasma-Number of Deals, displays the number of deals created in the selected period.

    • Plasma-Average Deal Size, display and benchmark the average deal size managed during the specified period in terms of revenue.

    • Plasma-Deal Velocity for All Deals, displays the average number of days that passed between the creation date and the submitted date, enables measuring processes effectiveness compared to the industry’s standards.

 Scope Validation and Project Readiness

During scope validation process we are ensuring that the project deliverables are completed according to the agreed scope and quality standard by asking the following questions:

Scope Validation and Project Readiness Workshop – Validation Questions & Answers:

Q1: Do you have alternative units of measure for your products that you price? 

A1: 

Q2: For sales analysis, are there any regional attributes to consider when benchmarking prices? (e.g., sales region, channel) 

A2:

Q3: Is you the pricing relevant customer hierarchy move than two levels deep? 

A3: 

Q4: Can one customer id be present in multiple sales organization with different data like payment terms or currencies? 

A4:

Q5: Waterfall setup; how should your pricing waterfall look like? 

A5:

LEARN MORE: For more information on scope validation and project readiness, click here.


User Stories

The following list showcases the user stories associated with this Chemical Use Case:

 Epic: Epic: Roles, Entitlements and SSO

As an administrator, I want to define application authentication and authorization abilities via SSO and business roles.

User Story Name - SSO

I want to: Have SSO setup

so I can: Log on seamless without having to enter my user/password

Acceptance Criteria:

  • Pricefx supports SSO using Azure Active Directory, ADFS, Okta and Salesforce 

  • Users can access Pricefx without having to enter a userid/password 


User Story Name - Business Roles 

I want to: Several business roles available 

so I can: Use these in workflows and steer the functionalities these user groups can access 

Acceptance Criteria:

  • In the standard delivery we have the roles Account Exec, Sales Manager, Global Pricing Manager and Pricing Manager available. 

  • These roles can be used to activate certain functionalities in the system. 

  • These roles can be assigned to users 

 Epic: Pricefx Plasma

As an Pricing Manager/Pricing Analyst, I want to load the master data needed by this use case.

User Story Name - Transaction waterfall mapping

I want to: Translate (map) my transactional data to the corresponding categories used in Pricefx Plasma transaction waterfall 

so I can: See my transactional data in standardized Pricefx Plasma structure

Acceptance Criteria:  Customer transaction data is mapped to the standardized PricefxPlasma structure in Plasma_TransactionMapping PP table 


User Story Name - Quote Extractor mapping

I want to: Translate (map) my quote data to the corresponding categories used in Plasma_Quotes Data Source 

so I can: See my quoting data in standardized Pricefx Plasma structure

Acceptance Criteria: Customer quoting data is mapped to the standardized PricefxPlasma structure in QuotesDataExtractorMappingConfiguration PP table 


User Story Name - Executive Summary Dashboard

I want to: See Executive Summary Dashboards with predefined KPIs (as per PricefxPlasma documentation

so I can: Compare my performance with the provided benchmark and make pricing decisions 

Acceptance Criteria: Customer can see the displayed KPI with benchmark and customer data.

The charts use either transactional or quote data. In case any of those are missing, Customer will still see the KPI with benchmark results for each chart but not the results representing Customer own data. 


User Story Name - Plan Dashboard

I want to: See Plan Dashboards with predefined KPIs (as per Pricefx Plasma documentation

so I can: Compare my transaction related performance with the provided benchmark and make pricing decisions 

Acceptance Criteria: Customer can see the displayed KPI with benchmark and customer transactional data.

NOTE: If customers do not have transactional data, the KPI benchmark results will be still visible for this dashboard but without the result representing Customer own data. 


User Story Name - Price Dashboard

I want to: See Price Dashboards with predefined KPIs (as per Pricefx Plasma documentation

so I can: Compare my transaction related performance with the provided benchmark and make pricing decisions 

Acceptance Criteria: Customer can see the displayed KPI with benchmark and customer transactional data.

NOTE: If customers do not have transactional data, the KPI benchmark results will be still visible for this dashboard but without the result representing Customer own data. 


User Story Name - Profit Dashboard 

I want to: See Profit Dashboards with predefined KPIs (as per Pricefx Plasma documentation

so I can: Compare my quote performance with the provided benchmark and make pricing decisions 

Acceptance Criteria: Customer can see the displayed KPI with benchmark and customer quote data.

NOTE: If customers do not have Quote Configurator and quote data, the KPI benchmark results will be still visible for this dashboard but without the result representing Customer own data. 


Data Requirements

As stated in this case.


Out-of-Scope

This represents the out-of-scope business functions and features for this use case. They can be configured, but by default they are not included in the Chemical Industry Catalog.

  • Any Reporting and Dashboards, other than the ones deployed with Pricefx Plasma

  • Notifications and alerts 

  • API method integration 

  • Customer-Facing templates 


Solution Design

The end-to-end solution for this use case can be categorized as follows:

 

 Step 1-Roles & Entitlements
  • Use of out-of-the-box Business role, Business Group and User Role in Pricefx core implementation.

  • Setup user permissions at the Business Role level.

LEARN MORE: For more information on roles and entitlements, click here.

 Step 2-Single Sign-On
  • Enable the SSO configuration in the SAML setup 

  • Allow admin users to login by using username/password  

LEARN MORE: For more information on SSO setup, click here.

 Step 3-Pricefx Plasma
  • Deploy Plasma Transaction Processor Package and Plasma Quote Processor Package 

NOTE: The user entitled to deploy packages to a particular partition in PlatformManager has to have all the available user roles in that partition 

CAUTION: If the partition has the “Plasma_Audit” CP table already, please truncate it before deploying the packages.  

  • Plasma Harvester Package is only deployed on the Plasma partition, not the client partition. 

  • Plasma Harvester steps are sequenced with a combination of Plasma_Harvester_Sequencer logic, Plasma_Harvester_Sequencer_Reset CalculationFlow and Plasma_Harvester_SequenceControlTable PP table 

  • After the selected packages are deployed, the following configuration needs to be taken care of: 

    • Plasma Transaction Processor Package Configuration 

    • Plasma Quote Processor Package Configuration 

    • Plasma Configuration Tables 

    • Plasma General Configuration 

    • Plasma KPI Dashboards Configuration 

    • Plasma Deployment Troubleshooting 

LEARN MORE: For more information on Pricefx Plasma and its deployment, click here.

 Step 4-Pricefx Master Data
  • Product Master

    • Product master must have the Id as the key 

    • Product master will be in CSV format 

    • Product master will be put into an agreed shared SFTP folder 

  • Product Cost Data

    • Create a Product Extension for the Product cost 

    • Product cost will be in CSV format 

    • Product cost will be put into an agreed shared SFTP folder 

  • Product Unit of Measure

    • Use system uom datasource for holding the Alternative Product UOM 

    • The Product Unit of Measure table will have the product ID and the alternative UoM as the key 

    • Product UOM will be in CSV format 

    • Product UOM will be put into an agreed shared SFTP folder 

  • Customer Master

    • Customer master must have the Id as the key 

    • Customer master will be in CSV format 

    • Customer master will be put into an agreed shared SFTP folder 

  • Transactional data/Invoice line items

    • Create a datasource for Transactional data 

    • Create a Datamart that uses the Transactional data source, Product Datasource, Customer Datasource 

    • Transactional data will be in CSV format 

    • Transactional data will be put into an agreed shared SFTP folder 

  • Currency Data

    • Use system ccy Datasource for holding the currency 

    • The ccy Datasource will contain daily exchanged rate 

    • Currency will be in CSV format 

    • Currency will be put into an agreed shared SFTP folder 

 Step 5-Input Data

The following tables can be either manually loaded in Pricefx using the Excel Client utility or can be automatically integrated using CSV files in a Pricefx dedicated SFTP folder: 

  • Price Waterfall data (typically based in invoice line items) 

  • Product Master 

  • Customer Master 

  • Product Cost data 

  • Currency data 

  • Unit of Measure 

LEARN MORE: For more information on Excel Client, click here.

NOTE: Pricefx table structures can be loaded automatically using Integration Templates and PlatformManager. For more information click here.

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