In this use case, we want to set up and update customer specific agreements by customer segment or product segments.
Good to know: Some of our screens may be different as we are in a demo environment.
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Situation description
For this scenario, we will assume that you have the role of a sales manager. In the current state, you are struggling with limited ability to use customer specific agreements because they lack transparency into the specific attributes of the agreement and they are complex to set up.
With Pricefx, agreements are very flexible and transparent and can be configured to make adjustments and allowances together in whatever fashion suits your business needs, resulting in improved program performance and increased revenue.
Workflow
Let's look at an agreement in Pricefx. You can see the header of the agreement. The header is where important information is stored like start and end date, the calculation date for the agreement, any sort of external reference you may want to have for your agreement.
Step 1: Defining the agreement
In this case, we called this Q123 CX so that we know this is Company X agreement for Q1. In the header you can also define your customers and your products. In our scenario we've defined only Company X as the single customer for this agreement, and I have not defined any products in the header as we will use a product segment in the Items tab.
Let's move to the Items tab and take a look at this.
Step 2: Items
In the Items tab there is an Input Parameter window where you pick the parameters for your agreement. In this case, we're going to use Business Services. However, you can choose any business unit, any product category, or any product group with a simple click of a button.
Let's move back to Business Services which makes up the product segment for this specific agreement. This means that to any product the customer buys within Business Services, the rules we define will apply. For instance, the calculation type we will use is Cost+. However, you can see that you can also use List Less and you can configure any or other business logic you may have. There is also an exceptions tab here because there are times when you would want to make exceptions to your customer specific pricing.
Let's imagine you have a slow movers price list where you wouldn't want to attach any fees because you want to liquidate those items. You can choose that with the simple click of a button. You can also define the cycle of your agreements. For this scenario, this agreement is going to recalculate every 30 days. It means that it will look at the current cost and the current resales and make any necessary changes. To make sure we have a more global recommendation, we also have configured 60 days and 90 days, but you can configure any cycle that makes sense to you.
Step 3: Making adjustments
The tables you see below make up where the actual adjustments are made.
For this scenario we have made a 1% adjustment on the price for account management. We also charge a 2% delivery fee, but the customer does not want to see that in their price but at the bottom of the invoice. As such, we will choose bottom of the invoice here.
You can also make any upcharges or charge any fees you may like, and you can make allowances in the same agreement. For instance, let's make a generic allowance to this customer, say quarter of 1% percent on all purchases made in that business category we chose and we'd like to put that at the bottom of the invoice rather than rolling it into their price. The .25% is going to be based on the cost of the part. We'll add that as a line in this agreement and then we'll look at some calculations.
Step 4: Calculations
You can see in the calculation tab that it is displaying high level details about the adjustments that we have made in the price and the items that will appear at the bottom of the invoice. For the generic allowance we made, you can see that the solution is telling us that for this part set that's going to be $2.55, the delivery fee is $20.64. And if you want to see that at part level, there is an attached price tag that'll bring you to the parts list for all the business services that this customer is purchasing.
This is broken down into a grid showing the exact fee attached to the account management, the precise amount attached to the customer price, and the allowances that were made. These are at part level for every part level within this segment. In addition to the list of prices, Pricefx also allows you to embed analytics into your calculations.
Step 5: Analytics
In this instance, we've embedded a Customer Insights piece of analytics. We're able to look at the customer insights to give us a higher-level view of this customer. This allows some guidance and support for our decisions that we are making. We can see here the customer details on the health of this customer, any trends that this customer may be experiencing.
LEARN MORE: To know more about what Accelerate Customer Insights can do for you, click here.
Step 6: Workflow
Back in our agreement, you see there are three other tabs at the top. We have an Attachment tab, a Workflow tab, and a Message tab in the attachment tab. This is a place where we keep any documents that are important to this customer. You can see that for this customer, we have an attached Sales agreement as PDF. To visualize the document, simply use the download button. You can see here that the customer has shared a PDF requiring it to be filled out. It's attached here and can be accessed from here as well.
After the item is action, you can see a message tab where you can message back and forth internally about the items which need discussion. In this instance, we are waiting for Susie to sign the attachment the customer provided.
And lastly, you'll see a workflow tab. Your agreements come with a workflow that you can configure, like an agreement set up that you would like approval for, or you can set up various levels of approval.
In this use case, this is addressed to a manager and the Vice President. Once these are both executed, the agreement can be submitted and then emailed and signed by the customer, or emailed internally if it further requires people’s attention.
This concludes the flow for agreements, which are very flexible within Pricefx. You can configure them to make adjustments and allowances in the same agreement and in whatever fashion suits your business needs.