Configuring product offerings and catalogs
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Summary of Configuring product offerings and catalogs
ServiceNow's Sales Customer Relationship Management (CSM) applications enable product catalog administrators and catalog managers to create and configure product offerings and catalogs for pre-sales, order capture, and post-sales activities. Starting with the May 2024 release, these configurations can be managed via the CSM Configurable Workspace, streamlining how sales agents access and use product catalogs and offerings.
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Key Features
- Create Product Offering Catalogs: Establish top-level catalogs containing categories and subcategories to organize product offerings logically for easier agent navigation.
- Define Product Offering Categories: Group similar products within catalogs to facilitate browsing and selection during sales processes.
- Configure Product Characteristics and Options: Specify attributes that distinguish products, affecting their configuration and pricing.
- Add Product Offerings: Configure and publish products within catalogs and categories, making them available to sales agents for creating opportunities, quotes, and orders.
- Add Product Visuals: Incorporate images and thumbnails to assist agents visually in selecting products.
- Create Product Offering Relationships and Bundles: Bundle products and services to streamline ordering, enable special pricing, and improve the order capture experience.
- Control Cascading Quantities: Manage how quantities for child items in bundles are calculated using a system property, enhancing order accuracy.
- Associate Related Contracts and Units of Measure: Link contracts and define units of measure to product offerings for comprehensive sales management.
- Manage Product Offering Versions: Update published offerings by creating new versions to maintain accuracy and relevance.
- Create Relationship Groups: Combine multiple product bundles into related groups for better catalog organization.
- Configure Needs Analysis: Use questionnaires (needs templates) to assist agents in identifying appropriate product offerings for customers.
- Export and Import Catalog Entities: Transfer product catalog data between ServiceNow instances to support development and production workflows.
- View Hierarchies: Inspect the full hierarchy of product offerings and their specifications to ensure correct associations and completeness.
- Configure Product Offer Eligibility: Dynamically filter catalogs and offerings to display only those eligible for specific customers, improving sales relevancy.
Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
This configuration framework empowers ServiceNow customers to efficiently manage their product catalogs and offerings, ensuring sales agents have access to accurate, organized, and visually supported product information. The ability to bundle products, control pricing and quantities, and tailor product visibility based on customer eligibility enhances the sales process's flexibility and effectiveness. Additionally, versioning and exporting capabilities support ongoing catalog maintenance and deployment across environments, aligning with enterprise development practices.
Create product offerings and the associated product catalogs that can be used by Sales Customer Relationship Management agents for pre-sales activities, order capture, and post-sales engagement.
As a product catalog administrator or catalog manager, you complete various configuration tasks to create the product catalogs and offerings for products and services sold by your organization. You also work with your pricing administrator, who sets the pricing for your product offerings. For more information on pricing, see Configuring product pricing.
The following workflow example shows a typical series of steps for setting up catalogs and product offerings, including the pricing configuration tasks performed by your pricing administrator. Some steps may be optional in your organization, and other steps, such as setting up product relationships between catalog entities, may occur in a slightly different sequence.
Overview of product offering and catalog configuration
Starting with the May 2024 release of Sales Customer Relationship Management applications, you can use the CSM Configurable Workspace to configure product offering catalogs, product offerings, and product offering relationships.
The following table identifies the configuration tasks for setting up the various features available in Product Catalog Management.
| Configuration task | Description |
|---|---|
| Create a product offering catalog | Create a catalog, which is the top-level entity in the catalog hierarchy. Catalogs can have categories, and categories can have subcategories or product offers. |
| Create a product offering category | Define a product offering category used to organize similar product offerings in a catalog. Catalog categories make it easier for agents to browse and navigate product offerings when creating opportunities, quotes, and orders. |
| Create product characteristics and characteristic options | Define the specific attributes, properties, and options that distinguish a product offering, influencing its configuration and pricing. |
| Create product offerings | Configure and add product offerings to catalogs and categories. Once published, product offerings are available to Sales Customer Relationship Management agents as they create opportunities, quotes, and orders. |
| Add product visuals | Add images and thumbnails to your product offerings to help agents as they build opportunities, quotes, and orders. |
| Create product offering relationships | Create product relationships to bundle products and services together to streamline the order process. Product offering relationships drive the order capture experience by letting you group multiple product offerings into bundles. Bundles also let you offer special bundle pricing. |
| Control cascading quantity values in child product offerings | Control how the quantities for child line items in a product offering for a quote or order are calculated by using the sn_prd_pm.enable_cascade_quantity system property. |
| Add related contracts to product offerings | Add related contracts to your product offerings in the Sales Customer Relationship Management application. |
| Add a unit of measure to a product offering | Add a unit of measure (UOM) to a product offering in Sales Customer Relationship Management. |
| Create a product offering version | Create a product version to add updates to a published product offering. |
| Create product offering relationship groups | Combine bundles of product offerings into related groups in Sales Customer Relationship Management. |
| Configure needs analysis | Create needs templates, which are questionnaires from product selection guides that your agents use to determine what product offers can be added to opportunities. |
| Export and import product catalog entities | Export and import product catalog entities between ServiceNow instances. For example, you can promote catalog entities from a non-production instance to a production instance. |
| View product offering hierarchy and associated specification hierarchy | View the complete hierarchy of a product offering and any associated specifications (product, service, and resource). Use these views to verify that all entities have been defined and associated correctly. |
| Configure product offer eligibility | Filter the product catalog, product categories, and product offerings dynamically, to display only eligible product offerings for a customer in the product catalog. |