Configuring product offerings and catalogs

Release version: Washingtondc

Updated January 4, 2024

2 minutes to read

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Summary of Configuring Product Offerings and Catalogs

This section details the configuration of product offerings and catalogs to support Sales and Order Management agents in pre-sales, order capture, and post-sales activities. As a catalog manager, you will collaborate with a pricing administrator to establish product offerings that reflect your organization's services and pricing. The CSM Configurable Workspace will be utilized for these configurations starting with the May 2024 release.

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Key Features

Create a product offering catalog: Establish the main entity of the catalog hierarchy, allowing for organization through categories and subcategories.
Create a product offering category: Define categories to help agents easily navigate and browse offerings.
Create product characteristics: Specify attributes that differentiate product offerings, impacting their configuration and pricing.
Create product offerings: Add offerings to catalogs, making them available for agents to create opportunities, quotes, and orders once published.
Add product visuals: Include images to assist agents during the order creation process.
Create product offering relationships: Bundle products and services to facilitate streamlined ordering and special pricing.
Add related contracts: Associate contracts with product offerings for seamless integration in Sales and Order Management.
Add a unit of measure: Specify measurement units for each product offering.
Create product offering versions: Manage updates to existing offerings by creating new versions.
Create product offering relationship groups: Group related bundles for better organization in Sales and Order Management.
Configure needs analysis: Develop templates for agents to assess product selection based on customer needs.
Export and import catalog entities: Facilitate the transfer of catalog entities between ServiceNow instances, such as moving from a non-production to a production environment.

Key Outcomes

By effectively configuring product offerings and catalogs, your organization can provide a more organized and efficient sales process, enhance the user experience for agents, and ensure that products are accurately represented and priced. This structured approach facilitates better management of product offerings, ultimately leading to improved customer satisfaction and streamlined operations in Sales and Order Management.

Create product offerings and the associated product catalogs that can be used by Sales and Order 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.

Workflow infographic that shows the main product catalog configuration steps, which are described in the following table along with other product catalog features that can be configured. — Figure 1. Product catalog and pricing configuration workflow

Note:

Review your entitlements to see the product offering options available to you.

Overview of product catalog configuration

Starting with the May 2024 release of Sales and Order 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.

Table 1. Product offering and catalog management configuration tasks
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 and Order 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.
Add related contracts to product offerings	Add related contracts to your product offerings in the Sales and Order Management application.
Add a unit of measure to a product offering	Add a unit of measure (UOM) to a product offering in Sales and Order 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 and Order 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.