Complex Service Pricing
Requirement: Harmonize the extended service offerings from 7 different product lines using 4 different applications and integrate them all in Siebel in order for sales reps to be able to offer a extended warranty in the same quote as equipment and improve turnaround time. It took anywhere from half a day to two days depending on the complexity of the configuration to get a quote from the service specialists.
Problem: While the entitlements and service plans could be harmonized there was no general agreement that could be reached on pricing methods. Due to an industry precedence or because of the perceived need that they would be hamstrung in being able to react to market conditions or competitor offerings we had to implement all the various pricing methods. Siebel does not support complex service pricing and the entire effort was custom build.
Solution: The pricing methods supported fixed component pricing, uplifts based on equipment offering or base service price, with volume discounts for certain elements with common functionality. For uplifts there was flexibility to control the various percentages based on characteristics of items being covered such as hardware, hardware/software or just software components. Service options also be be priced as fixed, uplifts based on configuration, service plan or service configuration base price. These various pricing methods could be mixed and matched on the same quotes with various service offerings. In order to overcome lack of service product knowledge there were defaults and required options that were automatically added to the quote to prevent errors. These rules just required to be maintained as master data by the service department and the application took care of the making sure that the service offering was valid.