Navigating the intricate landscape of Salesforce CPQ can transform a cumbersome sales process into a streamlined, efficient operation. This blog delves into the heart of product bundling within Salesforce CPQ, offering a comprehensive guide to mastering this powerful tool. By reading, you’ll gain insights into:
- Understanding Product Bundles: Grasp the essentials of what product bundles are and how they can simplify selling complex product offerings.
- Key Concepts and Features: Discover the three types of bundles—Static, Configurable, and Nested—and their unique characteristics.
- Implementing Product Options: Learn how to effectively use product options to customize bundles, including setting up key fields like Bundled, Selected, and Required.
- Strategic Use Cases: Explore real-world applications through use cases that demonstrate how to leverage Salesforce CPQ bundling to meet specific business needs.
Let’s get started!
Bundling in Salesforce CPQ
Selling complicated product offerings can be made easy by the Salesforce CPQ out-of-the-box tool that allows configuring sets of products called “Product Bundle” that can be tweaked as needed.
Product Bundle
A bundle is a group of products that must be sold together. When a sales rep chooses a parent product on the product selection page, all the related products are visible for selection, some of which can be pre-selected and required depending on how the bundle has been configured.
Key Concepts and Features
- There are three types of bundles – “Static”, “Configurable”, and “Nested”.
- The lead product is the bundle itself; the configurator is used to add or remove options from the bundle products.
- The “Configuration Event” field on the product bundle record determines how users can access the Configure Products Page.
- The “Configuration Type” field on the product bundle record defines when users can access the Configure Products page and whether they are required to configure certain options.
Product Option
To specify which products should tag along a lead product, a related product option record is created on the parent product. Product options are individual products that users can select from when configuring a bundle. The individual products in the bundle contribute to the bundle price.
Key Fields
- Bundled: A checkbox field, when selected, will have a fixed quantity, and zero price as the price is included in the main product.
- Selected: Select this checkbox if the product option should be selected by default.
- Required: Select this checkbox if the product is required on the bundle.
- Feature: Look up the feature that includes the option.
Key Considerations
- If the “Bundled” checkbox is selected on a product option record, it does not contribute to the bundle price. Sales reps cannot apply a discount to it.
- Salesforce CPQ presents the bundle options in the quote line editor in accordance with their display order inside the bundle’s configuration when a bundle configuration is saved. Options selected during previous configurations are always present before options chosen during later configurations.
- When using a renewal product option, the Type field’s values for the original and renewal product options must match.
- Discounts from the parent product are not carried over to the renewed product options when “Discounted by Package” is selected.
Product Feature
Product Feature is a bundling tool that gives structure to bundles by organizing similar options into groups and can be used to limit how many different options the sales rep can choose from a particular group.
Key Fields
- Option Selection Method: The way in which users can add products or options to the feature “Click”, “Add,” or “Dynamic”.
- Number: A sequential number that determines how features are sorted in the related list on the product.
- Min Options: Minimum number of options for this feature that must be part of the bundle.
- Max Options: Maximum number of options for this feature that can be selected as part of the bundle.
- Category: Group multiple features under one tab.
- Discount Schedule: Lookup to the Discount Schedule.
Create a Bundle
- A product bundle can be configured using a combination of options and features.
- Select the “Lead Product” to serve as your bundle parent.
- Create “Product Feature” records from the parent product’s related list to organize and structure your bundle.
- Create “Product Option” to tag related products to the lead product.
- Populate Product Option’s Feature lookup field to group options together.
- Optionally create “Option Constraint” records to impose restrictions if needed.
Use Case 1
An American multinational company specializing in consumer electronics, software and services wants to utilize the Salesforce CPQ out-of-the-box tools to streamline its product and service offerings. What should be configured in CPQ to allow the business to organize related products and services that are sold together, with restrictions based on product selection?
Solution: Configure Product Bundles
Reason: With the Salesforce CPQ product bundling tool, a group of products sold together can be bundled. Options can be created on the lead product to allow the addition of related products; similar options can be grouped into features. Constraints can be imposed on option selection by creating Option Constrain records on the bundled product.
Use Case 2
Sun Solar wants to impose restrictions on product option selection on their Solar Panel Console bundled product, which will restrict reps from selecting an option that does not go well when another option is selected and vice-versa. What should be configured in Salesforce CPQ to meet this requirement?
Solution: Create “Option Constraint” records
Reason: Option Constraint records can be created on the bundled product to impose restrictions on option selection. The type can be specified, which will indicate if there is a dependency or exclusion.
Conclusion
In wrapping up our journey through the nuances of Salesforce CPQ bundling, it’s clear that mastering this powerful tool can significantly streamline your sales processes, making the sale of complex products not only easier but more efficient. From understanding the intricacies of product bundles to implementing strategic product options, we’ve covered essential ground to equip you with the knowledge needed to excel.
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