Change In-Flight Orders

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Explain the importance of the point of no return (PONR) for orders.
Differentiate between in-flight order changes and asset change orders.
Amend an in-flight order.
Add new products to an in-flight order.
Cancel an in-flight order.

Change Is Good!

Brooks has arrived at the office in a great mood. The order Brooks submitted for Carole White yesterday has put Brooks over their sales target for the month. Brooks’s day is about to get even better—Carole calls to upgrade one of the products in yesterday’s order.

Brooks knows that making this change is easy with Industries CPQ. First, they check the order status and see that it’s still in progress, and the items aren’t past the point of no return (PONR). Phew! This means Brooks can amend the order for Carole.

Point of No Return

The PONR is the point at which it’s no longer possible to stop or make changes to an order. Think of a pizza. Once it’s delivered to the customer, the toppings can’t be changed.

To understand PONR, consider order fulfillment. The order-management system uses orchestration plans, which map out the steps for completing orders. These plans assign manual or automated steps to products, such as picking warehouse stock or updating inventory data. Your team may set one or more PONRs where you can no longer cancel or modify an order.

In-progress orders that haven’t passed the PONR, are considered in-flight orders. Use a supplemental order to amend an in-flight order by applying what you learned in this unit.

If the order has been processed, or the items you want to change are past the PONR, don’t worry, there’s still hope! In this case, create a change order based on the assets you want to amend. To learn more, complete the Industries CPQ Asset Management badge.

In-Flight Order Amendments

Let’s get back to Carole’s request to upgrade her order, and learn how Brooks can make it happen.

Brooks starts by opening Carole’s order from yesterday. Here’s the order header.

Order Status in the Order header.

Notice that the order status is In Progress, which means it’s an in-flight order that Brooks can easily amend.

Brooks clicks Amend in the order header. This opens the supplemental order cart where they can make amendments.

Brooks chooses InfiStream OnDemand, the upgraded service that Carole requested, and adds it to the cart. Brooks then cancels the existing InfiStream Kids service, which Carole wants to remove. Here’s how the cart looks now.

Cart tab of the Order screen with two line items.

The InfiStream OnDemand service (1) line item appears with a price in the cart and an order action status of New. InfiStream Kids (2), the original order line item that Brooks canceled, is struck through. It no longer has an attached price and has a status of Cancel.

Brooks checks the details. Brooks knows that sometimes, when a customer changes their order, administration or penalty fees apply. It’s important to notify the customer of any charges like this before submitting the order.

Carole White’s happy with the changes, so Brooks clicks Submit Order (3) to send the supplemental order to the order-management system. The system stops processing the original order, checks what needs to be undone and replaced, and adjusts the order.

You can check the progress of supplemental orders in the same way as the original order.

When you submit an amended order, the order and fulfillment status change to Superseded. At this point, you can’t make any changes to the original order cart.

In-Flight Order Cancellation

From time to time, customers change their mind and decide to cancel orders. Nobody wants to lose business, but on the bright side, Industries CPQ makes canceling in-flight orders a piece of cake. It’s just one way to keep customers happy, right?

Brooks starts by finding the order and checking the order header.

Cancel button in the order header.

The order status is In Progress, so it hasn’t yet passed the PONR.

Brooks clicks Cancel and follows a guided cancellation process set up by the Infiwave sales team.
The order-management application rolls back all the processing it’s completed so far on the order.
The order status changes to Canceled, and all the items in the cart are shown struck through with an activity status of Cancel.

All that’s left for Brooks to do in the order cart is to delete the order record, as a matter of housekeeping.

As you’ve learned, the sales process doesn’t always end once you’ve submitted the order. Thank goodness for Industries CPQ, which gives you all the tools for quickly changing or canceling in-flight orders.

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