Discover Product Catalog Management
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Describe Product Catalog Management.
- Explain the key features of Product Catalog Management.
- Identify the personas that interact with Product Catalog Management.
Before You Start
Before you start this module, make sure you complete the following content. The work you do here builds on the concepts and work you do in that content.
Improve the Buying Experience
You have an elaborate set of high-quality, best in the market products that you intend to sell to your customers. Now, you need a way to help your customers evaluate and buy them.
An easy-to-use interface gives the customers a better representation of your product catalog. From the customer's point of view, they:
- Search a curated list of well-defined product categories.
- View product details.
- Find the best price for individual products or product bundles.
Using a well-designed product catalog, you can provide a true shopping cart-like experience where customers can filter, select, and configure products, specify quantities, and see accurate pricing.
Meet Product Catalog Management
Product Catalog Management is the component of Revenue Cloud that acts as the single source of truth for all product-related information. Using Product Catalog Management, you can design a product catalog by focusing on defining products and their attributes, and configuring rules to govern product visibility.
Other components of Revenue Cloud, such as Salesforce Pricing and Transaction Management, use this centralized product definition that Product Catalog Management maintains.
Product Catalog Management offers a rich, intuitive, and user-friendly interface to manage your organization's entire product portfolio. You can:
- Define simple and complex products, and product attributes.
- Organize products into categories and bundle related products.
- Define rules to customize product displays for different customers based on specific conditions, such as geographic location.
A well-defined product catalog provides customers a streamlined product browsing experience while shopping. They can search and select the required products, view the pricing information, and make adjustments.
Explore Product Catalog Management Features
In Product Catalog Management, a product catalog is structured such that you can visualize and define your products, and launch them faster.
It’s time to review various Product Catalog Management features that help you create a product catalog.
Product Catalog
A catalog is a collection of the products that your company sells, organized for easy discoverability. In a catalog, products are further organized into categories and subcategories.
Dynamic Attributes
Products have specific characteristics or properties, known as attributes, that describe them. For instance, a laptop’s attributes include screen size, processor type, and number of ports. Some attributes, such as screen size, are common for laptops and phones.
During purchase, customers can configure certain attributes to suit their needs, while other attributes are fixed. You can group attributes into attribute categories and apply them to different products.
Product Classification
Product classifications are templates that hold a collection of dynamic attributes that you can use to create multiple products which are similar yet different. These products inherit the attributes of the classification and you can override these attributes, if necessary. In short, you can create new products faster using product classifications.
For example, consider Laptop as a product classification that has various attributes. You can create new products such as School Laptop or Gaming Laptop using this product classification.
Products
Products are items and services that you sell to customers. You can define two types of products.
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Simple products: These are standalone products without an associated product hierarchy.
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Bundled products: These are a group of products that are sold together as one unit and hence have a hierarchy. For example, a laptop bundle that contains a laptop, a mouse, and a monitor.
You can define simple and bundled products as:
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Static: You sell these products as is and can’t customize them.
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Configurable: You can customize these products during product selection. For example, in the laptop bundle, configure the mouse as an optional product or configure the number of USB ports when adding the bundle to a quote.
Customers usually want flexibility while purchasing products. Some products are purchased once. Some services are renewed periodically.
To define how to sell products and bundles, Product Catalog Management uses product selling models such as one time, term-defined, and evergreen.
Qualification Rules
By default, all products are available to everyone. For the best shopping experience, you must ensure that the products in the catalog are customized for the customers. For example, if a customer from Canada searches for electrical plugs, show only flat pin plugs. This is where qualification rules come in. Using qualification rules, you can qualify or disqualify products and product categories based on various criteria such as user and account attributes. When a product or a product category meets the criteria set in a qualification rule, it is considered qualified.
Product Catalog Management provides a seamless product discovery experience to sales reps when browsing for products using the Product List page and the Product Details page.
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Product List page: This page lists the available product categories and products within these categories. Sales reps can use the search feature to easily find products using keywords.
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Product Details page: This page displays detailed product information such as the product attributes, bundle hierarchy, and pricing, when a sales rep selects a product.
Discover the Personas
There are two primary personas involved in designing the product catalog: Catalog Admin and Product Designer. Click each persona to learn more about the common tasks they perform using Product Catalog Management.
You now have a basic understanding of Product Catalog Management and its various features. Use Product Catalog Management to design a tailor-made product catalog for your customers that ultimately offers the best buying experience.