Submit and Monitor Orders
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Identify common checks that happen before order submission.
- Locate and submit orders from the customer account.
- Troubleshoot orders.
Order Approvals
Brooks and Sophia have one more thing to check before they submit the orders, namely, order approval status. Infiwave requires margin and legal approvals before order submission. You can build approvals into your order-submission process, or use a separate process as needed.
Margin Approval
Infiwave mandates the review and approval of margins for all orders before submission. Margins are the percentage difference between customer price and organizational cost. They can apply to usage prices, one-time charges, and recurring charges.
Here’s a screen capture of the cart showing usage and one-time margins for an energy customer order.
In this example, the Gen Plus Energy Plan one-time charge is discounted from $35.00 to $28.00, a $7 reduction in price. The original price is crossed out, with the new price shown above.
- The profit is the difference between the price and cost, which is $28 - $22.05 = $5.95.
- The profit margin is the profit divided by the price, in this case $5.95/28 = 21.25%.
To incorporate margins, the product design team configures costs and charges, and while the implementation team adds margin details to the cart.
Legal Approval
Just as Sophia’s about to place the order for Acme, she receives a call from an Acme procurement specialist. He wants to change the purchase terms, but this could violate the recently finalized contract agreement between Infiwave and Acme.
In cases like this, the legal department is required to authorize any changes to the contract documents. If a formal contract-signing process is in place, Sophia must follow it, so she checks with the legal for guidance.
Order Review and Submission
If you can’t remember your last customer’s order details, or you want to view an order you worked on recently, don’t worry! Flip the cards to see what to do with Industries CPQ.
To open an order, click the order number or the order name.
Orders must be valid before submission. For example, you won’t be able to submit an order that’s missing necessary information or one that contains undeliverable product configurations. Make any corrections until the order is valid. After submitting the order, you can monitor the order progress from the customer account page or the order list page.
Order submission is like a swan moving across the lake: It looks graceful and easy, but lots of paddling happens underwater. When you submit an order, Industries CPQ does work behind the scenes.
- The order status changes from Draft to In Progress, and you can no longer edit items directly on the order.
- Industries CPQ creates a detailed list of all the commercial information about the ordered products and services, passing the list and relevant customer details to the order-management system.
- The order-management system consumes the commercial products list, breaks it down into components and tasks, and assembles and delivers the order.
- Finally, Industries CPQ creates an asset on the customer account for each order line item.
Now you know how Industries CPQ handles orders up through submission. Next, let’s turn our attention to what happens once the order-management system receives the submitted order. In the next section, you learn how the Industries Order Management solution fits in.
Industries Order Management
Industries Order Management gives comprehensive order-management capabilities to communications, media, and energy companies. The solution is based on a framework that provides a seamless user experience across all order-management–related modeling and runtime functions. It uses a single master data model (MDM) paradigm with supporting tools so users can collaborate in real time.
Once Industries Order Management receives the commercial products list from Industries CPQ, it decomposes the list into the technical requirements and orchestrates the order.
To find out more, click each component in the diagram.
Want to learn more about order management? Check out the Resources.
Order Status
Sophia is proud of her team. They’re submitting orders left and right to get Infiwave products to customers. Because she’s such a hands on sales manager, Sophia keeps tabs on how orders are progressing. The last thing she wants to see is order fallout! Lucky for Sophia, Industries CPQ gives her handy order statuses. The status of each order changes throughout order capture and fulfillment.
You can check order status from the Account record, on the Related tab, or select Orders from the navigation menu. Alternatively, open the order from the account or orders workspace, and view the status in the order header.
Configurable Order Statuses
Order status is configurable, so your Industries CPQ design team can create custom lifecycle stages and statuses, for example:
- A Draft status that appears while the order is being created and configured.
- A Queued status for future-dated orders or those awaiting processing.
- An In Progress status to show the order is currently being processed by the order-management system.
- An Activated status to indicate that the order-management system has finished processing the order.
Order Options
Despite the best efforts of Sophia’s team, something might go wrong with an order. The good news? You can find detailed information to help you troubleshoot any order issues.
To start, open the order you want to check, go to the order header, and show the action menu.
From here, you can see the following order details.
- Amendment History
- Status Notifications
- Decomposition details
- Orchestration plan details
Let’s find out more about each option.
Amendment History
The Amendment History is a log of all changes made to the order, including for supplemental orders, and the status of each change.
In this example, you can see that a user added a follow-on order to supplement an already activated order.
Status Notifications
Status notifications show the status of an order or supplemental order as it progresses through the order lifecycle, from creation to delivery.
This screenshot shows an order management notification.
The notifications show:
- Whether the order-management system rejected or accepted the order item or supplemental order
- The status of the order or order item, such as Activated or In Progress
- Whether a supplemental order was converted to a follow-on order
View Decomposition
From the action menu, click View Decomposition to see the components of the order, right down to each technical service and resource.
The example screen shows two columns with all the decomposition and fulfillment tasks currently in progress.
The screen shows the constituent parts of the Individual Simple Choice Plan offer (1). The resource facing specification (RFS) for the InfiStream Kids product is being processed for fulfillment (2).
Orchestration Plan
After order submission and decomposition, Industries Order Management generates an orchestration plan. The plan provides the instructions for processing the order.
Here’s an example orchestration plan.
The Orchestration Plan View shows each task performed during order orchestration and the status of each task. To learn more about orchestration, check the Resources section.
Onward and Upward
By monitoring order statuses and related processes, Sophia and her team can communicate more effectively with customers and nip any issues in the bud.
Now you know how to review, submit, and troubleshoot orders in Industries CPQ. That’s all you need to know, right? It’s fine, so long as your customers never change their minds. But as you know, customers can be fickle.
In the next unit, you learn how to manage in-flight orders to cater to the changing tides of the customer mind. Let’s go!
Resources
- Trailhead: Industries Shared Catalog
- Salesforce Help: Create an Order with the Cart in LWC
- Salesforce Help: View Status Notifications for In-Flight Orders
- Salesforce Help: View Amendment History for In-flight Orders in LWC
- Salesforce Help: Industries Order Management