Introduction:
In Salesforce Revenue Cloud, pricing procedures allow businesses to efficiently automate complex pricing calculations for their products through the use of preconfigured pricing policies. These procedures help companies establish a clear method for calculating discounts and final net prices, ensuring that sales transactions are both consistent and accurate. When a new pricing procedure is initiated, it begins with a blank, usable version, marked as v1, which is ready for further customization. Users can then incorporate pricing elements and lookup tables necessary for making the required calculations.
This modern approach marks a notable advancement from the traditional, code-intensive setup found in Industries CPQ, where intricate pricing calculations depended on a mix of Pricing Plans, Pricing Plan Steps, and Calculation Procedures. With the declarative and visually configurable Pricing Procedures in Salesforce Revenue Cloud, organizations can streamline the setup process, adjust more swiftly, and better align pricing structures with their established business policies. The article delves into creating and configuring pricing procedures, using lookup tables, and transforming business policies into actionable pricing logic within the Revenue Cloud framework.
What is the Pricing procedure?
A Pricing Procedure in Salesforce Revenue Cloud is essentially a blueprint for calculating product prices. Think of it as a customizable recipe that lets you add and adjust various ingredients—like discounts, fees, and taxes—to arrive at the final net price for a product. Pricing procedures take predefined pricing policies and translate them into structured steps that ensure consistent, accurate pricing every time.
When you create a pricing procedure, you start with a clean, blank version (labeled “v1”) that’s ready for customization. From there, you can layer in pricing elements and connect to lookup tables that pull in key variables, such as customer-specific rates, bulk purchase discounts, or any other pricing factors that your business relies on. Each of these elements adds another layer to the pricing process, creating a clear, visual stack that determines how the final price is calculated.
The real power of a pricing procedure is in how it empowers businesses to implement complex pricing strategies without needing custom code or intricate calculations. It makes it easier to update pricing policies, adjust discounts, and ensure pricing consistency across sales teams and channels. Rather than hard-coding logic or managing extensive spreadsheets, businesses can use these procedures to stay responsive to market changes, customer demands, and specific contract terms, all while keeping pricing accurate and aligned with company policies.
Benefits of Pricing Procedures
Implementing pricing procedures in Salesforce Revenue Cloud provides several advantages:
1. Streamlined Configuration and Management
With pricing procedures, businesses can configure complex pricing structures in a visual and manageable way. Instead of relying on custom code or external spreadsheets, companies can define and update pricing elements directly within Revenue Cloud. This also makes it easier for teams to manage and update pricing policies as needed, especially for non-technical users.
2. Consistency and Accuracy in Pricing
Because pricing procedures follow a structured process, they help ensure that the same pricing logic is applied to every transaction. This consistency reduces errors, enhances transparency, and helps avoid pricing discrepancies that could affect customer trust or revenue.
3. Dynamic Adaptability to Changing Market Conditions
Pricing procedures are built to be adaptable. If a business wants to introduce a new discount or modify existing pricing rules, it can do so by updating the relevant elements or lookup tables without extensive changes to the system. This flexibility allows companies to respond more swiftly to market changes, seasonal promotions, or special deals for specific customer segments.
4. Declarative Approach to Complex Pricing
Traditional pricing adjustments often required complex coding solutions. Salesforce Revenue Cloud’s declarative setup for pricing procedures enables teams to configure sophisticated pricing logic through a user-friendly interface, reducing the need for custom code and development resources.
5. Alignment with Business Policies and Customer-Specific Agreements
Pricing procedures can be tailored to reflect specific business policies and contractual agreements. For example, a company can set up customer-specific discounts or tiered pricing models, ensuring compliance with contractual terms and making it easier to honor customer agreements without manual intervention.
Pricing Procedures vs. Traditional Pricing Models
In older systems like Industries CPQ, pricing was often managed through Pricing Plans, Pricing Plan Steps, and Calculation Procedures. These methods could handle complex pricing needs but were code-heavy and time-consuming to update. Pricing Procedures in Salesforce Revenue Cloud, however, offer a more visual and declarative approach. With Revenue Cloud, companies can create and update pricing models much more quickly, reducing reliance on technical resources and creating a setup that’s easy to understand and manage.
Pricing Procedure Setup
Predefined Lookup Tabels:
Lookup tables are crucial in matching your input values with the rows in a decision matrix or decision table. The table then returns the matching row’s output to the pricing procedure or pricing element. You can use predefined tables in the Salesforce Pricing solution or create custom lookup tables. Here’s how to map these variables:
- Input Rule Variables: Inputs from the selected lookup table.
- Output Rule Variables: Outputs from the selected lookup table.
- Input Variables: Inputs provided by the pricing element.
- Output Variables: Outputs generated from the pricing element.
- Additional Variables: Custom output variables that reflect a pricing change. These values can be added using Advanced mode (JSON) during the simulation and are visible in the waterfall view.
Context Definitions
Context definitions contain all the necessary information to run the pricing process. They include the relationship between nodes and their structure, attributes, context tags, and mapping. Mapping updates the nodes and attributes with the correct input data from Salesforce objects. The pricing procedure runs with the associated tags and writes back the results to the context definition that the tags belong to.
Creating a Constant Resource
For variables that don’t have context tags, you can create a constant resource. Constants act as placeholders for fixed values in pricing procedures for inputs, outputs, and other values passed from a pricing element. Here’s an example of how to create a constant for the `VolumeBasedAdjustment` input variable:
1. Create a pricing procedure, and on the Pricing Procedure page, click the necessary icon.
2. In the Resource Manager panel, click Add Resource.
3. Specify the resource type, name, data type, and default values.
4. Save your changes.
Configuring Your Pricing Procedure
Pricing procedures use preconfigured pricing policies to calculate discounts and the final net price for your products. Follow these steps to create and configure your pricing procedure:
1. From App Launcher, find and select Pricing Procedures.
2. Click New and specify the details:
3. Enter a name and press Tab to auto-populate the API Name.
4. Select Pricing as the usage type.
5. Associate the pricing procedure with a context definition.
6. Save your changes.
7. On the Details tab, in the Pricing Procedure Versions section, click the pricing procedure version you want to work on.
8. You will open the Pricing Procedure Builder as a new tab.
9. On the record pages of your new pricing procedure, on the Versions tab, click the necessary icon next to the pricing procedure version and select Open in Pricing Procedure Builder.
10. Click the appropriate icon and select a pricing element from the list. You can also drag the pricing element from the Pricing Elements panel to the builder canvas.
11. In the Lookup Table Details field, select the lookup table and enter the values.
12. Set profile-level access by selecting the profiles that can see the pricing information in Waterfall view after simulation.
13. Save your procedure.
Note: In some cases, to see the Simulate button, users need to deactivate, save, and reactivate procedures that include List Price or Price Adjustment Matrix elements.
Simulate and Activate Your Pricing Procedure:
Before activating your pricing procedure, run simulations to test if the variables entered are accurate. Here’s how:
1. Open a pricing procedure in the Pricing Procedure builder.
2. Add your elements, map them to the appropriate tags, choose a rank, enable the option to include the output, and then save your pricing procedure.
3. Click Simulate.
4. Select an input mode to pass simulation data to the pricing procedure:
5. Simplified: Enter values for the variables defined in the pricing procedure.
6. Advanced: Enter the values for the variables in JSON format in the JSON Input box. Modify the values directly or download the JSON input file, modify its values, and paste it back in the box.
7. If you make more edits, click Simulate again.
The Waterfall View shows every step of the pricing calculation from the list price, the discounts applied, and the changes or taxes on the product to arrive at its final net price. If you’ve set up profile access, only the profiles you selected at the element level can see the pricing information displayed.
When you’re happy with the simulation result, click Activate.
Conclusion
Pricing procedures in Salesforce Revenue Cloud empower businesses to configure detailed and consistent pricing for complex product offerings. Companies can create highly customized and transparent pricing structures that align with their policies by setting up clear rules with lookup tables, defining context for data flow, using constants for fixed values, and carefully configuring each pricing element. Simulation allows users to test each procedure step, providing confidence that the final net price accurately reflects all applicable discounts and adjustments.
In a competitive market, where precision and flexibility are crucial, pricing procedures provide a streamlined, adaptable approach that maximizes revenue potential while meeting customer expectations. With the right setup, Salesforce Revenue Cloud’s pricing procedures simplify pricing complexities and deliver a powerful, automated system that helps you respond to market changes quickly and efficiently.