Understanding Products and Items in PeopleSoft CRM

This chapter discusses:

• Products.

• Items.

• The relationship between products and items.

Products

Products in PeopleSoft Customer Relationship Management (PeopleSoft CRM) are what you sell to customers. You might sell physical goods such as cars or refrigerators or intangible services (also known as service products) such as 3000-minute rate plans for wireless phones.

Product Definitions

PeopleSoft CRM represents products by product definitions. A product definition, keyed by product ID and setID, stores all of the product information that company representatives reference to sell or support products.

A product definition and its associated price setup provide the foundation for many features of PeopleSoft CRM, which include product ordering, catalogs, catalog searches, product advisor dialogs, dynamic product packages, and configured products that are accessed from applications such as PeopleSoft Order Capture, PeopleSoft Order Capture Self Service, PeopleSoft Sales, PeopleSoft Advanced Configurator, and so forth. You also use products in PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService, PeopleSoft Support, and PeopleSoft HelpDesk for on-site and off-site customer support processing.

Use the Product Definition component to define products. If you implement both PeopleSoft CRM and PeopleSoft Supply Chain Management (PeopleSoft SCM) or another third-party supply chain management system, you can use the Product enterprise integration point (EIP) to synchronize product data between the two systems.

Note. If you integrate between PeopleSoft CRM and a supply chain management system, you should define all product records in the PeopleSoft CRM system to take advantage of functionality, such as dynamic product packages and configured products, that are offered only in PeopleSoft CRM.

Types of Product Definitions

The types of product definitions in PeopleSoft CRM are:

• Engagement service

  Engagement services are services such as consulting that are priced by PeopleSoft Proposal Management. PeopleSoft CRM integrates with PeopleSoft Proposal Management to exchange quote, status, and pricing information.

  See Integrations with PeopleSoft SCM and PeopleSoft Proposal Management.

• Service agreement

  Service agreements are agreements with a company to provide services, such as repair and maintenance, for a product or to provide a service such as satellite TV or lawn care that is purchased by a customer. Service agreements are priced through the service pricing engine, and do not use the product price or price rule features to retrieve a price. When you set up a service agreement product type, you first set up the agreement template that defines the service that is provided by the agreement.

  See Setting Up and Managing Agreements and Warranties, Defining Pricing Information for Services and Support Offerings.

• Service product

  Service products, such as cellular phone service, are not physical items that are inventoried. The customer purchases the service and not a physical product.

• Standard product

  Standard, or standalone, products do not contain components. You can designate that a standalone product is a configured product by selecting the configuration option. When you define a product, you select whether it is standalone or contains components.

• Package product

  Product packages contain more than one component. A product package can include other packages and are priced either at the product level or as the sum of the package components. When you define a product package, you designate the pricing method.

  Package products can be configured. They can either be lightly configured packages or configured packages using the Advanced Configurator.

• Subscription product

  Subscription products allow you to record orders and quotes consisting of subscription based installment billing periods. This product type may or may not contain a product package.

See Also

Setting Up Product Definitional Elements

Setting Up Products

Items

Items are tangible goods or materials that an organization keeps in stock for sale or use in the future. You use items to keep track of material stocks—goods that are located in physical storage locations such as warehouses, storerooms, or service trucks—in the inventory control system.

Item Definition

You define items either by using the Item Definition component or by using the Item Master EIP (enterprise integration point) to integrate with an inventory or purchasing system.

Because the synchronization of item definitions is one-way from the inventory or purchasing system to the PeopleSoft CRM system, PeopleSoft suggests that you create and update item records in the inventory or purchasing system, then publish them to PeopleSoft CRM.

Note. If you integrate with an inventory or purchasing system, you are unable to update the item definition within PeopleSoft CRM.

See Also

Defining Items

Ordering and Receiving Materials

The Relationship Between Products and Items

In PeopleSoft CRM, a product is associated with only one item (one-to-one relationship). For any physical product that you sell in-store, there is an item equivalent in the inventory system, which establishes the one-to-one relationship. You stock the item on the warehouse shelf and use it for fulfilling orders of that product.

More than one product can use the same item. This typically happens when you position or price the same item differently for different product lines.

A product is not required to have an associated item. For example, a 3000-minute rate plan for wireless phones does not have a physical equivalent on a storage shelf and, therefore, is not associated with any item in the inventory system.

Items are associated with products for fulfillment and servicing purposes in PeopleSoft CRM.

See PeopleSoft Enterprise Managing Items PeopleBook

See PeopleSoft Enterprise Order Management PeopleBook.

See Defining Creation and Update Rules for Installed Products.

Items in PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService

In PeopleSoft CRM, products are used in the Installed Product and Services component and are required. Items are an option in the Installed Product and Services component. The Installed Assets component is for internal assets that are used in PeopleSoft HelpDesk.

Service technicians order items that they need to perform service using the Order Materials component, either as an interunit transfer or purchase order. After the purchasing or inventory system processes the order and ships an item to the technician's truck, the technician installs the item and uses the Time Material Expense page within the Service Order component to report the receipt and usage of the new item, as well as the removal of the old one.

You can set up rules to govern when the system creates or changes the status of installed products.

For example, the system creates an installed product or changes its status when:

• A product is ordered through PeopleSoft Order Capture.

• An automatic shipping notification (ASN) for the product is received from a fulfillment system.

• A material usage or removal is recorded in PeopleSoft Integrated FieldService.

When these activities occur, the PeopleSoft CRM system passes product information along with the inventory system serial number (if applicable) to the installed product.

For example, an electrical appliance retailer might keep stock in a warehouse. The inventory system associates each product with an item on the warehouse shelf. When a customer places a product order and the order comes through the fulfillment system, the associated item of the product is picked from the warehouse and shipped.

The serial number is sent as part of the ASN message, which triggers either the creation of an installed product for the shipped product or an update of the existing installed product for that product.