Pricing and promotion

The Pricing Service is a component of Sterling™ Order Management System Software. It acts as a hub for every pricing calculation that occurs in Sterling Order Management System Software.

Support for pricing in Sterling Order Management System Software requires additional licensing as an optional component.

The Pricing component provides the ability to define a pricing organization and to store and maintain all the pricing and promotion related data for that organization. This pricing organization can be used by other organizations modeled in the system.

This module includes two distinct functionality:

Model the price of an item and price list.
Model promotions for items, orders, and promotions.

Price lists

Pricelists are used to model unit price. Price can be defined as base unit price, at quantity tier level with additional flexibility to apply adjustments to the base unit price. Pricelists can be assigned to specific customers, for a region, for a specific or group of stores. A price list is a list that defines pricing for specific items or SKUs. It consists of header information and a list of products and their list prices. The header contains information such as the name, description, currency, effectivity dates, and status of the price list.

The price list lines associate products with a list price and show either positive or negative adjustments. Each price list line has zero or more quantity tiers, and each tier can have its own list price. Each price list line also has zero or more effectivity date tiers and each tier can have its own price.

A price list can be inherited from a master price list, and additional percentage adjustments or absolute adjustments can be defined for the child price list. Pricelists can be assigned to specific customers, customer profiles, for a region, for a specific or group individual of stores or group of stores based on profile(s). Pricing lists can be administered through the Sterling Business Center application.

Promotions

Promotions are modeled as pricing rules and can be defined for a store, an entire system, for a particular customer, and so on. Promotions can be modeled as:

Pricing rules: Used to model automatic promotions your business is running such as Buy one get one free, free shipping on category of items. These promotions are applied automatically to an order when it meets a certain criteria.

Coupons: Used to model scenarios such as vendor and manufacturer coupons. These are applied when a particular coupon ID is applied to an order and that order meets the criteria defined for the coupon.

Non instant pricing rules: Used to model scenarios such as store rewards, cash back, mail in rebates. These promotions are applied automatically to an order when it meets a certain criteria. They are associated with a non billable charge name such they do not impact actual order total but can be use further processing.

In addition to managing prices for products using price lists, you can manage prices using pricing rules and coupons. Pricing rules and coupons manage special offers, discounts, and charges at either the order level or the line level. A pricing rule defines a set of conditions and actions. When the condition of a rule is satisfied, the corresponding action is taken. A rich variety of conditions can be defined for example coupons based on a category of items, a minimum amount , quantity purchased and attributes. For example, a promotion can be set to apply to a category of items (electronics) where brand is X. Pricing rules can be assigned to specific customers, customer profiles, for a region, for a specific or group individual of stores or group of stores based on profile(s). Pricing rules and coupons can be administered through the Sterling Business Center application.

Manual adjustments

The Pricing Service enables a Field Sales Representative (CPQ) or a Customer Service Representative (OM) to manually adjust the price of a line total or an order total during the creation or modification of an order. The adjustment may be a discount or an additional charge.

For example:

In a quote scenario, a Field Sales Representative or a CSR can manually add a discount to a line, based on the negotiation between the buyer and the seller.
If a customer is not satisfied, or has had a bad experience with any of the services that are provided, a Field Sales Representative or a CSR can appease the customer by manually applying a discount to the order total.

Surcharges

Sterling Order Management System Software enables you to add shipping surcharges to items that have a specific set of features you define. For example, an organization can charge an additional amount of $20 as surcharge to ship items that require refrigeration.

Manual pricing rules

Manual pricing rules enable you to perform price adjustments for a quote along a single or multiple lines, including the price of the components in a bundle item in a quote. A manual pricing rule can be set to be effective in defined date ranges and to be called when certain conditions are met. A manual pricing rule is characterized by conditions and effects. When a condition pertaining to a manual pricing rule is satisfied, the corresponding effect is applied to the corresponding quote’s price. There are various price adjustments that a customer sales representative can apply to the price of an entire quote, a line item or an option in the quote. For example a dealer can give the factory discount, marketing discount, and special pricing discount on an item. Manual pricing rules can thus be applied to a quote as required.