THE ESSENTIALS

A product is a physical good or a service that your business offers to contacts and partners to either purchase or subscribe to. CRM.COM maintains detailed information that describes a product such as its SKU, name, characteristics and brands. Product images, description and categories are essential to showcase your products to contacts in front-end systems.

Products are created from two workflows. Key user based, within CRM.COM using the user-interface or Import Data utility or APIs; or automatically when a purchase is received from a Point-of-Sale for a new item.

Products may have a flat, simple structure and fixed prices, but you can also offer more advanced ones by configuring them as bundles or with multiple variations and price terms. Regardless of their structure, each product must be well-defined before it can be available for sale to your contacts.

CRM.COM’s Pricing enables you to set up simple or complex pricing strategies that can accommodate multiple currencies, tailored for specific contacts and pricing terms.

Let’s get familiar with some Product-related key terms and features.

Type

Product Types encapsulate a product’s Classification, Composition and optionally, Characteristics - information that show the product’s behaviour, structure and how it can be offered to your contacts.

Classification

Products in CRM.COM are classified as either services or physical goods, with further breakdowns based on their nature and behaviour:

• Traceable physical goods - Tangible items that can be traced using a unique identifier (serial number), e.g., smartphones and decoders.

• Non-traceable physical goods - Tangible items not tracked individually, but are measured based on quantity (e.g. magazines, cables).

• Termed Service - Services contacts subscribed to and billed for on a recurring period based on their price terms (e.g. OTT service, gym subscription).

• One-Time Service - Services billed once (upon ordering) for a specific amount and offered to contacts for a specific duration (e.g. Pay-Per-View, Data for one week)

• Usage Service - Services billed based on usage consumed over a period of time, such as Voice or petrol refueling. Usage services can only be provided to contacts when they subscribe to a Termed or One-time service.

• Expense Service - Services used to charge contacts for an extra fee like delivery fees for orders or cancellation penalties for subscriptions.

Composition

Composition shows a product’s structure i.e. whether it is offered as a flat one or has a more advanced structure:

• Flat - A single, flat product

• Fixed Bundle - A fixed set of flat products, offered as one.

• Flexible Bundle - A set of multiple products that a contact selects from during ordering to form the product they want to buy.

• Composite - A product sold in multiple variations and contacts select which one to purchase.

Modifiers

Modifiers are products used to change the content of another, base product. They are not standalone, i.e. cannot be sold individually but only as part of a Composite product. They might have a price and contacts select among various modifier options during their ordering.

Accessibility

Accessibility gives control over which Organisation in your Business Network is allowed to keep stock, sell and fulfill your products.

Ownership

The Owner shows who officially manages the properties of a given product. Possible Owners include your business or a Merchant within your Business Network or even a B2B Merchant. Ownership defines who can configure the product.

Order Catalogues

Order Catalogues are menus that may include a sub-set of the entire of your product catalogue, and you publish them when you want to differentiate your product offerings per location, supply method or time of the day in front-end systems.

Tags

Tags are labels assigned to products to categorise, track and group them for more flexible filtering and reporting purposes. Refer to the Generic Settings manual to find out how to configure Tags.

Managing the Product Catalogue

Navigate to Commerce > Products > Products Catalogue to see and manage existing products.

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Creating Products

Select Create Product to create a new product.

Follow this step-by-step setup to quickly complete the minimum required product information. After creation, more details and prices can be added to the product.

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Product Offering

First provide the basic information of your product offering:

• Select whether you want to create a new Service or a Physical good. This selection displayes a list of Product Types to select from. Selecting a Type is mandatory as it determines the product’s Classification and Composition.

• Optionally, for physical goods, explicitly specify whether the product is a modifier or not, this information is utilised when you set up Composite products.

• Enabling the restricted visibility option denotes that this product will:

  • Be eligible for use in Reward Offers

  • Not be available for ordering

  • Not appear in the best-selling products section on front-end apps

  • Not be included in the recommended products section on front-end apps

Product Information

Next, provide some additional product details.

• Name - The title or label of the product, used to promote it to front-end systems for contacts to select

• SKU - Stock Keeping Unit - a unique code or identifier assigned to a product - used to uniquely identify each product, stock tracking and managing Orders accurately. SKU cannot be changed after the product is created.

• Description - Clear description of the product, essential for describing your offerings in front-end systems.

• Images - Upload a high-quality image to make the product easily recognisable on the front-end. Be sure to follow the recommended size, format, and resolution. There are two types of images to choose from:

  • Image – The main product image.

  • Carousel – Extra images (e.g., different angles) with optional captions. Use the drag-and-drop icon to change their order.

• Categories - Categories help in organising your products in a hierarchical structure, the one your contacts browse in a front-end’s menu. A product can be assigned to multiple categories.The sections your customers browse in the app menu

• Family - Families are used to group products with similar traits, like decoders or televisions. Each product can belong to one Family.

• Brands - A commercial brand can be assigned to a Product to group it for Reward Offers and Analytics. Each product can have only one brand.

• Tags - Use tags to easily filter and report on your products

Pricing

Set the product’s price by specifying the pricing model and monetary value. After creating the product, more prices can be added for multiple currencies, pricing terms and contact conditions. For detailed pricing setup, check the Pricing manual.

Stock Information

Specify inventory-related settings for your physical goods:

• Is this product stockable? - Determines whether you will maintain stock levels in your business’s warehouse.

• Can this product have a negative balance? - Allow the stock level to drop below zero?

Provisioning Information

Determine whether the product’s information will be forwarded to third-party, Provisioning Provider integrations. This option is available only for Termed and One-time services and for Traceable physical goods. For such products, you will also have to set up their provisioning information.

Managing Products

Continue by specifying detailed product set-up to complete your products. Note that depending on the selected classification/composition, each product’s setup varies.

External Code

An external reference code, used only for filtering and integration purposes. It can either be set by a user or by the product synchronisation process.

Accessibility

Restrict which Organisations can fulfill your products.

• Product accessibility - Which Organisations may keep items in stock and deliver or offer pickup.

  • across Business Network - Default option, that shows that all Organisations within your Business Network can fulfill.

  • only by the Business - The product can only be sold when ordering from your Business.

  • across Business Network and specific B2B Merchants - Any Organisation in your Business Network and selected B2B Merchants that your Business is a Peer of.

  • by Business and specific Merchants - The product can only be purchased from your Business and selected Organisation of your Business Network.

• Product B2B accessibility - Share your products with other Businesses in the CRM.COM platform. Your business is still the owner of shared products (you manage them and fulfill them) but these products are also available within the other business’s (B2B Peer’s) product catalogue.

  • only by the Business - The product can only be ordered, managed and fulfilled by your Business.

  • by specific B2B Peers - The product is shared with selected businesses (B2B Peers), it’s included in their catalogue but your business will still fulfill it.

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Taxes

The Taxes tab provides overview of the applicable taxes for the specific Product. Refer to the Taxes manual for further information on configuring taxes.

Modifiers & Components

Modifiers are products that cannot be sold separately, but only as part of another product, a Composite one.

Components on the other hand are the items that comprise a bundle, Fixed or Flexible one, but they can also be sold individually.

The commonality between these two is that they are included in a Composite or Fixed/Flexible bundle compositions. The composition denotes the products that are available for selection to contacts during ordering.

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Modifiers for a composite product (e.g. a pizza)

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Components for a bundle product (e.g. a subscription service)

Select Add Components or Add Modifiers accordingly to define the composition in each case.

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When setting up the composition you must specify one or more of:

• Individual products: Select an individual product to be available for selection or

• Groups of products - Select a group of products that indicates that contacts may select one or more products of this group to order from. A group is either a product Type, Category, Family or Component set.

Then determine restrictions on individual products must be included in the order:

• Should this product be included with the main product?

  • Mandatory - This product will be included in the order by default and cannot be removed.

  • Optional - The product can be optionally selected by contacts.

For product groups define:

• How many products from the selected group can be added to the main product? - Set a minimum and maximum number of items that can be ordered from this group.

• Default - Optionally select a default product from each group to be included by default in orders.

• Mandatory: One of the products of the group can be set as a mandatory, meaning that is added by default and cannot be removed.

Finalise the composition’s set up by defining whether each added product will be price inclusive or not:

• Price Inclusive - Contacts do not pay an extra amount for each added product. If not, the product’s price will be added to the main product’s price.

Variants

A Composite product is sold in multiple variations, called Variants. Variants derive from the Composite product’s characteristics, based on all combinations of their values. Each Variant product has its own SKU, name, description, it may also have its own price. Additionally, you may maintain stock levels for each Variant in your warehouse.

The Composite product is the one that your contacts see in front-end menus, but when they actually order they have to order one of its variations.

Example

A Composite product (e.g. a smartphone) has two characteristics; ‘Colour’ with values Black and White, and ‘Capacity’ with values 128GB and 256GB. So, this composite product might have up to 4 variants, one variant for each colour-capacity combination (Black-128GB, Black-256GB, White-128GB and White-256GB). During ordering, contacts can choose the color and storage capacity of their smartphone, indirectly ordering the variant of their choice.

To create Variants for a product:

• Expand the Variants section and click Add Variants.

• Characteristics - Select from the pre-configured characteristics and their values. Characteristics (and optionally their allowed values) are defined in the Product Type.

• As you select characteristics and values, you will see one Variant product for each combination with a default SKU and name, automatically generated based on the composite product’s attributes and characteristics.

• Optionally, you may also select from products in your existing catalogue to add using the Add Existing optio

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Adding product variants

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Product variant definition

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Product variants added

Up-Sell Products

Upsells are products offered to your contacts at checkout as a higher-value alternative to the one they included in their basket, encouraging them to spend more.

Cross Sell Products

Cross-sell products are related or complementary products offered alongside the basket items and they are offered at checkout so as to encourage additional purchases.

Device Characteristics

Specified in Traceable Physical goods and are used to indicate which characteristics will be inherited and defined when a Device - an instance of such products - is created. This means that the product’s setup includes the characteristics whereas each Device with be assigned the value. For example, a SIM card’s characteristics is its MSISDN so when SIM devices are created, each device is assigned a unique MSISDN number.

Provisioning Information

Additional information required for successful provisioning to a Provisioning Provider. For:

• Termed/One-time services - Select the Provisioning Provider(s) to provision the service and its code as this is defined in the provider’s side.

• Traceable physical goods - Select the Provisioning Provider.

Copying a Product

When copying a product, only selected attributes, such as the type, components, and modifiers, are copied. Prices are not copied. The user must provide the new product’s name, SKU and variants (if a composite product is copied).

Bulk Update Options

Users can select multiple products from the Product Catalogue summary screen to update specific attributes simultaneously, eliminating the need to modify each product individually.

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• B2B Accessibility - Share products with your B2B Peers

• Update Products - Modify the Family and/or Brand of the selected products to the ones specified by the user.

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Deleting a Product

A product cannot be deleted if any of the following conditions are true:

• The product has been invoiced at least once.

• The product is included in at least one non-completed Order, active Subscription, or Service Request.

• The product is included in a bundle as a component.

• The product is included in an order catalogue.

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Managing the Order Catalogue

Creating an Order Catalogue

Navigate to Commerce > Order Catalogues. Select Create Order Catalogue to create a new one.

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Name

The order catalogue name - for internal use only.

Display Name

The order catalogue name as it will be displayed when ordering.

Supply Methods

Specify whether the order catalogue is valid for specific supply methods (e.g., delivery only).

Images

Upload an image to showcase the order catalogue in the front-end.

Once the order catalogue has been created, additional options are made available.

Time Availability

If the order catalogue isn’t available for ordering at all times, specify the days and times when it will be available.

Accessibility

Optionally specify which organisations have access to the Order Catalogue, i.e., they can sell the items in the catalogue, and the Merchants/Venues fulfill the Orders.

• only by the Business - The products in the order catalogue can only be purchased when ordering from the Business.

• across Business Network - This is the default setting. The products in the order catalogue can only be purchased from any organisation in the Business network.

• by Business and specific Merchants - The products in the order catalogue can only be purchased from the Business and selected Merchants.

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Categories

Organise products of an Order Catalogue using its categories. Create parent and sub-categories and start adding products to each one. You can sort categories themselves and also products within each category.

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Two-level categories example

Pricing Utility

The Pricing Utility allows you to search and perform bulk price updates for a group of products, all from a single screen

Navigate to Commerce > Products > Pricing Utility to access the Pricing Utility. Note that only Owner users or users with Manage Product Catalogue permissions can access this screen.

• Retrieve product prices for a specific pricing area (Contact, Segment or Sales Model).

• Identify products without prices for a pricing area.

• Add new prices to multiple products at once.

• Modify product prices in one go.

• Remove product prices.

First, choose how to search for products - by name, type, brand, family, or classification.

Then, select the pricing area to retrieve products for. If the price changes apply for specific countries of agreement, then select the respective countries.

Then click Search Prices to view the all prices of the selected products. To update prices, click the pencil icon next to a product, then select Apply Changes to save any changes.

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Product Settings

Navigate to Settings > Commerce > Products to configure product-related settings.

Products

Define settings relevant to how Products will be configured.

Product Name Rules

Define whether duplicate product names are permitted.

Brands

Define any commercial product brands.

Families

Define product families to group products of similar characteristics.

Categories

Define categories with meaningful names in a hierarchical structure. One or more categories can be assigned to each Product.

Categories for Ordering

To make the main category and sub-category visible on the app/portal, activate the Available in order menus checkbox.

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Product Categories

Characteristics

Create additional attributes for products, which can be included in the Product Type definition or directly set on products. Characteristics - optionally - may have multiple values.

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Characteristic with values

Types

The Product Type definition determines the Product's behaviour and its configuration.

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The Product Classification selection determines the Composition options too. Optionally, select Characteristics and their values to restrict the characteristics available for products of this type.

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Product Type with characteristics

Component Sets

CRM.COM provides you the ability to group products together, regardless of their classification and composition, into Component Sets. Use Component sets when setting up your Composite and Flexible bundles and allow your contacts to order any of the products of this set.

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Synchronisation

Configure settings to be used when synchronising products through third-party systems. Define the default behaviour when synchronising, and set the default attribute values that will be automatically assigned to the newly created products or to the existing ones if not specified.

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Synchronising Products

Product synchronisation updates products in CRM.COM based on an external system, which acts as the main source. Updates happen through a Web API call. Settings can be configured for both new and existing products. In short:

• New products are created in CRM.COM along with their definitions - e.g. a new product, ‘Homemade Lemonade’, is created along with a new product category, ‘Cold Drinks’.

• Existing products in CRM.COM are updated, e.g. the description and price of ‘Forest Fruit Smoothie’ is changed.

• A Product Synchronisation Automation can also be set up and triggered when the Product Synchronisation API is called to carry out further actions.

Tier Paths

Tier Paths are only used for Termed Services and define the permitted changes between subscription services.

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Dependency Rules

Dependency rules make sure that subscription requirements are followed when purchasing or changing services. There are a few types of dependencies:

• A service may require a physical device to be included.

• A service may require other specific services to be active in the same subscription.

• A service may not be allowed to co-exist with certain other services in the same subscription.

If a new service has a dependency on another service to work, that required service must be added to the subscription.
If a new service can’t exist with another non-churned service, then that service must be removed from the subscription.

These dependencies are managed manually during the order process and must be confirmed by the contact.

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Dependency rule with ‘Requires’ condition

Measurement Units

The unit of measurement of Usage services, i.e. which unit is used to measure their consumption, e.g. GB of Data, minutes for phone calls.

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AI Tool

CRM.COM has an in-built AI tool that can be used after products are created or imported to generate descriptions or assign categories.

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The AI Tool has two different options to be used separately:

• Product Categorisation - To assign a product category to products without a category.

• Product Description - To create suitable missing product descriptions based on the product name and category.

Select Preview to see an example of how the first 10 products will be affected.

Generic Settings

Navigate to Settings > Commerce > Products to configure product-related settings.

Sales Model

Sales models are assigned to contacts to define how these contacts are invoiced by your business. For example determine which contacts are invoices based on your Retail or Wholesale prices. Then, include Sales models within your products' pricing conditions.

CRM.COM has two predefined sales models:

• Retail - This is by default assigned to Contacts of type Person.

• Wholesale - This is by default assigned when creating a Contact of type Company.

Additional sales models can be configured and assigned to Contacts.

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Reference Material

It may be useful to refer to the following manuals for further reading about Products and Order Catalogues.

Products APIs

• Public key

• Secret key

Business Network

Business Network

Orders

Orders

Promotions

Promotions

Automations

Automations

Integrations

Integrations

Pricing

Pricing

Subscriptions

Subscriptions

Billing

Billing

Inventory

Inventory and Devices

Integrations

For service provisioning.

Integrations

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