Selling packages and solutions is viewed as a considerable value driver and has been identified as a trend in several industries. Do you agree? What are your experiences from implementing such scenarios?
Which kinds of packages and solutions do the businesses you work with offer to their customers? Who are the stakeholders, how do their KPIs benefit from this approach?
Selling Packages and Solutions – what is meant by this?
A Package is a super-ordinate product which bundles different products (those can be tangible products, services, or service contracts) into one offering. The package items can, for example, allow selection options, they can be inter-related, and every item can be offered at a package-specific price.
While a package could, of course, be composed to contain tangible products only, the term Solution here refers to packages that tie tangible products together with one-time services and/or service contracts.
(Here is a system demo which introduces the capabilities in SAP CRM 7.0).
Stakeholders and implementable steps
Looking at Packages and Solutions from a value chain perspective, the process starts with composing the package, i.e. creating the optimal offer. The key organizational stakeholders in an end-to end scenario would be Marketing, Sales and Operations:
Supporting this value chain, a respective scenario would distinguish three implementable steps:
Campaign and Offer Management - which, besides general campaign management, provides the capabilities to bundle products and / or services into packages and define package-specific prices. Packages can be defined quickly and easily, but also allow for complex rules and dependencies.
Multi-Channel Order Capture - where Selling Solutions means releasing a package quotation in CRM and automatic triggering of the subsequent processes. Depending on the package composition, this involves the processing of CRM sales orders and/or CRM service orders and/or CRM service contracts.
Sales and Service Order Execution - that is, the processing of the generated sales- and service transactions. Service order execution includes resource planning, service order confirmation in CRM and transfer of internal orders to ERP. Sales orders are transferred to ERP SD for delivery and shipment. Service contract execution means service planning in CRM, creation of internal orders and revenue recognition in ERP. All transactions can be invoiced in CRM Billing - in case of service contracts this is done periodically.
Packages and the Package Quotation were introduced in the release CRM 2007. A wide range of very different usecases is possible with respect to package composition details and subsequent processes. Looking at active implementations, it will be interesting to see which KPIs are supported best with which scenario setup.
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