Best Practice Product Modeling for Decomposition

Enterprise Product Catalog (EPC) is where you model and define the technical products to use in the decomposition and fulfillment steps. EPC provides the concept of Object Type to confer the aspect of inheritance to the product model. Modeling the Commercial Catalog using Object Types is standard across all projects. However, the same feature can also be useful for technical products.

Specifications defined in the Technical Catalog are defined like other products, meaning that most of the fields you configure for the Commercial Catalog also apply. However, there are some differences: The technical specifications have no need for pricing, and the product should never be orderable. There are likely no attachments as the product is never exposed in CPQ.

Conversely, there are configurations that are only used by Order Management, such as Scope field. The Scope field is important in controlling the decomposition behavior. For more information, see Setting the Product ScopeSetting the Product Scope. You can also manage product attributes through EPC and use appropriately designed layouts to simplify product creation. It is therefore highly recommended that you design the technical catalog with the use of Object Types.

You model the Commercial Catalog from the perspective of the order capture and assets created for a customer. You model the Technical Catalog, however, to meet the technical requirements of fulfillment and to make the integration with fulfillment systems easier.

There are two main approaches when it comes to modeling the Technical Catalog:

• Flat modeling: The model is only concerned with the RFS layer and is modelled to facilitate the integration with fulfillment systems. Flat modeling typically has less complexity because there are fewer decomposition relationships and mappings.

• Hierarchical model: The model is composed of the CFS layer and the RFS layer. The CFS layer confers an abstraction of the RFS layer that is less technical and more understandable from the commercial side.

To fulfill orders containing commercial products, a fulfillment designer must create corresponding decomposition rules. This may result in a very large technical catalog as well as a considerable amount of repetitive, potentially error-prone rules that are difficult to maintain.

For example, a TV service may have a large number of channels or channel packages that can be defined that all share the same fulfillment process. Another example is a variety of commercial broadband offerings, such as bronze, silver, and gold that are all realized through the same Broadband fulfillment process.

As a fulfillment designer, Salesforce recommends reusing the same entities and the same configuration as much as possible.

Actions associated with the decomposed technical products are generated automatically by Order Management as a result of an analysis of the actions and products on the incoming request against any existing technical inventory held by Order Management. For example, if no assets are located by Order Management for a new order, then all decomposed actions generated by Order Management will be Add, since Order Management assumes it is a new customer.

• Vlocity Solution in Modeling Decomposition
  As a fulfillment designer, you can create a technical product to share by all products of the same class, and therefore define a single decomposition relationship once for the class instead for each commercial product.
• Suppressing Synchronization Check Before Submitting an Order
  Whenever any EPC configurations are changed, the changes must be synchronized with Order Management Plus to avoid unexpected results.