Pricing in SAP CRM

Pricing

In any business transaction like sales order or service order, pricing is used to determine the cost of the item or product in that transaction. Every time we make a new business transaction, we do not need to enter the prices for the item or product manually into the system. We prepare a customer master record and do some customizing in the system so that system automatically finds the price for that item. The whole of the procedure in customizing the prices is known as pricing procedure in sap crm. In sap crm, the pricing is maintained by internet pricing and configurator(IPC).

IPC

Main role of IPC is that it provides the pricing data to different components in the SAP CRM. It is mainly responsible for pricing throughout entire SAP CRM system. IPC is connedcted to CRM components, and CRM components gets the prices from the IPC. IPC fetch price from CRM Database and provides to entire CRM components. IPC is connected to database by RFC. IPC provides faster access to pricing data. If IPC is not there in the system, CRM components will fetch data directly from the database, making the system slow. The concept of IPC can be understood by following picture.

Pricing Procedure

Pricing procedure is mainly a calculation rule on pricing on what type of formula or calculation should be applied in a transaction. Pricing procedures defines all the valid condition types, calculation of that condition types in any transaction.


Every pricing procedure have different type of condition types. The condition types are the calculation rule of  prices. How you want to calculate the price, whether you want to give the discount to the price or charge some taxes.

Pricing procedure determination is influenced by following elements:
- Sales organization
- Distribution channel
- Document pricing procedure (assigned to transaction type)
- Customer pricing procedure (assigned to business partner as billing data in sales area data)
- Division (optional)

Apart from Condition types, there is one more important concept in pricing, and that is Access Sequence. Access sequence is basically a search strategy which system uses to find a data in condition type.

Creating Pricing Procedure

Though the pricing procedure topic is a very vast topic. But for basics, there are two simple steps in creating a princing procedure. First we make a copy of the standard sap crm pricing procedure. Then we determine that pricing procedure in our transaction. Lets see how..

Go to SPRO > CRM > Basic Functions > Pricing > Define Setting for pricing > Create Pricing Procedure.

Select OCRM01 or OCRM02, which is SAP standard pricing procedure. Copy As, and edit it with a new name and description.

This will create a pricing procedure in CRM. Now, We have to Determine this pricing procedure in the transaction.
Go to  SPRO > CRM > Basic Functions > Pricing > Pricing in Business Transaction > Determine Pricing Procedure.

Make a new entry with your Sales Organization, Distribution Channel, Division, Document Pricing Procedure which should be B which is standard w/o tax, Customer Pricing Procedure should be 1 which is standard and the pricing procedure which we created in earlier steps.

Save the entries and your pricing determination is done.
Some basic thing you should keep in mind before using the pricing procedure.

Go to org structure, and make sure you have selected correct currency in the attribute section.

Make sure the customer pricing procedure and currency is maintained in the Billing section of respective BP.

Marketing Plan and Marketing Strategy

Marketing Plan and Marketing Strategy

Marketing in today's scenario is very important. To put simply, marketing is the action or business of promoting and selling products or services. Today if you want to see your product, getting your product known is very important. to make market and customer aware about your product is essential for your business growth. Marketing product or services generates customer awareness and demand for your product. Marketing basically begins with a strategy and plan.

Marketing Strategy and Marketing Plan. ?

Marketing strategies are nothing but what goal you want to accomplish, whereas a marketing plan contains all the details of how you are going to achieve your goals. With a proper marketing plan and its execution, you make sure your customer know about your product or services you are offering.

Marketing Plan and Campaign

Marketing Plan is top level plan which consists of all the other plans and campaigns. A marketing plan mainly consists of Campaign. Campaigns runs on the basis of what objectives and tactics you would need to fulfil your marketing plan. So basically A marketing plan can be structured as

Campaign

One of the main business activities in CRM marketing is the business to the client interaction. This simply means a company want to interact with large number of customers or prospect customer. In such scenario Campaign management is used for carrying out marketing campaign as per marketing plan. The two elements of campaign - Objectives and Tactics.

In SAP CRM Web Ui, there is a particular profile for Marketing professional where all the marketing activities are done. It is called MARKETINGPROFESIONAL.

Prerequisites concepts for creating a Marketing Plan. 

There are some concepts we need to have in order to create a successful marketing plan. Those are
- How to configure marketing plan profile.
- Define types and objectives
- Segmentation and creation of External Lists
- Mailforms

How to configure and define marketing plan profile.

For configuring marketing plan profile we need to go to GUI. Go to SPRO > CRM > Marketing > Basic Data > Define Types Objectives and Tactics. Copy from the standard for marketing plan, and give a short name

• A new marketing plan is created.
• Now do the same for campaign. Copy from the standard.
• A new campaign is created.
• Now we have to define objectives and tactics for our campaign. To do so go to SPRO > CRM > Marketing > Basic Data > Define Objectives
• Create a new objectives under any name. Create a suitable objective.
• A new objective to reach "1 million sale" is created.
• Now go to define tactics. Tactics are generally that through which we wants to achieve our objectives.Here we will be creating those tactics that will fulfil our objectives of 1 million sales. For tactics, go to SPRO > CRM > Marketing > Basic Data > Define Tactics
• Go to new entry to create tactics. Here we will create some tactics which will be useful for company to achieve the objectives.
• Now again go to SPRO > CRM > Marketing > Basic Data > Define Types Objectives and Tactics. Select your marketing plan and click on Objectives
• Select new entry, and enter the objectives you created in earlier steps.
• Now select this objective and go to tactics.
• Select New entry and look for the tactics which you have created for above objectives.
• We have selected the tactics for our objectives.

This was all of the configuration related to a marketing plan and campaign which are done in GUI. There are two more concepts for Marketing plan. Those are Segmentation and Mail forms.

Segmentation

Campaigns in marketing plan are executed for a certain segment. The segment is the target the campaign is executed for.

First we create attributes for BP segmentation maintaining data source for segmentation. We create a target group using segmentation and then target group are used with marketing activity to address a particular set of customers or prospects. 

External List Management 

We can create a target group for segmentation by using external list also. External List Management is used for uploading BP to the CRM externally. There are two steps in external list management - 

1. Define a mapping format 

2. Maintain address list.