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  • 1.  What entity should I use to represent new product idea

    Posted May 05, 2020 07:59
    Hello!

    I have a challenge to develop a new component (or maybe it will be a part of Product catalogue), where marketing managers and product people will post their new product ideas. For example, they would like to develop new product, and they have an idea. They post it in this component, go through approval process and then this idea becomes Product offering. The problem is that they post their ideas in xls file now then they go through the approval process and manually it appears in product catalogue. So, high level requirements are:
    1. Marketing people must post their ideas in this new system. Manage and track changes in posted ideas.
    2. Marketing people must have accounting on what ideas they have had and what ideas became Product offerings. They would like to see the delta between ideas and Product offerings.
    3. This ideas might become product offerings, and automatically appear in Product catalogue. (now it is fully manual process)

    My open questions:
    1. This component should be a part of product catalogue or anything else?
    2. What entity is the best to represent "market people's product idea"? I went through product domain and found out "Product Line" and "Product category". May be it will suit?
    3. What relations should I build in my model, so that "ideas" will become Product offerings and publish these ideas in Product catalogue?

    Thank you in advance!
    Aleksey
    ​​​​
    #TMForumGeneral

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    Aleksey Dashkevich
    Mobile TeleSystems OJSC
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  • 2.  RE: What entity should I use to represent new product idea

    Posted May 06, 2020 05:34
    Best is Part of KM as a discussion forums or an Ideation app submodule.

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    Sharad Gandhi
    TO BE VERIFIED
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  • 3.  RE: What entity should I use to represent new product idea

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 06, 2020 08:15
    Hi Aleksey,

    I think we can achieve this requirement in 2 ways:
    1. Dedicated collaboration tool which has access to certain user groups and custom approval processes
    2. Colloboration as a Service (CaaS) which is also exposed as service within cloud platforms with UC and CaaS services

    We may need to make more search on this within public domain to gather further information about specific requirements

    I hope this would probably help you to refine your search and conclude the final approach

    Cheers,
    Sarang S Panajkar

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    Sarang Panajkar
    Netcracker Technology
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  • 4.  RE: What entity should I use to represent new product idea

    Posted May 06, 2020 09:00
    Thank you! Do you have ideas about this question:
    What entity is the best to represent "market people's product idea"? I went through product domain and found out "Product Line" and "Product category". May be it will suit?

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    Aleksey Dashkevich
    Mobile TeleSystems OJSC
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  • 5.  RE: What entity should I use to represent new product idea

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 06, 2020 13:40
    This is a very common feature included in implementations of Salesforce CRM using "Ideas". Users - including employees, customers and partners - can submit ideas and relate them to other objects / records. Voting up/down by the community as well as tracking and follow-up are also part of the solution.

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    Jonathan Phillips
    Salesforce
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  • 6.  RE: What entity should I use to represent new product idea

    Posted May 07, 2020 03:18
    This should be done inside Product lifecycle management or PLM. 
    In general it is a BPM using a workflow lifecycle for your idea becoming a product or service in the catalog.
    Hope this help

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    SANTIAGO LORENTE JURADO
    Pegasystems, Inc.
    Any opinions and statements made by me on this forum are purely personal, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the TM Forum or my employer.
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  • 7.  RE: What entity should I use to represent new product idea

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 08, 2020 08:47
    Hi Aleksey,
    This can be achieved through PLM.(Product Life cycle Manager) a Module of Product Catalog with inbuilt work flow Management Module . Life cycle of a Product from inception/idea can be defined as a work flow .In Your case Marketing Manger comes out with a New Idea and Marketing specifications of the idea is available in the excel sheet .This idea or Marketing Specs need to be converted into a full fledged product Model which can be converted into sellable offer by enabling the service and resource specific configurations on the respective systems i.e. Billing , charging Configuration specs ,etc.
    Once the required configuration specs are enabled on the respective systems the product will be Validated and tested for E2E  .Finally Upon review and approval the Product life cycle state will be moved from Development to Active which is available for Selling/Consumption by the partner systems/CRM.
    This entire life cycle which includes the Modeling of the product ,Configuration specs enablement in Billing/Charging and other systems , Reviews ,Validation , Testing and approval are orchestrated through the defined work flows designed exclusive for the specific Operator needs. Also this orchestrates  includes the functions of various roles like , Marketing Team, E2E Product Modeler ,Billing/Charging/Catalog  Configurators, Testers,Business Team for necessary Approvals

    Hope this provides more clarity on how the idea from inception gets converted into sell-able product.

    Regards
    Sankareswaran 


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    Sankareswaran Arumugasamy
    Ericsson Inc.
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