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TMF 620 Product Catalog - ProductOffering - ProductOfferingPrice different per Party

  • 1.  TMF 620 Product Catalog - ProductOffering - ProductOfferingPrice different per Party

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jun 15, 2022 13:47

    I got a ProductOffering that has different ProductOfferingPrices per location and per relatedParty . it's the same ProductOffering but the price could change per location and per customer Party

     

    For location its ok since we got under ProductOfferingPrice  with placeRef

    But for relatedParty ? How can we model it ?

    How can I create the same productOffering that has different prices per (customer) Party ? 

    Any ideas ?

    Best regards

    Tassos Sarantis



    ------------------------------
    Anastasios Sarantis
    CityFibre
    ------------------------------


  • 2.  RE: TMF 620 Product Catalog - ProductOffering - ProductOfferingPrice different per Party

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jun 16, 2022 02:31
    Hi Tassos
    Glad to see you see you in Open API land :)
    There will surely not be a different price for each customer, you have millions (hopefully) of customers, and you won't be representing them at catalog level.
    You presumably have a price variation based on some aspects shared by multiple customers (e.g. market segment) and you would need to have a business rule that selects the relevant price based on this.
    We are all aware that currently the product catalog model in TMF620 does not deal with business rules (policy), this is a planned enhancement in the future, and I'm sure @Ludovic Robert will be happy to use this use case as input to the work he is doing.
    Hope it helps​

    ------------------------------
    Jonathan Goldberg
    Amdocs Management Limited
    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.
    ------------------------------



  • 3.  RE: TMF 620 Product Catalog - ProductOffering - ProductOfferingPrice different per Party

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jun 16, 2022 07:16

    Hello Jonathan 

    Thank you very much !


    Ok got it :) 


    So ok i could use the MarketSegmentRef under ProductOffering but the policies? 

    I mean how can i correlate the ProductOfferingPrice (POP) with a MarketSegmentRef  

    Is the Business Rules (policy) Entity  schema somewhere i could see and check ? @Ludovic Robert

    best regards 
    Tassos 




    ------------------------------
    Anastasios Sarantis
    CityFibre
    ------------------------------

    ------------------------------
    Anastasios Sarantis
    CityFibre
    ------------------------------



  • 4.  RE: TMF 620 Product Catalog - ProductOffering - ProductOfferingPrice different per Party

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jun 16, 2022 07:29
    Hi Tassos
    Thanks for the clarification.
    If your intention is to have a single offering with multiple prices that vary according to market segment, then you could add (as an extension) market segment ref to Customer and to ProductOfferingPrice, and make the matchup at ordering time.
    The snag is that this is not scalable from a software perspective, because you don't want to change your software model each time you get a new requirement.
    That's why the policy work could be relevant.

    ------------------------------
    Jonathan Goldberg
    Amdocs Management Limited
    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.
    ------------------------------



  • 5.  RE: TMF 620 Product Catalog - ProductOffering - ProductOfferingPrice different per Party

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jun 16, 2022 07:44
    Hello Jonathan 

    Thanks ! my usecase is more about B2B not B2C where you are right its not meaningful . 

    I was also thinking about using the ConstraintRef inside POP  which is for policies as alternative way of doing it but i dont have an example on how to use it ... 

    ----------------
    Constraint reference. The Constraint resource represents a policy/rule applied to an entity or entity spec.
    -------------------

    "constraint": [ { "@referredType": "PriceConstraint", "name": "PriceRuleNo1", "id": "2503", "href": "https://mycsp.com:8080/tmf-api/productCatalogManagement/v4/constraint/2503", "@type": "ConstraintRef", "@baseType": "", "@schemaLocation": "https://mycsp.com:8080/tmf-api/schemas/Common/ConstraintRef.schema.json" } ],


    any examples how to use it ? 

    best regards 
    Tassos

    ------------------------------
    Anastasios Sarantis
    CityFibre
    ------------------------------



  • 6.  RE: TMF 620 Product Catalog - ProductOffering - ProductOfferingPrice different per Party

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jun 17, 2022 04:40
    Edited by Peter Skoularikos Jun 19, 2022 03:01
    Hi Tassos, Jonathan,All

    The Party model GB922_Party  has a comprehensive structure for differentiating the customer and the agreements applicable to that customer , associated  to the product offering, as per the figure below. Would it be feasible to create this classification in the B2B case and thus pick the relevant catalogue reference at execution time ?

    Furthermore the party API  669B references account, agreement, credit profile and payment method entities so there may be something in that as well. Certainly in B2B cases one party may play diffrerent roles and thus the pricing scheme will vary accordingly.



    And the pricing structure is kept within the catalogue, associated with the offering at execution time  , according to party, role and other criteria  ( See figure from SID 21.5  below )




    ------------------------------
    [Peter] [Skoularikos]
    [Telekinetics]
    peters@telekinetics.eu
    ------------------------------



  • 7.  RE: TMF 620 Product Catalog - ProductOffering - ProductOfferingPrice different per Party

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jun 16, 2022 07:44
    Hi Tassos,

    There is several solutions to your problem and the one to choose depends on your use case.

    1/ Customer segmentation
    In most  organisitions different pricing will be used for different market segments. In this case the customers are assigned to a segment (e.g. digital nomads). Different catalogs can be created, each serving as an entry point for customers of a particular segment. In each of the catalogs the productOffering & productOfferingPrices will be adapted to the segment.
    You can use MarketSegmentRef to cater for this use case.

    2/ Customer specific pre-agreed pricing
    It is also not uncommon that certain key customers get very specific negotiated producOfferings. In that case a(n) (framework) agreement is created with these very specific ProductOfferings. AgreementRef on ProducOffering and the ProductOfferingRef in TMF651 are intended for this use case.

    3/ Others
    If your use case is even different from the above use cases it is always possible to extend the OpenAPI using polymorphism and extension patterns.

    I hope this helps.

    ------------------------------
    Koen Peeters
    OryxGateway
    ------------------------------



  • 8.  RE: TMF 620 Product Catalog - ProductOffering - ProductOfferingPrice different per Party

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jun 17, 2022 09:52
    Actually we have a related topic.

    The problem relates to wholesale customers - so there is indeed a requirement to have a customer specific price (the number of wholesale customers distributing products is small).

    However in our case we also want to have customer specific rules that apply to the product specification. i.e. depending on agreement, wholesale providers may not have access to certain product options. Product offering qualification only returns offering, not any specification details. We have been discussing extending this to return specification options, as we don't want to have to duplicate the product offerings and create dedicated spec for each one. 

    @Ludovic Robert would the catalogue rules work encompass this kind of requirement also?

    thx

    greg

    ------------------------------
    Greg Branch
    Vodafone
    ------------------------------



  • 9.  RE: TMF 620 Product Catalog - ProductOffering - ProductOfferingPrice different per Party

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jun 20, 2022 03:23
    Edited by Matthieu Hattab Jun 20, 2022 03:24
    Hi Greg,

    for customer-specific prices, see my reply.

    for customer-specific product specification:
    Creating a customer-specific PO seems a reasonable starting point and it makes sense. a PO represent the marketing view of what you offer to your customers.

    This would leave implementing customer-specific product rules at a functional level:
    • if the rule concerns PS characteristics and/or values, you can avoid creating multiple PSs by using prodSpecCharValueUse.
    • if the rule concerns PS rules (bundling and dependencies), you should use bundledProductSpecification or productSpecificationRelationship
      • Then you need to extend the API to allow it to associate these product rules with your customer-specific PO.
    There are possibly other options.

    PS: you mentioned "Product offering qualification" (TMF679 API), I believe it was never supposed to provide "specification details". It's more of a pre-sales process to provide a list of eligible POs.
    What you want is a product configurator API. Such TMF API doesn't exist TMF has logged a JIRA task to design one.

    ------------------------------
    Kind regards,

    Matthieu Hattab
    Lyse Platform
    ------------------------------



  • 10.  RE: TMF 620 Product Catalog - ProductOffering - ProductOfferingPrice different per Party

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jun 16, 2022 08:52
    Edited by Matthieu Hattab Jun 16, 2022 16:23
    Note: Tassos infomed me that the requirement is for customer-specific price book. A form of framework agreement singed between the CSP and a business customer where a list of PO are listed with special prices. These special prices adjust/override the normal "list price"

    Jonathan said constraint will be removed from TMF620 so we should wait and see what the next version of the API will provide (can't wait!)

    the price book (framework agreement) may contain POP like:
    • -10% on VPN for 3 months
    • €45/month for internet
    • no installation fee on mobile subscriptions
    • ...
    These can be seen as "price alterations" (cf GB922 - Product), which is a type of POP.
    So each line in the price book is a POP associated to a PO.
    Say "ProguardVPN" PO has a POP of €40 (normal price) per month
    Customer "Bluesteel" has a framework agreement/price book that contains ProguardVPN associated with POP: "-10% for 3 months"

    TMF620 can return all POPs associated with ProguardVPN, which include the €40 monthly charge, the 10% discount, and any other POP relevant to ProguardVPN. but TMF620 will not tell you which of these POP is applicable to the product price in a shopping cart.

    your CRM has a "pricing engine" / CPQ that should be able to check if Bluesteel has a valid price book, if ProguardVPN exists in the price book and if yes, update the product price.
    you'd need to find TMF APIs that the CPQ can consume GET /POST to determine if customer has a framework agreement/price book and if the product you're pricing exists there.

    Other ideas:
    POP are associated to Product Terms (Terms), check the SID documentation, there could something useful with Terms
    Price Policy, could still be a solution, at least to help identifying if Bluesteel has a valid price book that contain ProguardVPN. Hopefully the next TMF620 API has a Price Policy in store.


  • 11.  RE: TMF 620 Product Catalog - ProductOffering - ProductOfferingPrice different per Party

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jun 16, 2022 08:58
    Hello Mathieu 

    Sorry about private messaging its just me that using the community for first time so by accident used the reply . 

    I did the same to Jonathan to be honest . So probably i deleted something ? dunno . 

    I will post here the private message we got if you dont have a problem to help other also 

    best regards 
    Tassos

    ------------------------------
    Anastasios Sarantis
    CityFibre
    ------------------------------



  • 12.  RE: TMF 620 Product Catalog - ProductOffering - ProductOfferingPrice different per Party

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jun 16, 2022 09:35
    In the context of the policy work, it looks like Constraint will be deprecated (and eventually removed) and be replaced by explicit reference to policy.

    ------------------------------
    Jonathan Goldberg
    Amdocs Management Limited
    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.
    ------------------------------