Describing the Product Modelling in an Overview

You're a product manager in Sales Organization 1010 Cloud4You. A new subscription cloud product for data storage is launched on 01.01.2020. You're required to design the new data storage product with the following name: SCR_DATA_STORAGE. The product includes a recurring price component and a usage price component.

The process step product modeling outlines the functions of: modeling bundles (including products, projects, recurring and one-time services, and usage charges), defining prices for recurring fees, products, and one-time services, mapping usage charges with cross-catalog mapping, defining and processing allowances, and applying combination rules with variant configuration.

Subscription orders support different kinds of products:

Subscription products can be used to subscribe to a service. Fees and charges can be managed in different ways.

• There are usage-based subscriptions for consumption-based pricing models for which the pricing is defined in SAP Convergent Charging.
• There can also be products, which shall be billed on a regular basis, for example, monthly, the recurring subscriptions.
• There can also be one-time fees, for example, one-off charges like an activation fee for a contract.

All these subscription products are billed in SAP Convergent Invoicing as billable items. Billing documents are either being created directly in SAP Convergent Invoicing (recurring fees), being sent from Subscription Order Management (SOM) (one-off charges), or being sent from SAP Convergent Charging (usage based).

Physical goods can be treated as sales items, resulting in an SD sales order to support logistical processes, such as delivery or goods issue.

Bundles can combine different kinds of products, to be sold in a bunch and to offer a specific process for the single bundle components. Bundles can be sales packages but also subscription products.

All kinds of Material Masters are maintained in the Fiori Manage Product Master Data app. The initial setup always requires a Product type to indicate the business scenario. In the meaning of SOM, most materials are Subscription Products.

A subscription product provides specific attributes and settings required for capturing subscription orders and contracts. These result in provider contracts in Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable (FI-CA) and SAP Convergent Charging. These include terms of duration, billing cycles, discounts, and charges, among other core attributes, using the subscription product.

The subscription product is modeled with SAP S/4HANA product master and specifies certain subscription-specific attributes within the product master, such as terms of duration, billing cycles, and resource assignment schema.

In addition, the product master is defined by its subscription product-specific data, like cross-catalog mapping or discounts and charges.

Due to this extension, you require three apps while modeling subscription products.

These applications are available from the SAP Fiori Launchpad.

With product models, it's possible to configure a product so that it allows the user/customer to choose from a number of options when ordering the product:

• The product contains a number of characteristics (attributes).
• The user / customer chooses a value for each characteristic.
• Some characteristic values can also be selected automatically by predefined rules.
• Product components are selected automatically by rules, based on the chosen characteristic values.
• The product contains a number of characteristics (attributes).
• The user/customer chooses a value for each characteristic.
• Some characteristic values can also be selected automatically by predefined rules.
• Product components are selected automatically by rules, based on the chosen characteristic values.

All products can have bundle components allocated to them:

• Less commercial relevance, more driven by technical or process requirements.
• Can have complex conditions (including Business Rule Framework (BRF), allowing process and/or configuration dependencies) and generation rules are possible.
• Often straightforward generation, but optional or alternative components are also possible.
• Dependent components usually do not become part of the Subscription contract.
• Usually appear on the lowest hierarchy level of a complex package.

Technical Resources are the (typically unique) identifiers of a contract that are used in SAP CC to identify the contract for rating and charging.

In the product, an assignment schema is assigned. The assignment schema contains one or more technical resource types. For example, one phone number and one SIM card ID.

Cross-Catalog Mapping is the mechanism to integrate the pricing algorithm, defined in the rating catalog, with the commercial product.

To maintain a subscription product, it must be first created in the product master, using the Manage Product Master Data app. This subscription product is then extended by its subscription product-specific data, using the Manage Subscription Product-Specific Data app.

In SAP S/4HANA, only the product master, also known as the material master, is used to maintain central product data. In addition, attributes like cross-catalog mapping, or discounts and charges are maintained in their own application.

From SOM 2021 FPS00 onwards, the resource assignment schema has moved from the product master to the subscription product-specific data.

In this case, a bundle is the container for each product. The first step to Create the Cloud Selection Service is to maintain the material master with the Manage Product Master Data app. The same for the activation fee, the change fee, and the licences.