Variant Configuration – The New Solution Sales Configurator

My new gig is actually going to be pretty cool.  It looks like I’m going to get a chance to learn the new SAP SSC, which is the new Solution Sales Configurator.  Now for those of you that have been doing VC for a while or have ever attended a CWG, I’m sure you’ve heard of the SCE advanced mode.  Now, you can bet there will be more posts coming soon as I start to get into this, but I wanted to start with a quick intro on what the SSC is.

Now, for you VC experts, this might all seem obvious, but stick with me, I’ll be getting into more details soon.  The first thing to understand about the SSC (or even the advanced mode of the SCE) is that it allows you the ability to configure in a “bottom up” fashion, vs. the standard VC top down.  Let me explain more what that means.  The easiest way to do this is with an example.  So I’m going to go back to my roots, and talk about a Frame product.  Let’s say you have a product like this:

1-Frame
2-Module
3-Cable
3-Cable
2-Module
3-Cable
3-Cable
3-Cable
3-Cable
2-Module
3-Cable
2-Module
3-<empty>

Now, in a product like this, if you use VC, you must first configure the Frame, then determine how many modules, and for each module, determine how many cable connections you need.  Each of these level is configurable.  Now this may work for you (but it will have a lot of potential iterated characteristics).  Now, often the customer doesn’t really care about what frame is chosen, or even how many modules are involved.  The customer knows that they need 350 cable connections of certain types.  To use standard VC to model that behavior would be extremely complex and cumbersome.  This is where the SSC comes into play.  The SSC allows you to write logic that can build the structure from the top down, even though the items don’t exist within a single model.  So you could start with the number of connections, and build logic into the SSC that says if I choose at least 48 connections of this connector type, then you need at least 2 modules, and then you can say to select a certain frame based on the size and qty of modules.

I hope this makes sense.  The concept is difficult to explain, but it might start making more sense when I get deeper into this.  The short story is that SSC lets you give the customer a guided selling or at least a simpler method to method a complex product.  I have to say, I’m pretty excited.

Stay tuned for more SSC details 🙂

 

As always, thanks for reading and don't forget to check out our SAP Service Management Products at my other company JaveLLin Solutions,
Mike