CPQ – Feature – Pricing Guidance

This is a feature of CPQ that allows for some guidance when your reps are deciding on discounts for the products they’re quoting.

There are Two Types!
– Manual Pricing Guidance (OOTB LOE: 20 Hours)
– Pricing Guidance with Einstein Analytics (OOTB LOE: 50 Hours)

Off-the-Bat Caveats!
There are some caveats with this feature!  See below.

1. Not available for:
   1. MDQ Products
      If there are any MDQ Products on your Quote, Pricing Guidance will be disabled for all Products on this Quote.
   2. Bundle Products
      This feature is only available for either single products or child products.
   3. Component or Accessory Products.
      This feature is only available for child products with Product Option Type field = “Related Product”.
   4. Percent of total subscriptions and their covered assets
   5. Products with discount schedules
   6. Products with contract-based or renewal-based special pricing
   7. Products that have a compound discount or option-based discount
   8. Products with consumption schedules
   9. Products with active Non-Discountable or Non-Partner Discountable fields
   10. Quote lines with partner discounts or distributor discounts
   11. Quote lines that move from an amended quote to an amendment quote

Enable the Feature First!
Before you can take advantage of this feature, you must enable it in Package Settings.

Setup ➡️ Installed Packages ➡️ Salesforce CPQ ➡️ Configure ➡️ Pricing and Calculation ➡️ Enable Pricing Guidance ➡️ TRUE

Manual Pricing Guidance (OOTB LOE: 20 Hours)

This is configurable with the Pricing Guidance object and the Pricing Guidance Tier object.  You can see there is a Type field and a Unit field. These fields are hidden on the layout at first.  They both only have one value; “Range” and “Percent” respectively. This is to allow for future other values.

Assign to a Product

Now, you need to assign your pricing guidance to a product’s Pricing Guidance field. You can associate a pricing guidance record with more than one product!

How it Looks in the Line Editor

Clicking the Button
You can see that clicking the blue button on the popup injects the Target Discount into the Additional Discount field as a percent.

Pricing Guidance Popup Columns
Right now, this popup shows all columns from the Line Editor fieldset on Quote Line object.  I am guessing this will be expanded to add another field set to the Quote Line object to denote which fields appear here.  But NOT YET!

Pricing Guidance with Einstein Analytics (OOTB LOE: 50 Hours)

This requires the EinsteinAnalyticsPlus license in order to make use of Einstein Analytics.  You set up filters for which quotes (by status and created date) and which lines (by product) to include in the analytics used to define discount suggestions.

This also requires that you have some historical Quote Lines! If you have no data to analyze, this feature does nothing helpful. So, the idea is you, first, set up tiers manually to dictate what discounts should be. Then in some months time, configure this analytics and run the Create Pricing Guidance page. See below.

Enable Analytics
To use the Analytics platform, first enable it for your organization.

1. In the Salesforce Setup menu, under Administer, click Analytics | Getting Started.
2. Click Enable Analytics.
3. Click Einstein Discovery | Getting Started.
4. Click to Enable Einstein Discovery.
5. Click Einstein Data Insights | Getting Started.
6. Click to Enable Einstein Data Insights.

Create Permissions Sets
You also want to create permission sets to either manage or view analytics. See this documentation for a step by step.

Enable Pricing Guidance
There are multiple steps you should do to enable Pricing Guidance with Analytics in Salesforce CPQ.

Install Einstein Analytics Package for Salesforce CPQ
You must install the Einstein Analytics Package for Salesforce CPQ (220.2) in order for this functionality to work as expected. Install for Sandbox or Production. 

Create Custom Tab: VF Page: Create Pricing Guidance
The tab is created for you inside the above package. This tab will give you quick access to the custom VF page in CPQ that creates Pricing Guidance records using Einstein Analytics.

Navigate to the Create Pricing Guidance Page
This page is where you will use Analytics to create your Pricing Guidance records and your Pricing Guidance Tier records.

Create Pricing Guidance – Keep in Mind

1. This screen only generates records to store in the Pricing Guidance and Pricing Guidance Tier objects. Once generated, you can then go into these objects and update the records manually as in the first step.
2. Quantity Upper Bound means up to but not including.
3. The “median” discount (in the “away from median” section on the lower left) is the median of Total Discount field values for all Quote Lines in a quantity bound range.
4. 30 Total Quote Lines. This one is a bit technical. When evaluating historical Quote Lines, CPQ will make tiers so that each tier represents at least 30 historical Quote Lines. If there are less than that, it makes ONE tier based on all historical lines.

Possible Errors
Something went wrong while setting up your Einstein Analytics assets. Try again later. Additional Details: Wave REST call failed to endpoint: https://cpqu-dev-ed.my.salesforce.com/services/data/v44.0/wave/asset/02K1K000000t2W9UAI/schedule

An internal server error has occurred Error ID: 401278423-108712 (-605224538)