Product services: delivery services, provided services and special services

In addition to shipped products, Catalog Management™ provides the capability to manage delivery services, provided services, and special services.

Shipped products are physical products that are purchased and shipped to a customer, for example, a piano.

Delivery Services are billable services that are directly associated with a product in a sales order or a return order, for example, the delivery of a high-definition television. Stand-alone delivery service lines can also be created, and if required, associated with a product at a later time.

Provided Services are billable services that are offered to enhance the life or usability of a product associated with a sales order or a return order, for example, fabric protection for a sofa or installation service for a home theater system.

Special Services are billable services that are directly associated with a product in a sales order. For example, gift wrapping, monogramming, personalization (engraving). You can associate multiple special services with a product.

Delivery Services, Provided Services, and Special Services are also defined as items by the catalog organization and are available to all the organizations that share that catalog organization.

Each service item is assigned a service type. Service types are used to identify the capacity UOM for the service items. Delivery Service Types can be used to compute additional capacity. In addition, service levels are used to indicate the complexity of the assigned service type.

Note: As Special Services are applicable at the order line option level, UOM is always blank.

For each Delivery and Provided Service, a list of valid service options are also created as items and associated with the respective service item. Special Service does not support service options and each special service is associated with an item.

Besides setting up Delivery, Provided, and Special Service items, the catalog must include the list of delivery, provided, and special service items available for products. This association can be set up either at any level within an Item Classification hierarchy (not supported for special service items) or at an individual product item level.

The application enables item associations (associate an item with another item or/and associate a special service with an item) and item service associations (associate a product with a provided or/and delivery service).