Pricing Display / Performance Enhancements

A. Description
In School specialty iStore sites the catalog pages do not display the discounted price for
a B2B customer. The price displayed is only the retail price, for a customer to see the
final price; the user needs to add the item to the shopping cart where the discounts are
applied. This process causes business concerns because the user / customer would not be
able to do a proper comparison of pricing with the school specialty competitors and
hence might eventually affect business with school specialty.
lso !urrently in School Specialty pricing is always a concern when it comes to
performance and efficiency of "racle applications "rder #anagement and iStore. This
cause concern with both IT and Business users due to wastage in time spent in labor and
defects/enhancements which $eep arising.
1. Business Problem
The Business %roblem with current pricing structure is performance and maintenance. lso certain
features needed for enhanced smooth customer user interaction which are standard functionality within the
"racle eBS system cannot be utili&ed.
2. Business Objective
The following are the business ob'ective for this pricing display enhancements proposal.
(nhance user interaction and scalability by displaying customer specific discounted price in the
catalog pages.
)isplay discounted prices without affecting page load performance i.e., improve performance and
add functionality without affecting customer interaction.*
Improve overall performance in catalog, search and hopping cart pages for better customer
e+perience.
#aintain a pricing structure suitable for current business processes and reduce huge
maintenance.
#aintain current catalog process i.e. support multiple catalogs and pricing across the stores.
Some stores might share prices and some may not by having a new pricing structure.
3. Core Business Activity Impacted
The following are the core business activities that would be impacted by this pro'ect..
Core Business Activity Impact on Core Business Activity
Pricing Maintenance The impact is both positive and negative:
- The negative side of the impact being re-training
users of the new application processes and time
spend for training and catching up.
- The positive impact on the other had is that the
Performance would be improved, standard
functionalities can be utilized in catalog pages and
additional customizations can be prevented.
Pricing restructure There is a bigger impact when it comes to pricing
restructure. This would mean restructure the
standard operating procedures in pricing in areas of
- Marketing ommunicating with
customers regarding how pricing works
after restructure.
- Training educating customer service
representatives and customer care
representatives with new processes
-
ustomer are enters There also an considerable amount of impact in the
customer care side due to the e!pectanc" of increase
in customer care # service calls from customers
because of new methodologies and processes.
G. Change Suggestions

Current Process
Impact New process !!ect o! new
process
$n the current process %iscount
modifiers are setup in such a wa" that,
each customer each item each
contract has a price override modifier
line.
&ver" time a search
for an item price
needs to be
performed b" the
s"stem it has to
scan through
millions of modifier
lines.
%etermine and
'etup ( passed
discount pricing to
reduce the number
of modifier lines
and level of
comple!it" for
maintenance.
$mproved
performance and
reduced
maintenance
)id s"stem interface program
currentl" the interface program between
the bid s"stem and oracle is designed in
such a wa" to create modifier lines for
items discounted as part of the discount
contract.
This results in
creation of
numerous amounts
of modifier lines
which otherwise
could be handled in
more efficient wa".
)ased on pricing
from contract # bid
stand point
determine discount
application levels
and setup
corresponding
discount modifiers
$mproved
performance and
reduced
maintenance
*ualifiers logic urrentl", customer
+ualifiers are based
on either, customer
class, customer
account or name.
This impacts on
pricing performance
to a certain e!tent as
in b" having huge
lists of +ualifier
lines for each
modifier
,nal"ze and
determine better
wa"s for grouping
customer +ualifiers
and also setting up
customer groups.
$mproved
performance and
reduced
maintenance
Pricing data archive There is no standard
archiving setup
currentl" in -racle
%etermine efforts
for setting up
scheduled
$mproved +uer"
performance and
site catalog
pricing archiving of
pricing data.
,nal"ze business
process for price
lookups for older
items # orders.
displa"
Pricing data purge There is no standard
purging setup
currentl" in -racle
pricing
%etermine efforts
for setting up
scheduled purge of
pricing data.
onfirm
availabilit" of
pricing date from
data warehouse
applications.
$mproved table
space and disk
space.
H. Proposed list of task and order of execution
The following are the list of task that would need to be performed in that order for a using standard
seeded price displa" in catalog pages and to improve pricing performance in $store.
.. %etermine contract # bid pricing procedures to setup standard discount modifiers that would
replace promotional modifiers.
/. 'etup customer group +ualifiers and setup +ualifier grouping for eliminating redundant use.
0. ,dd minisites based +ualifier line for modifiers used in i'tore, the generic order t"pe +ualifier are
known to have issues in $store pricing, adding minisites +ualifier would improve pricing for $store
side.
1. %etermine archiving schedule for archiving older pricing data and setup concurrent processes.
2. %etermine pricing data validit" and life c"cle for purging pricing information from -racle s"stem.
3. ustomize i'tore catalog pages to remove custom pricing code that prevents discounted price
from being displa"ed.
4. Prepare training manuals for internal users for the new pricing structure and business precesses.
. Current and future data Estimates
,ctive Price 5ists:
There will not be significant change in price lists setups .There are about 040 active price list and total of
about 30.,404 lines. This is most likel" the same after proposed changes
,ctive Modifiers:
There are about 101/ ,ctive current Modifiers in total. -ut of which, 167. are promotional, /00 are
discount list and /7 are harges.
This could change depending on the contract procedures getting evaluated. The changes can be as far as
reduction to 8.666 modifiers and about 46( reduction in modifier lines.
$nactive pricelists:
There can be reduced to about 36-32( based on archiving and purging setups
$nactive modifiers:
This could be reduced to about /6 /2( based on archiving and purging setups.