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The client’s master product list exists in the MAS 500 back office system.  In order to provide a complete quoting solution in SalesLogix, the product list from MAS 500 had to be integrated into SalesLogix.  This would allow the entire product catalog to be available for Opportunities and Quotes. 

In addition to the product list, MAS 500 also has a myriad of options for special pricing of the products.  Pricing can be specific to a customer, dependent on time periods, and quantity driven.  Because of the complex rules around pricing it was deemed impractical to recreate prices in SalesLogix.  It was decided that an integration to MAS 500 would be created to provide real time pricing.  SalesLogix users would be able to select products from the SalesLogix product list, however the pricing of the products would be determined by MAS 500.  See specifics on the pricing integration here.

Standard Products
MAS 500 has the capability to track standard items as well as build to order kits (BTO Kits).  Standard products are those items that are available for sale.  These are the items that are available in the client’s catalog.  These items all have a price associated with them.  While a standard product can be a single component, it can also describe an entire set of sub components. 

BTO Kits
BTO (Build to Order) Kits are a conglomeration of one or more products that make up a single sellable item.  An example of a BTO Kit is a computer.  A computer (which is a standard product) also consists of many components, such as a hard drive, processor, motherboard, etc. While each of these sub-components can be, individually, a standard product, when bundled together they produce a BTO Kit.

These kits of components are priced and sold as a single item.  For the client’s purpose, the BTO Kits are all pre-configured with a set of some pre-defined products.  Users may modify the components of a kit, however doing so does not modify the price of the Kit.  More discussions on BTO Kits can be found here.

With these product requirements in mind, a custom SQL DTS package was developed to perform ongoing data imports from MAS 500 to SalesLogix.  Also, the SalesLogix product table structure was expanded to support the BTO Kit model from MAS 500.

A custom DTS package was developed that uses data driven queries to add data from MAS 500 that is missing in SalesLogix.  It also updates existing products when that information changes in MAS 500.

The DTS package utilizes standard DTS “data driven query” components in conjunction with the SalesLogix OLE DB Provider to add, edit and delete products in SalesLogix based on both the items and BTO Kit components from MAS.  The DTS package is scheduled using the standard SQL Server Agent to run every day at 6PM, ensuring that any updates made to the MAS item catalog are reflected in SalesLogix the next day.

The import is designed based on a match between the MAS Item Key.  This allows the flexibility to re-number the SKUs in MAS 500, if necessary, and have this information pass across to SalesLogix.

Standard Pricing
Along with loading the products themselves, the import also loads attributes about the product from MAS, including the standard “list” price, size and weight dimensions, tax and commission attributes, and the units in which the product is sold (Pallets, Cases, Each, etc.).  The list price is then used to drive Opportunity pricing, as described here.

Comment Items
In addition to the standard item catalog, MAS 500 also has “comment only” items that may be added to quotes and orders.  These items are comment placeholders, and do not actually reflect a sellable item.  These items are flagged with a distinct SKU and are treated specially by SalesLogix in the quoting interface. 

The product load also keeps in sync those products that are currently available for sale, those items that are no longer active, and those items that are available only as replacement parts, used during the customer repair process and tracked in SalesLogix tickets. This tracking is performed by loading the Status of each item with a defined value.

• The following are the list of Product status values and how they affect usage of products in SalesLogix:
  Available – An actively sold part, available to be added to a quote or opportunity.
• Kit Available – A current item that is valid to be selected as a component of a BTO Kit, but may not be added as an independent item to a quote or opportunity.
• Part Available – A current replacement part.  These products can be added to a quote or opportunity as a normal product.  These items have a special designation, in that they are the only items available to add as a part to an activity tracked against a ticket.
• Discontinued – A product no longer sold.  This product is not available to be added to quotes or opportunities

Product Management Changes
Since all management of products occurs in MAS 500, SalesLogix was modified to make the Manage Product interface a read-only view to the data loaded from MAS 500. 

The interface was also expanded to display the custom attributes of a product that pass from MAS 500, such as BTO Kit components and Units of Measurement.

The customized Manage Product Interface in SalesLogix

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