Foreword In this series, we will give you an overview of the functions of the standard Product Configurator that Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance &…
Foreword In this series, we will give you an overview of the functions of the standard Product Configurator that Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations offers. Products and their variants (available from 19.01.2022) Configuring products (available from 26.01.2022) From calculation to the bill of materials (available from 02.02.2022) Fine-tuning and calculating prices (available from 09.02.2022) Introduction Time and again, we have seen with our customers that there is that one item. Some call it a dummy, others have been more creative. This one item always had to serve for everything that did not fit into the standard product range. But when you look at the sales figures, these items are not unimportant. So what is this about? To give a concrete example: a trading company that deals in Italian delicacies used a dummy item to sell gift baskets. A gift basket contains any selection of Italian delicacies from the standard product range. End customers can put together their very own basket. Not only does the content of the basket vary, but the size of the basket is also variable. There are numerous such examples, and we have encountered them with every customer. What is the problem? For sales, this is usually not a problem. These dummy items also pose no problems for other parts of the company. At some point a process was somehow defined and supported accordingly with Excel lists or text fields. It only becomes interesting when these items need to be valued and a controller tries to carry out a cost-of-goods-manufactured calculation. In one very extreme case, we saw that at one company more than 30 percent of the items sold were the dummy item. But how can this situation be eliminated? Microsoft D365 Supply Chain Management has offered a product configurator from the very beginning. With this built-in application, any product can be configured, from very complex products through to simple gift baskets. Product master and variants Before we turn specifically to