Transcript
I am Garima Arora, product manager for our platform team. Joining me today are Vedanti and Prabhu. They're going to talk about the topic, procurement lifecycle in platform PSA, and a brief agenda about how we are going to cover today. Vedanti, if you mind going to the next slide. Yeah. So we're going to talk about the program, what we do here. We'll switch on to the next slide. And what do we do here? We provide a live product demos followed by a focused Q&A. We take a look at a new feature or standard use cases, and most importantly, the best practices. Why do we do it? Our goal is basically twofold. We want you to master the platform, and also we want to have a direct dialogue with you and help with any queries that you might have. We are here for you every Wednesday, 11 a.m. EST. Mark your calendars. Quick housekeeping. Please move on to the next slide. Thank you. To all the registrants, they're going to receive the recording of these sessions within 48 hours. Also, we post all these recordings on YouTube so that you can always play the playlist and check back. You can always find our upcoming future sessions for Product Office Hours on University Calendar. If you're facing any technical issues, please let us know in the Q&A section. You can also ask all the questions that you're having in this demo in the Q&A section, which is basically on your right top, third icon from the left. It's like a box inside. There's a question mark. That's what you use for asking any questions. With that, I'll hand over to Vedanti to get us started on today's topic. Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the webinar of Procurement Lifecycle and Platform PSA. What are we going to discuss today is a practical end-to-end walkthrough of the full procurement lifecycle in Platform PSA, showing how the products flow from setup through sales, purchasing, receiving, and then invoicing to enable accurate and timely billing of both your inventory as well as non-inventory items. The key takeaways after this webinar are going to be see the full flow clearly, understand the complete procurement lifecycle in Platform PSA, and check where each handoff occurs. Set it up right for billing, learn the best practice set of patterns that will prevent mischarges or manual invoice corrections, apply it immediately, work away with a real-world scenario which you can mirror in your operations. What are our upcoming releases? We have a release on 8th of June, which is related to the custom fields usability on Platform. Custom fields will be enabled on Platform soon, and we will be able to add custom fields on all our modules in Platform. Okay. Having done that, let's move to the demonstration. Hope my screen is visible. Now, let's say I will start with a business use case saying that, let's assume that I'm a sales executive at a company called as Apex Consulting, and I see a prospect, Greenbridge Law Associates, who are setting up a new branch, and they have a requirement of a few laptops. They need a firewall, let's say, and they need some managed services that can be provided. So I, being a sales executive at an MSP, I understand that this is a good prospect for me, and how does the sales lifecycle begin? This is the Platform UI that we are able to see. I go ahead and create an opportunity in the left navigation menu under the sales menu. You will be able to find opportunities as a sub-menu. Clicking on opportunities will take you to the grid view of opportunities, wherein all the opportunities that are created in the system will be listed. I'll just give it a minute to load. So these are all the opportunities which have been created by me, because the member selected here is the logged in user that I have. Now, going by the business case that I explained, let me create a new opportunity, let's say, I'm creating this opportunity for Greenfield Law Associates. Jessica House is the contact on this company, and I say, I'm going to have an opportunity being created for Greenfield Law Associates. Clicking on create will create the new opportunity for this company, prospect company that we have, and like I mentioned, we are going to add the products, which are the requirements presented to us by this company. That is the reason I installed on opportunity screen, and now I will navigate to our procurement, which is under finance, procurement, product catalog. Now they had three requirements, one, they wanted a laptop. So let me go ahead to the product catalog sub menu. This is how the product catalog looks like, it will give me the list of all the products which are already created on the system, but for the demo purposes, let me add a new product. So I'm saying, the laptop, the category that it belongs to is hardware, subcategory is hardware, the product type is inventory, product class as well is inventory. The unit cost I see is $120, and the unit price that I'm charging would be $150 for this. Clicking on create would create this Dell laptop product on my product catalog. Next is, they need managed services. So I'm going to add another product with a different product ID. Let me call this as managed service services. So this belongs to managed service category, managed IT services is the correct subcategory. I can say services is the product type that it belongs to, and the product class can also be a service. I have to change the UOM here, let's see the UOM is hourly basis, the cost that is incurred to my company on the service is $50, but I'm going to go ahead and charge this one $80. Going ahead created this product as well. Now the third product that was required by Greenfield Law Associates was a firewall. So let's see, let's go firewall, the category on this can be hardware, subcategory can be network security, product type is firewall, this is again an inventory class product. But the requirement was, let's say the firewall has to be drop shipped at the customer location directly. So once I procure this product from the vendor, I don't want this product to be on hold in my warehouse, I want this drop shipped directly to the customer site. So I've marked the drop ship as yes for this product and I'm creating this product as well. So now that I have all my three products ready, I will go back to the opportunity, under the quick access links, you will find a link called as products, wherein you can add all the products for which the requirement had been raised. I can go ahead and search for my products, 401 was the product ID, 402 for managed services and 403 for the firewall. Now here it is asking me for the quantity, let's say the laptops is 10, managed services is let's say, 12 hours of services is required and firewall is 2. So these are the quantity of the products that are required or that was required by Greenfield. Okay, this is how my opportunities, an opportunity got created and I also added the products which were mentioned in the requirement, adding the products would give me the revenue and also the margin that I'm earning on this, how it gets calculated is depending upon the unit cost and the price that I'm associating with each product, the margin got calculated and the revenue also got calculated. After this, I can go ahead, print the opportunity. It says opportunity report for Greenfield Associates, which is correct. It is mentioning all the three products which I've added. It is showing the revenue, the cost, everything rightly done. So let's say I have this opportunity document. I can also print a code document, but in the interest of time, I'm not doing that. I can print the code document and send it over to the company to make sure that the negotiations start with the code. And once both the parties agree to the code, we can mark the opportunity as win. So let's say the negotiations ended and everybody agreed. So now I'm clicking on win. That means the opportunity has got won. I'm going to update status for all as won. Opportunity status should also become won now. Clicking on next. And here I have two options. Either I can mark the opportunity as win and keep the opportunity in that status, or I can win the opportunity and convert it into a demand. So in my use case, I want to convert it into a sales order or convert it into a demand. That is the reason I'm going to win and convert. This message said that because the opportunity is won, the opportunity is closed. And this has given me the convert workflow. Here I'm selecting a sales order. Going next. I want a new sales order created from this opportunity. I want all the three products which are added on the opportunity to get copied over on the sales order. So all this seems right. I'm clicking on finish. As soon as I click on finish, a new sales order would get created. So sales order got generated. The number is 110. All the information came in rightly. Shipping information, the company information, and the products which are attached or which got copied over from opportunity have come up here correctly as well. Now here is where the procurement workflow begins. Now I have created or I have generated a demand wherein I know that all these three products, the inventory products on these sales order have to be procured. That is how we reach the next step now that I have the products on the sales order. That means I have to go ahead and take the purchasing approval for these products. The next thing which I go is purchasing approval under procurement. You would be able to find this as the second submenu below product catalog. I can search the product IDs number. So both my inventory products have been listed here. 401 was for Dell laptop and 403 was for Firewall. So I'm going to go ahead and approve the purchasing of these two products. In your case, probably the purchasing approver would be different and that person would have to log into the system and approve this demand. But in my case, I'm using the same user. Once that has happened, after the approving is done, we go to the next step, which is the third submenu under procurement, that is purchasing. I can again search for the products. So these are both my products which are ready for purchasing. I select both the products. The dropship product has to be created into a separate purchase order. I can select these both and create a purchase order and then show you the error that it gives. So this is what the system sees. Dropship products must be created separately than other products. So I cannot club a dropship product with a normal product or with a product which is not dropship. So I'm going to select Dell laptop as the only product and create a purchase order for that. Let's say that the vendor I want to purchase Dell laptop is Vector USA and the warehouse that I want this to be kept is warehouse CW. Let's click on OK. So right from purchasing, we created a purchase order. Purchase order got created. This is how it looks like. It has a product tab. We can move to the product tab of purchasing and we would be able to find the product attached. Now, this purchase order, again, there is a print button available. Go ahead, print the purchase order. Purchase order for Vector USA. All the details is given. What is the vendor? What is the vendor contact? And then what is the shipping method? And the product details also are present on this purchase order. So we can go ahead, take a print of this purchase order and email it to the contact of the vendor. Once that happens, the product purchase order has been created. Now, I have to go back to purchasing and create a purchase order for my dropship product as well. So I'm doing that. So this is my dropship product. I'm creating a separate view for this. Let's say I want this dropship product from Vendor Arrow. The warehouse is disabled because we don't want to hold this product. It is going directly to the. See, here the ship 2 says dropship 2 and these are the customer details. These are the customer address details which are given on the purchase order. And if I go to the product tab, I will be able to find my product. Right now, on purchasing, we have created a purchase order for both our products. Next is, let's say, purchasing has been fulfilled by the vendor. And now is the time that we can go ahead and mark the products as received into our system. So the next submenu that we have to go to after purchase orders is receiving. On receiving screen again, I can. Go ahead, search for the product ID. I will find both my products present on the receiving screen. I can select both of them and say receive products. Because I know that I have like one product has already reached my warehouse. The laptop product, the Dell laptops and the other product, which was dropship has reached the customer location. Once I have the confirmation, the offline confirmation of receiving, I will go ahead and mark them as received in the system. So the receiving stage has been completed. Now, once the Dell laptops have been received into the warehouse that I wanted it to be received in, I can go to the inventory management. Which is, which is another submenu item inside of procurement. Here I can, under the inventory management, I can search by the warehouse where CW was the warehouse. And you would be able to find this product 401 Dell laptop on hand quantity has been increased to 10 because I received 10 laptops from the vendor. Hence on hand quantity increased. Now, from here, you can do the inventory transfer. You can make inventory adjustments. If you want to transfer this inventory or these laptops from warehouse CW into some other warehouse, that can be done by our inventory transfers. If you want to make few adjustments, let's say 10 laptops were received from the vendor, but one came in broken. And hence you want to adjust the inventory, make it on hand quantity has to be 9 instead of 10. All those adjustments also can be made via inventory adjustments. In the interest of time, I'm not showing showcasing inventory adjustment and transfers, but we can demo it separately for anybody who is interested. This is how my receivable state got completed. I received the products. The next step is product pick and ship. Now the laptops that I have in my warehouse, I have to make sure that the laptops get picked and then shipped to the client location or to the customer location. So on my not picked app, I will have to search the product. I find my Dell laptop present here. I can select this product. Go ahead and pick the product. That error came up because I was selecting another warehouse. I was trying to pick up from a different warehouse. And then the system told me that that warehouse does not contain any on hand quantity. So that works well. Now I'm moving to the not shipped section. Searching for my product again via product ID. Selecting my product again, going to the actions and seeing ship product. Once the pick is complete, I will be able to ship the products as well. And now if I see the shipped section or the ship tab, I will be able to find my product Dell laptop. This has been shipped to the correct location. And in the charge to column, you would also be able to see the association that this product is associated with sales order 110. Okay, now that everything has happened, I can go ahead and refresh the sales order, which was already open. In my system. Now with our products, we can ship the last step of our procurement lifecycle is done. That means all our products have been have been received and they are being shipped to the ship to the customers correctly. That means the sales order is completed now. Now the next step would be to close or to complete the sales order to mark the status on the sales order as complete. And create an invoice for this Greenfield Associates. Now that I have fulfilled their requirements, I'm going to invoice them. Let's select one service class service class all the products which are present on the sales order should be appearing on our invoice. So I said create invoice and clicking on create invoice would take me to the invoicing page or invoicing screen. Invoice 1209 has got created. If you see the products tab, you would be able to find all our three products inside this invoice. What I can do is I can click on print and I would have a printable invoice here. So like I said, I belong to Apex Consulting. So this is my this is my company name, my address. And I'm willing to Greenfield Associates, which was the which was the customer in this case. And I have all the three products mentioned inside of the invoice with the quantity price and the charges and everything else on the invoice appears right. So this was the workflow that we wanted to demonstrate as part of this webinar. Any questions that I can take? There is one question that has come in regarding the serialized products. So a product can be serialized even if it is a drop ship product. So that is the question. So we know that product can be serialized if it is getting shipped to the warehouse to the MSP's warehouse. But even if you're drop shipping, can it be serialized or not? Yes, yes, you can serialize or you can have a serialized product or drop shipped as well. That's only what we have so far. If there are no more questions, I can just quickly tell you the road map that we have for the next quarter on procurement. And next, what are we going to work on? Procurement is on configuration site on configurations. We have something called as managed devices, which is already working in our PSA. So we are going to enable that on platform. Clicking on managed devices is going to connect or integrate the user to RMM device management. So from PSA, user can smoothly or seamlessly move to RMM and check out the device details on the device management system there. That is going to get added in the upcoming releases. Next is we are going to have a quick launch button on our service ticketing. So again, on service tickets, we have configuration available inside of configurations. We are going to get a quick launch button, which is going to connect us or integrate us with CW automate and screen connect. So user again will be able to seamlessly integrate or move around in platform, move around in platform between our products. So that's what that's what is coming up in the upcoming releases. We are also enabling pricing schedule and few of the enhancements with related to pricing schedule will be seen in platform. We are going to make it work as it works in PSA first and then add on few things on pricing schedule. And also we are going to have audit trail on product catalog. Like you know, most of the things on product catalog today are not getting audited. So we have taken up that initiative where in all the fields on product catalog would have been would have auditing so that it becomes easier to track who changed what and when. So these are a few of the items on the roadmap that we have planned. And the other thing which we have in our mind is the workflow that I demonstrated today is related to the inventory workflow wherein you want to hold the products, have inventory, put them on to your warehouse and drag them, things like that. But we also want to serve our best for the just-in-time procurement workflow. So, yeah, I would be posting a virtual community post regarding that. Connect with me to help me understand if you are a just-in-time procurement user. How do you how do you want your workflow to be designed so that it happens quickly or it is quite simple to move around in procurement? Any suggestions, enhancements are welcome. Connect with us through virtual community. Give suggestions because now that we are on platform, we want to do things better and faster. There are more questions. I'm just trying to answer them. They will not have enough time to answer all of it. My bad. I missed those. If you want to take a few and then answer without me, that would help. I'm also trying from my side. How do you how do I connect with you? I am going to have a virtual community post. So if you are a member of a PSN ASIO community, you would be able to find my post shortly. I respond on that and we can connect one to one to discuss your concerns or suggestions that you have. Is it possible to record expenses for a purchase order outside of shipping like memory? So charges, et cetera. Right now, no, we are not tracking expenses for purchase order. But, yeah, I would like to talk more on this. We did not think of this use case, so it would be a good start. Will these products be pulled from distributors? Yes, we are building, like rightly said by Prabhu, we are also building a vendor catalog that would give you a complete list of products from the distributor that you are being integrated to. So we are we are opening up that integration wherein you could have you would be able to enter the integration details of of the distributor that you are already linked with. And you would be able to directly see the list of products that they offer along with life pricing so that it is helpful to generate quotes which are which are true. Will these products, is it possible? Why is PO print not updated? Yes, for purchase order template, like I showed, it is the purchase order print is very similar to what we offer in our legacy PSC. So it is how it looks like. But again, it is an initiative being taken up by different teams, not by our team. But we are going to have an integrated template experience wherein purchase orders can be a purchase order. Templates can be customized according to your needs and then attached, attached those templates to your purchase order and send out a purchase order of your. OK, thank you for that. If we can come back to the slides now, I see there are a couple of questions which are not answered. So probably when we're done, they're going to directly reach out to you guys and answer those questions one on one. Or you can always reach out to us on what your community. And yeah, so coming back to slide six, thank you for that. On the screen now, you'll see a QR code for connect wise YouTube channel. This is where you can always catch the replays. You can just pause for a few seconds and then you can scan, subscribe and you won't miss any sessions. OK, moving on to the next slide, it's about the scheduled topics for June. We just did the first one and we have upcoming three. So that's these are themed on PSA and then RMM and RMM again. We are on the next screen. We hope to see you next week again. Please use this if we can move on to the next screen. Thank you. This is for the next immediate session on Wednesday, which is about dispatch portal debut. You can use this QR code to scan and register on the session. We'll meet you again next Wednesday at 11 a.m. Thanks for joining us today and great questions. There's going to be a feedback link after the session ends. Make sure you give us that feedback. Be helpful for all of us to improve in the future. And thank you. Have a nice day, everyone.
