Negotiated pricing

Customer service representatives (CSRs) can negotiate product prices with customers, if necessary, to complete a transaction. CSRs override product prices by specifying the price agreed upon by both the customer and the CSR.

Each CSR group has an authorized range, which is defined by the quoted price as the upper bound, and a group-specific floor price. The quoted price is the initial price that is offered to the customer. The floor price for a CSR group is determined by the administrator, and is a percentage markup from the nominal cost of the product. A nominal cost is a monetary amount, which represents the cost of a single unit of that catalog entry. There is at most one nominal cost for each catalog entry in a catalog. The collection of nominal costs is stored in a nominal cost price list. The nominal cost list, is like a standard price list, but it is only accessible as the basis for price override limits.

Negotiated prices are only applicable to the current order. Repeat customers do not automatically receive the discounted price. If an order is copied to a new order, the negotiated price is not copied.

To illustrate, consider the following example:

A hardware store sells claw hammers and ball peen hammers. Assume that claw hammers have a nominal cost of $8, and ball peen hammers have a nominal cost of $10. These hammers sell for $15 and $20. CSR group A has a floor price that is defined as the Nominal Price + 25%, and CSR group B has a floor price of Nominal Price + 50%.


Product	Claw hammer	Ball peen hammer
Nominal cost	$8	$10
CSR group A floor price	$10	$12.50
CSR group B floor price	$12	$15
Default offer price	$15	$20

A CSR in CSR group A can negotiate a price for a claw hammer between $10-15. A CSR in group B can negotiate a price between $12.50 - 15. CSR group A might be reserved for CSRs with greater seniority, or they are associated with a particular high priority client, and require more leeway in negotiations.

If a CSR tries to offer a price that exceeds their group limit, the system blocks the order. A notification message is sent to the appropriate person for approval.

HCL Commerce Enterprise In a hosted store environment, the user interface displays all price-override limits that belong to the owner of the hosted store. If the store owner owns multiple hosted stores, all the price-override limits created in all the stores display in the Price-Override Limits page. However, only the price-override limits associated with the current store can be deployed. The price-override limits deployed in the other hosted stores have a status of Active, but are marked to indicate that they are active in a different store.