Understanding Salesforce Revenue Lifecycle Management (RLM): Product to Asset Process

If you are working with Salesforce Steelbrick CPQ, you must be familiar to concepts like Quote to Contract (CPQ), Quote to Invoice, or Quote to Cash (CPQ with Billing). However, with Salesforce Revenue Lifecycle Management (RLM), a new concept emerges: Product to Cash. This approach represents the complete journey, starting from the sale of a product or service—whether it’s a physical good, a subscription, or a license—right through to cash collection. It includes all critical steps necessary to deliver value to the customer and recognize revenue for the business.

In this article, we’ll explore a key segment of this end-to-end process: Account to Assets. This involves tracking a customer from their initial contact through to the moment their purchased products or services become assets in the system.

Process Overview:

• Account - Contact - Opportunity: Standard customer and deal information capturing.
• Quoting: Generate a proposal for the customer.
• Contracting: Formalize the agreement through a contract.
• Ordering: Customer places an order, initiating fulfillment.
• Fulfillment: Deliver the products or services to the customer.
• Assetizing: Convert delivered items into assets in the system.
• Amendment: Make adjustments to the original agreement as needed.
• Renewal: Extend the contract or subscription for continued service.
• Cancellation: Manage contract termination and service discontinuation.
• Billing: Managing invoicing, payment collection and revenue recognition

This process can vary depending on the specific needs of a business, and some steps may be more or less involved depending on the asset lifecycle.

1. Account - Contact - Opportunity

This is where sales representatives establish relationships with customers and track future deals. At a high level, these elements inherit the core functionalities of Salesforce Sales Cloud.

Account: Track key details about customers, including their name, website, industry, employee count, revenue, and billing/shipping addresses.?

An improved feature in RLM is the ability to manage multiple addresses for a single account, which eliminates the need for custom objects to handle complex address requirements.

E.g: A customer named Acme in the UK can have different addresses due to different offices located in each city.

Contact represents an individual associated with an Account. Typically, Contacts are the people you interact with within the Account. Each Contact is linked to a single Account, but an Account can have multiple Contacts.

Opportunity represents a potential sales deal or revenue-generating event with an Account. Opportunities are crucial in tracking sales pipelines, as they allow sales teams to manage the progress of deals from prospecting to closing. Opportunities are linked to Accounts and often involve one or more Contacts.

2. Quoting

Quoting in Salesforce RLM involves generating a proposal that includes details like products, services, pricing, and terms. Multiple quotes can be linked to a single opportunity, though only one quote will sync back to the opportunity’s price.

I covered some of the improvements in terms of Quoting experience in this post .

In this article, I want to cover some additional functionalities that Salesforce RLM introduces that guide sales representatives to follow the correct sales processes, select appropriate products, and configure them with the right attributes to ensure accurate pricing. The process can be simple or complex depending on the business requirements.

Highlighted features include:

a. Product Configuration Rule [similar to CPQ Product Rules]

Product configuration rules streamline the product configuration experience and reduce configuration errors, eliminating fallout due to faulty product configurations when you use the validation, exclusion, and require rules

• For front-end user experience (Sales Rep):

When Sales Reps set up a combination of products to sell to customers, namely "Bundle", RLM triggers an "Information pop-up" to enforce the logic of the Bundle.

• For back-office users (System Admin, owner):

- Product Configuration Rules inherit the robust concept of Auto Add, Auto Remove, Alert or Validate the Product Bundle Setup. This means the selected option will satisfy the business logic.

- The setup UI has a significant improvement, instead of being record-based in SteelBrick CPQ, Configuration Rules are set in a Wizard UI with guidance steps. [screenshot below]

• Moreover, RLM also extends some functionalities, which are highlighted below::

- Set Quantity, plus informed information and locking quantity editing. .?

- Since the Standalone product can be configured, the Product Configuration Rules can be applied to this type of Product at runtime

• There is a consideration when setting up Product Configuration Rule - Scope of configuration is “Product” or “Product Classification”, there is no “Quote” level scope, which means checking logic across the selected Products inside a Quote may require a workaround or customization.

b. Quote creation can be with or without Opportunity??

Some business does not require to have an opportunity to present a deal,?instead, Quotes or Orders need to be created to confirm purchased products with their customer, before generating the contract.?

With RLM, Quote or Order creation can be processed with or without Opportunity records. This flexibility will be helpful for RLM implementation as some businesses do not require using Opportunity.?

This also breaks the linkage between Contract and Opportunity in the Steelbrick CPQ which I personally think it is not a great deal of CPQ (one contract can only be generated from 1 opportunity).

c. Custom Field Mapping - [similar to the “twinned field” function in Salesforce Steelbrick CPQ]

With RLM, information from upstream (Quote) can be cascaded to downstream (Order, Asset)?

The information transferred between objects can be set up with field mappings using Context Service, includes either "custom field to custom field" or "custom field to standard field". Such mappings are processed at runtime.?

Example: A business may add a custom field to the Product2 record. This field can then be displayed in the product catalog, added to quotes, orders, and subsequently persist onto the assets.

d. Dynamic option

Dynamic Options supports grouping multiple products into a single collection using RLM Product Classification.?

This function greatly simplifies the definition and administration of product bundles and allows users to select a subset of products from the classification on the bundle.

e. Viewing Price Waterfall breakdown in Bundle element:

Sales Reps can hover over the net unit price for a product in the summary panel to view the price breakdown of the component.

3. Contracting

Once the customer accepts a quote, the next step is contracting. A contract formalizes the agreement between the business and the customer, outlining the terms, conditions, pricing, and commitments of both parties. Contracts in Salesforce RLM are typically linked to Accounts and Opportunities and serve as a legal record of the agreement.

Organization can use RLM to create contracts to manage their customers’ products and services through Asset records

After a customer finalizes a quote or an order, create a contract from the quote or order.?The contract copies information such as account and start date from the quote or order record.

Automation can be enhanced to trigger the contract creation on specific conditions either on Quote or Order.

Improvement:

• Contracts can be generated either from Quote or Order by clicking the “New Contract” button on these object levels
• Contract now can be extended to the Salesforce Contract package which enables CLM functions (managing T&C library, Red-lightning, etc. ) inside Salesforce? [this will be covered in the next posts]

4. Ordering & Fulfillment

a. Ordering

Ordering is the process where the customer places an official order based on the agreed-upon terms in the contract. This step triggers internal processes for fulfillment and invoicing (Billing process). In Salesforce RLM, an order record may be created to track the customer's purchase and monitor delivery or implementation status.

• Capture Orders with Line Items with Flexibility and Scalability?

Sales reps or service agents can skip the quoting process and quickly browse the catalogs and select the correct product and pricing information on the order level.

Automate order creation from a quote or a configuration preview. The new enhanced UX for selecting & configuring products and managing discounts on a quote is also now available on orders which can be important for processes that do not require quoting, document generation or deal negotiation.

b. Fulfillment?

On the other hand, Fulfillment involves delivering the products or services which the customer ordered. This could be the physical shipment of goods, provisioning of software, or activation of services.?

In RLM, Fulfillment can be processed inside Salesforce RLM through Dynamic Revenue Orchestration [this will be covered in future posts].?

I am personally excited about this net-new functionality coming up with RLM. This will possibly remove many workaround solutions on Order and Order Products that are related to fulfillment processes in Salesforce CPQ projects.

In a nutshell, Salesforce RLM can be used to:

• Track fulfillment status, ensuring that everything is delivered according to the customer's expectations. These can be manual tasks, automated workflows or integrated actions with external systems.

• Track the fulfillment item from the original Order Products. These fulfillment items can be different from the original line orders?

5. Assetizing

Assetizing is the process that converts delivered products or services into assets within the CRM system. These assets represent the items the customer has purchased and now owns. Asset records in Salesforce allow businesses to track what has been delivered, monitor warranties, and manage support or service requests.

In RLM, all one-time and termed products are captured as Asset records which is different from Salesforce Steelbrick CPQ. It has the recurring products generated as subscription records.

Improvement:

• Enhanced Asset and Purchased Product Visualization helps better understand customer growth. Customer Asset Lifecycle Management view is also available at the account level.

• Sales or Service agents periodically review what customers have purchased to spot upsell, and cross-sell on the Asset level.

6. Amendment - Renewal - Cancellation

In the sales cycle, it is important to capture post-contract activities such as customers’s requests to increase the purchase and license; swapping products for newer versions; cancelling what they ordered; or simply renewing what they purchased in the last orders.?

At first glance, the processes for Amendment, Renewal, and Cancellation are straightforward and easy to execute. Users can effectively track upsells, downsells, and renewal quantities. Ideally, this efficiency will extend seamlessly into downstream processes like invoicing and crediting.

RLM offers a set of actions (Amendment, Renewal or Cancellation) that can be processed either from the Account or Contract level.

Amendment, Renewal or Cancellation can be processed without opportunity.

a. Amendment refers to modifying an existing contract or agreement. This might occur when a customer wants to change the terms, such as upgrading services, adjusting quantities, or altering contract durations.

With RLM, when processing Amendment, Sales Rep can see the “Delta Quantity” display, which is useful to understand if the line is upsell or downsell.

b. Renewal is the process of extending an existing contract or subscription. As contracts near their expiration, businesses work with customers to renew agreements, ensuring continuity of service and preventing churn.?

• Create quotes, orders to capture asset renewal information.?

RLM create quotes for asset-based renewal negotiation, with the out-of-the-box process, it automatically generates renewal quotes or orders based on the predefined configuration. These records are linked back to the original contract.

• At the renewal time, users select bundles, one-time assets, and evergreen assets. Users can reconfigure bundles, change quantities on bundles, one-time assets, or evergreen assets where the changes are applied on the order effective date.

c. Cancellation occurs when customers wish to terminate their contract or discontinue a service. This may be due to dissatisfaction, changes in business needs, or cost considerations. Salesforce helps track cancellations, providing visibility into why customers leave and aiding in retention strategies.

Billing is in the roadmap to release in future, however, by understanding this RLM end-to-end process, organizations can efficiently manage their sales process, ensure smooth customer interactions and transactions, and foster long-term relationships. Salesforce RLM enables automation, visibility, and tracking at each stage to optimize the overall customer experience.