We are working on a customer Ofbiz implementation for a client and have
an interesting challenge. Here's the basic outline:
The client extends special offers to their customers, including offers
that include a free product (shipping charges apply) if they purchase a
quantity of other products AND sign up for recurring shipments. We are
using shopping lists to implement the recurring portion. In many cases
the order taker will know the offer ID only. Of course, it is possible
for them to lookup the component products and rules for the offer, but
we need to automate this to improve order taking efficiency.
Basically we need to have a mechanism to translate a Trial Offer
containing multiple products into multiple orders, and we must be able
to use this mechanism for both order imports AND to make it easy for
CSR's to create orders manually.
An offer might consist of a free product(shipped for the cost of
shipping charges only), a quantity of the same product for which they
are billed later, possibly other product(s), and possibly one or more
shopping list entries. Some parts of the offer are "free", others billed
at regular prices but delayed payment terms, and the shopping list
portion will be paid by cc when each order instance is created.
Originally I was intending to handle this via marketing packages but
some of the trial offer requirements make that impossible. At the very
least, we need to associate the Offer ID with the following:
1. A Products that is free (FBO), but has associated shipping charges
2. One or more Products (regular and/or auto ship (shopping list
entires))
3. A billing delay that affects only some of the order components
- we need to translate this into Order Terms, like net 35 or
net 45
4. A TollFree number associated with the offer
5. The actual marketing campaign
6. A shopping list Frequency value
7. A shopping list Next Ship Date
There are no existing OFB data constructs that we can use - so we need
to add something. (At least I haven't found one :-) )
The approach we are considering is to add a new entity, related to
tracking code by trackingCodeId which will hold some values like the
products included, shipping cost rules for each component, the tollfree
number, the shopping list frequency, billing delay and next ship date.
We would use this as reference information - to be used by a new service
that will serve a dual function - it will be used o import orders
related to the offer AND could also be triggered by order takers to
create multiple order and shopping list entries by simply entering the
offer number.
I'm wondering whether there is a better(simpler) approach, and also any
caveats about potential issues with upgrades/migrations to future
versions of OFB. Also, would this be of value in the core OFB product?
Any comments would be appreciated!!
--
Dave Tenerowicz
[hidden email]
Office: 303.493.6727
Mobile 303.906.6116
Fax 303.814.8330
Visit us at
http://www.salmonllc.com
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