In Mind Cloud - Product Release - 1908

Manufacturing X Release Notes
Key Features and Enhancements
1908

| 03
1. Introduction
With the 1908 release of the Manufacturing X Sales Platform (MX), In Mind Cloud focuses on outstanding usability of the
system to maximize the value of existing features for our customers. Numerous features, e.g. Quote Overview,
Configurator, Opportunity Pipeline and Product Catalogue have been re-designed to enhance usability and efficiency. MX
also introduces a new, eminently flexible user interface (UI) framework, which enables customers to have a highly
customized UI to support their special needs to the full extend.
To serve our manufacturing customers better, which often require tight integration with their existing backend systems
such as ERP, In Mind Cloud further enhanced its integration capabilities to support CRM and CPQ processes even better.
Examples are a newly introduced account and business partner synchronization, supporting scheduled jobs for custom
tables, as well as views and enhancements on the backend pricing integration. Another significant milestone for the
integration is that MX now offers open APIs, which for instance allow the usage of MX’s robust configurator and pricing
engines in third party user interfaces, such as building e-commerce front-ends.
2. Usability Improvements
2.1. UI Widget – Task-driven Dashboards
Manufacturing sales processes often involve monitoring,
reviewing and completing multiple different types of
tasks, from recording a customer request, to quote
negotiation and approvals, and to final order creation.
There should be no delays due to miscommunication or
overlooked tasks. System emails, reminders and
notifications per task level help to keep all stakeholders
informed. However, per user or role level, it is still
necessary to have a task-driven and personalized
dashboard available to ensure all the assigned tasks are
closely followed, in order to streamline especially
cross-departmental processes. Such dashboards require
to be highly tailored based on each user’s role and the
tasks assigned in the sales process.
With above considerations, MX introduces a highly
customizable UI Widget feature which is part of MX’s
User Interface Framework. In MX, a UI Widget is a
pre-built user interface control that performs a specific
task.
Use case examples are:
• A table control that shows "Open Quotes”
• A table control that shows “Opportunity in
Quotation phase”
• A graph control that shows quote header
information, e.g. pricing date, currency and total
quote amount
In our 1908 release the UI Widget functionality applies
to the MX homepage, which is the entry point for each
user. It will be further extended to other application
areas in the future. More task-driven UI Widget controls
will be continuously added into the framework based on
demand.
Figure 1 : Homepage with UI Widgets

| 04
2.2. Classic Line-Item View
To improve the performance on the quote line item view,
In Mind Cloud introduces the Classic Line-Item View.
This view can be enabled via a setting. It is optimized for
desktop usage and supports all features of the
Figure 2 : Line-Item Grid view
responsive view. This new line-items Grid View can
support rendering for 1000+ line items much faster than
the responsive line item view and gives desktop users a
much clearer overview on hundreds of line items.
2.3. Quote Overview Page Re-Design
To improve access to quote header information, the
former Quote Overview and Additional Attribute views
have been merged into a combined Quote Overview tab.
In Mind Cloud also introduced a separate Pricing
Information section to view and control data for
pricing scheme/procedure determination,
which is related to the Pricing
Determination feature discussed later.
Figure 3 : Quote Overview page

| 05
Figure 5 : Opportunity Pipeline view
Figure 6 : Opportunity Pipeline filter
2.5. Opportunity Pipeline Re-Design
With this release, the Pipeline View has undergone a
re-design, making it much easier to find the latest and
most relevant information on the sales pipeline, and
therewith empowering even faster sales cycle times.
It also comes with easy-to-use filters on the top left. The
filter criteria are now visible on the top right so users
will be able to clear them directly without going into the
filter selector.
Figure 4 : Product Catalogue Detail Re-Design
2.4. Product Catalogue Re-Design
With the 1908 release we are also introducing a leaner
design of the product catalogue detail view. To have a
consistent user experience, users from multiple entry
points to the product catalogue will now view the same
design.

| 06
2.6. Configurator paginated view
enhancement
The configurator page is in many scenarios screen where
users spend most of their time. We have been constantly
reaching out to our customers, to get feedback and
continue to improve the configurator’s usability.
Figure 7 : Configurator Page
In the 1908 release of the Manufacturing X Sales
Platform, below fine tunings have been implemented:
• Ability to list all sub-groups of a group within one page
• Make the paginated view the default one
3. MX Core Features
3.1. Similar Quotes Check
Finding similar quotes, let it be by customer, sales area,
product or even product configuration is a frequently
requested feature. Especially if your business model is
more indirect e.g., via value-added distributors, who are
involved in the same project, it becomes an essential
part of the sales process to ensure a consistent offer
and pricing for all distributors bidding for the same
tender. Hence, it is critically important for sales
representatives to have a holistic picture about the
tender/project so that they can make informed
strategic decisions.
To cater for these use cases, MX introduces a Similar
Quotes Check feature which provides very detailed
capabilities to search for similar quotes. Users can
search based on quote header data, quote partner
functions, line items (i.e. products) and specific product
configurations. The results are not only exact matches.
They are ranked with respect to the similarity to the user
search criteria, i.e. by the number of criteria a certain quote
fulfils.

| 07
Figure 8 : Deﬁne Similar Quotes Check criteria
Figure 9 : Similar Quotes Check results page
3.2. Approvals directly from Email
Approvals are time critical for providing an outstanding
customer experience. Next to the task-driven dashboard
mentioned above, MX introduces with the 1908 release
a direct email approval functionality. Eliminating the
Figure 10 : Email Approval
need to log into the application it will speed up quote
turnaround times. This feature also meets latest
standards on security to prevent misusage. A one-time
link is generated that has an expiry time, which can be
controlled by an administrator.

| 08
3.3. Pricing Scheme/Procedure Determination
A global organization needs a differentiated costing and
pricing approach across regions or sales channels. To
better support our customers, In Mind Cloud further
enhances MX’s both internal and external pricing
engines. With this release, MX can support multiple
pricing schemes/procedures and determine the relevant
one based on quote header attributes (i.e. sales
organization, distribution channel, division and document
type) and the customer account selected. This has
significantly enabled our customers to have much more
flexibility to implement various pricing strategies.
Figure 11 : Price Items screen
3.4. Price Items enhancements
The ‘Price Items’ concept i.e. a detailed cost and price
beak-down, enables customer to have complex cost and
price calculation per line item. To further improve the
usability of the cost and price breakdown, MX delivers
the following changes with the 1908 release:
• Ability to show and change a price condition type’s
base unit and unit of measure
• Showing the condition type ERP ID on the Price Items
screen
• Showing a pricing condition’s status, i.e. active and
inactive
• Ability to trigger ERP pricing from Price Items screen
4. Integration Features
4.1. MX APIs with OAuth based
authentication
MX has powerful built-in product configuration and
pricing engines. To extend the capability to third party
applications, MX proudly announces that all APIs, which
have been previously used only MX internally, are now
open to third party applications to consume. The APIs are
accessed via an OAuth based authentication. Consumers
can register their systems with an MX instead and get a
client ID using which the client will be authorized. This
enables various use cases such as building custom, highly
specific user interfaces for product configuration for
specialized e-commerce scenarios or supplying data from
or to any other application that is used in a sales process.
With the open APIs, MX once more underlines its
platform capability to enable third party applications,
especially customers’ existing systems to leverage on
MX’s powerful features.
4.2. Account and Partner Function
enhancement
The ERP Account and Partner Replication introduced in
the 1904 release of MX was extended.
MX now replicates an account’s partner function list from
ERP. This data is used to ensure that correct ship-to,
bill-to and other partner functions are set on an
opportunity and quote which is essential for globally
operating companies.

| 09
Figure 12 : Account Partner Functions
Figure 13 : ERP Sync for knowledge base and product variant
On top of the partner function synchronization, the
following enhancements have been introduced:
• Additional data points (like main address country and
city) at below places
o Accounts page
o Account selection screen under Create Quote
view
• Enable pagination for Partner selector in Create
Partner view under account
• Relax the rules to allow a quote to be created with
different accounts under the same opportunity to
support certain distribution sales scenarios
• Allow quotes to be assigned to an existing opportunity
• Enable opportunity selector in Create Quote screen
• Enable pagination for Opportunity selector under
both, Quote Overview page, and Create Quote screen
4.3. Product Conﬁguration/Knowledge Base
synchronization enhancement
To support a high degree of business agility and ensure
maximum data accuracy, MX introduces two additional
options for manual ERP product data synchronization,
i.e. to refresh the knowledge base which refers to the
product conﬁguration data and the product variant data
from ERP.

| 10
5. Tool Support
5.1. Enable administrator to set system/user
preferences
To support a truly customized and tailored sales journey,
MX already allows a user to set his/her own user
preference, for instance for email notifications, default
quotation templates, system parameters and
configurator settings.
In the 1908 release, MX further extends this capability to
enable administrators to set system preferences and to
mass-update the preference on behalf of users. This can
be extremely helpful for initial setup and to support
non-tech-savvy users from the IT side.
Figure 14 : User preference update for System
Below are the system/user preferences that an
administrator can change:
Configurator
Label Font Size
Hide Sub-label
Hide comment button
Configurator Attribute Single
Row mode
Label Width
Configurator Pagination Mode
Use Fluid Layout
Value Option Threshold
Show Attribute Positions
Report Templates
Save Proposal as Attachment
Notifications
Receive Email
Receive Approval Email
Receive Routing Email
Receive Notification Email
System
Default Language
Default Currency
Time zone
Enable interactive pricing
Figure 15 : Preference update for users

| 11
5.2. System Tasks enhancement
MX already supported scheduled synchronization jobs
for products and accounts from ERP. Now it further
extends this capability to lookup tables, which can be
used for various use cases to control application
behavior. This has significantly further improved MX’s
integration and customization capability. Now,
customers can synchronize customized data sets
automatically based on scheduled jobs. This ensures MX
always provides the latest data sets and business logic to
manufacturing users.
From the administration user interface, MX consolidates
the previously separated product, account and report
synchronization screens into a central screen to allow
easy administration. MX also introduces a monitoring
dashboard to show which tasks are running and which
process units have completed their runs.
Figure 16 : Master Data screen under System Tasks
Below is a summary of the types of tasks that are
supported:
• Account Sync Job: To sync accounts from ERP
• Delete Sync History job: To delete the Sync History
(introduced in 1908 release)
• Product Sync Job: To sync products from ERP
• ERP Table Sync Job: To sync tables from ERP
(introduced in 1908 release)
• Report Sync Job: To sync MX report data to external
systems
• Simplification of configuration rule creation
The user friendliness of creating configuration rules
has been increased greatly. Users do not even need to
type and can perform the action by simple clicks.
• SPARQL drop/alternate for quote
Starting from 1908 release, there is little to no need of
using SPARQL on quote. Users can use IMCScript to
compute documentHeaderPrice and
itemHeaderTotalPrice.
• Pricing scheme – Excel-based definition
Starting from 1908 release, users can download a
pricing scheme in Excel format, make changes and
upload it back into the system. This makes it very easy
for a non-IT user to create, understand or change a
costing or pricing scheme. Also, it allows to easily
compare costing and pricing schemes or to move them
across tenants.
5.3. Other tool support
• Groovy extension data interface enhancement
All quote related groovy extension points can now
access the entire quote data and execute any actions
on the quote. In addition, more data points are made
available in the groovy interface.
• Groovy extension on change of quote currency
and/or pricing date change
This is a new extension point introduced to default or
control currency and price date.
• Groovy extension for creating ERP material,
bill-of-material and routing
The creation of material, bill-of-material and routing
are now fully customizable via Groovy. This is done to
support customer specific needs more efficiently.
• HTML Audits for configuration engine
More HTML audits are made available for both
configuration and pricing engine. In addition, the
output structure and folder naming has been
standardized.

| 12
ABOUT US
In Mind Cloud (www.inmindcloud.com) is an independent provider of an innovative manufacturing sales platform. Their solution
“Manufacturing X” combines CRM and CPQ with production expertise and intelligent insights to transform the profitability of
manufacturing and engineering businesses. Based on the SAP Cloud Platform their solution is deeply integrated into manufacturing
processes and front-end sales operations. In Mind Cloud is operating globally through its offices in Germany, Singapore, China and a
high-value partner network.
GERMANY
Theresienstr. 1 | 80333 München | +49 89 2050 0853 40
SINGAPORE
35 Ann Siang Road | Singapore 069714 | +65 6908 4350
CHINA
Shenzhen High-Tech Industrial Park | Suite 4C07
Science and Technology South 12 Road | Shenzhen 518000
6. Performance Improvements
Below is performance improvement that have been done
in 1908 release:
• Save and reload ERP configuration cache from
database
MX can now save the last cached data in
configuration and pricing data from ERP. The data is
saved into the database and upon system start, it is
then restored back into MX’s engine cache. This
significantly reduces the time taken to reload the data
from ERP after a release upgrade or hotfix
deployment.
• Save time in load of attribute meta data from
configuration engine
Previously most of the meta information from the
configuration engine was reloaded on every
transaction. This has been improved and now
requires to be loaded only once.
7. Other Enhancements
Other enhancements include:
1. Reduce data in cached data set, i.e. TimeZone,
IMCScript.
2. Filter of inactive users in case of tagging.
3. A Sales Item for which an ERP material is created
cannot be deleted.
4. Quote has TimeZone is now defaulted based on user
time zone or sales_system_instance timezone in that
order. Users have the option to change the time zone,
too.
5. Default Quote language based on Account language
or user language (in this order).
6. Enhancement to support Google Maps API upgrade
7. Enable copy of an active IMCScript from browser.
8. Allow users to be searched by their first and last
names as well if searched in user object name only.
9. Read the symbolic value image path from IMCScript.
10. Making a line item optional is supported in any quote
status.
11. Quotes do not need to be saved until change
happens
12. CRM quote import/export enhancements related to
import of product with ERP External ID and with
product list price if any in CRM
13. User has the option to save a quote without seeing
the pricing pop-up screen. This can be achieved using
a setting: SettingDisablePopupOfPricing.
14. Quote type is no longer mandatory on quote
creation
15. Support ERP BOM explosion and line item ordering
16. Others.

In Mind Cloud - Product Release - 1908

More Related Content

What's hot (20)

Similar to In Mind Cloud - Product Release - 1908 (20)

More from In Mind Cloud (11)

Recently uploaded (20)

In Mind Cloud - Product Release - 1908