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Introduce, define, and manage services through concept to market business process areas

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Applies to: Dynamics 365 Commerce, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights, Dynamics 365 Field Service, Dynamics 365 Marketing, Dynamics 365 Project Operations, Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Microsoft Supply Chain Center

The product and service lifecycle management process is broken down into business process areas for categorizing products and services, introducing new products and services, maintaining product data, organizing and assigning product attributes and catalogs, designing and configuring manufactured products, controlling product engineering changes, defining product and service costing, managing product and service pricing, managing product assortments and catalogs, and managing the product lifecycle. The following sections further describe these business process areas.

Define service offerings and strategy

This business process area involves categorizing services based on various attributes, such as the service type and brand. The exact categories in your organization vary, depending on the type of services that you offer, their complexity, and the industry. Categorization helps organize services and makes it easier for customers to find what they are looking for. Internally, categorization helps you report and analyze trends for your services. Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and Commerce support the creation of category hierarchies to further enhance the discoverability of your services.

Learn more at Define service offerings and strategy overview.

Introduce new services

Every organization has a process for developing and introducing new services to the market. The process includes idea generation, concept development, product design, testing, and launch. Office 365 includes a variety of tools to help you remain organized, and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management includes tools, such as a configurable workflow, to help with the business process flow of introducing new services. For more basic services, you can also design a business process flow in Dynamics 365 Sales. When you're ready to test new services and advertise new service offerings, Dynamics 365 Marketing includes a variety of tools to help with the process. A well-managed introduction of new services can help organizations remain competitive and meet customer needs.

Learn more at Introduce new services overview.

Define service costing

All organizations must analyze and define the costs that are associated with developing and delivering services. These costs include direct labor costs and overhead costs. Dynamics 365 Sales includes functionality for assigning basic costs to services. Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management includes more robust costing capabilities. Examples include multiple costing methodologies, such as last in, first out (LIFO), first in, first out (FIFO), standard, and average costing, and indirect cost calculations for overheads. An understanding of service costs is essential for setting prices and making informed business decisions.

Learn more at Define service costing overview.

Manage service pricing

After you define costs, you can start to manage and define service prices, based on factors such as cost, competition, and customer demand. Effective pricing strategies can help organizations improve profitability and maintain a competitive advantage. Dynamics 365 Sales includes basic sales pricing functionality. Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management has a pricing engine that includes trade agreements, price lists, customer loyalty programs, promotions, and discounts to help determine the best price.

Manage service lifecycle

This business process area involves managing the entire lifecycle of a service, from ideation to retirement. Management of the service lifecycle involves making strategic decisions about product development, pricing, and marketing, to help ensure that the service remains profitable and relevant to the market.

Next steps

If you want to implement Dynamics 365 solutions to assist with your concept to market business processes, learn more at the following resources and steps.

  1. Concept to market introduction

  2. Concept to market end-to-end overview

  3. Manage service lifecycle overview

You can use the following resources to learn more about the concept to market process in Dynamics 365.