Cost Estimation

Note: Spartacus 4.x is no longer maintained. Please upgrade to the latest version.

Note: Spartacus 4.x was tested with SAP Commerce Cloud versions 1905 to 2205. Spartacus 4.x has not been verified to work with (and is not guaranteed to work with) SAP Commerce Cloud 2211 or later releases.

Note: This feature is introduced with version 1.3 of the TUA Spartacus libraries.

This feature determines and displays the average cost for a product offering considering the provided yearly consumption entered by a customer.

Table of Contents

• Prerequisites
• Business Use Cases
• Frontend and Backend Dependencies
• Configuring and Enabling Cost Estimation
• CMS Component Configuration for Anticipated Consumption
• Attributes
• Components
• Further Reading

Certain types of product offerings (that is, commodity products - electricity and gas) are charged by consumption. For customers to get an idea of how much these type of product offerings could potentially cost them on a monthly or yearly basis, customers will need to provide additional information regarding their anticipated usage. The estimated consumption entered by the customer is captured if third-party systems need to process it as illustrated in the following figures:

Electricity consumption:

Gas consumption:

When the customer selects or enters anticipated annual consumption information and clicks Get Available Offers, the product listing page displays all applicable product offerings based on the annual consumption as illustrated in the following figures:

Customers are able to view the average cost that each of the product offerings would cost them based on their anticipated usage. Additional pricing-related information for each product offering is available by expanding the offering. The products shown in the search result list must be properly configured for this scenario and have prices defined for maximum 1 usage unit (such as kWh and cubic meter for example). The Average Cost for a product offering is determined using the following algorithm:

Average Cost / Year = PayNowPrices + YearlyRecurringCharges + (YearlyConsumption – YearlyIncluded) * UsageCharges

IMPORTANT NOTES:

1. Average Cost is determined using the algorithm presented in the above illustration. The calculation works with simple price information, such as one-time charges, recurring charges, and usage charges, for which the price has a fixed value and not a complex price formula.

2. Average Cost is determined for those product offerings that have prices defined for a maximum of 1 usage unit. In case the product offering has prices defined for more than 1 usage unit, the average cost cannot be properly determined, case in which it will not be displayed. Please see the following illustration.

Prerequisites

1. Product offerings for which the average cost has to be calculated and displayed must have prices defined for maximum 1 usage unit (kWh, minutes, sms, etc).
2. CMS components must be properly defined in the CMS system (in our case in SAP Commerce Cloud, in the content catalog).

Business Use Cases

Use Case 1: Discover product offerings by consumption from homepage

Customer lands on the homepage and is able to search for product offerings by consumption. Customer selects the desired option for gas or electricity and provides the annual consumption manually in the consumption input area. Alternatively, if a customer does not provide a value, a default value will be taken into consideration. Customer conducts the search, and search results with list of product offerings are presented. For each product offering, the customer is able to see the average cost that was calcuated using the provided input. For each product offering listed, the customer has the option to expand the row and view additional pricing-related information including the contract duration, one-time charges, recurring charges, and usage-based charges. From the search results page or from the Product Details Page, the customer has the ability to re-calculate the costs using a different anticipated consumption value.

Use Case 2: Customer lands on category page

Customer accesses a category page (in this use case example, a commodity category of either electricity or gas). As a result, the customer lands on the product listing page displaying the product offerings in that category. If the customer has not yet provided any personal consumption usage criteria, each offering shown will display pricing information based on the default value. Customer will be able to view additional pricing-related information, view the details of a selected product offering or change the consumption criteria.

Use Case 3: Content Manager defines the CMS components enabling customers to search by consumption in backoffice tools

A Content Manager wants to define and enable the cost estimation feature. The Content Manager accesses the Backoffice to create the necessary components including:

• Component of type SliderOptionComponent
• Component of type PoSearchByConsumptionComponent (Note: Slider option components part of a PoSearchByConsumptionComponent are selected within the list of the SliderOptionComponent objects)
• Component of type ConsumptionListComponent (Note: Search by consumption components part of a ConsumptionListComponent are selected within the list of the PoSearchByConsumptionComponent objects)

Content Manager updates the homepage by including the desired ConsumptionListComponent objects in the corresponding slot.

Frontend and Backend Dependencies

Configuring and Enabling Cost Estimation

Configure default consumption values for PO types and usage units: Consumption values are stored based on the product specification of the product offering and the usageUnit in the following format:

```text
consumption_<productSpecification>_<usage_Unit> : <value>
```

Example:

consumption: {

    defaultValues: [

        { productSpecification: <string>, usageUnit: <string>, value: <string>},

        ...

        { productSpecification: <string>, usageUnit: <string>, value: <string>}

    ],

    default: <string>

}

CMS Component Configuration for Anticipated Consumption

The Content Manager creates CMS components for consumption (defined in b2ctelcoaddon). This is the list of CMS components that a Content Manager would need to define in CMS to enable the cost estimation feature.

SliderOptionComponent - Sample List

Following is the sample list of SliderOptionComponent objects:

1000 kwh

• uid: 1-person-option
• name: 1 person
• value: 1000

2000 kwh

• uid: 2-persons-option
• name: 2 persons
• value: 1750

Attributes

Examples of how components can be defined in CMS as sample data:

SliderOptionComponent components

Detailed sample data

Electricity specific slider option components

Component UID	Name	Value	Media
OnePersonElectricitySliderOption	1 person/ 1000 kwh	1000
TwoPersonElectricitySliderOption	2 person/ 2000 kwh	2000
ThreePersonElectricitySliderOption	3 person/ 3500 kwh	3500
FourPersonElectricitySliderOption	4 person/ 6000 kwh	6000

Gas-specific slider option components

Component UID	Name	Value	Media
ThirtyM2GasSliderOption	30 square meters/ 800 cubic meters	800
FiftyM2GasSliderOption	50 square meters/ 1200 cubic meters	1200
OneHundredM2GasSliderOption	100 square meters/ 2500 cubic meters	2500
OneHundredFiftyM2GasSliderOption	150 square meters/ 4500 cubic meters	4500
OneHundredEightyM2GasSliderOption	180 square meters/ 6000 cubic meters	6000

PoSearchByConsumptionComponent components

Detailed sample data

Electricity search by consumption components

Gas search by consumption components

ConsumptionListingComponent components

Detailed sample data

Consumption listing component for electricity and gas

Components

The following new and updated components must be enabled in the TUA Backoffice to appear on the Spartacus TUA storefront:

Further Reading

For further reading, see the following topic in the TUA Help portal:

• TUA Pricing