Process ENGINE PRIMER
Services for Rapid Development and Time-to-Market
Our team's vast knowledge of B2B sets us apart from others in the industry. We created viax to address the issues and pain points we experienced while working on enterprise B2B projects. We aim to build a core set of complex, dynamic services that can effectively cover a wide range of B2B use cases.
We use these services to develop specific models for various functionalities. For example, our Determination Service powers models such as Pricing, Costing, Commissions, and Product Restriction. Similarly, our Configuration Service powers Product Configurations, Guided Selling, and Subscription Models. Furthermore, our clients and partners can build models tailored to their business needs using our services in aid of rapid development.
As an API-First SaaS platform, all of our Services and Models are exposed via endpoints, and their functionality can be used anywhere. You have complete freedom to decide whether to use viax Business Interactions with our Services and Models or use them standalone for additional horsepower in outside applications.
Our complex services provide our clients and partners with a roadmap to innovation and the speed to market that businesses demand. While most platforms shy away from complexity or assume that "ERP handles it," viax thrives with a modern and pragmatic approach. Let’s take a closer look!
We’ll use our Determination Service to illustrate our Services approach and the multiple use cases each supports.
An everyday requirement in B2B is to “determine” data sets based on criteria — determining Parties or Sales Teams based on Product Family and Customer. In this example, determine the restricted product set a salesperson is browsing while building a quote — based on a region, the customer, the channel, and any custom data points specific to your requirements.
Additionally, this set of product restrictions may change when an installation partner is set on the interaction. This is an excellent example of our Determination Service and Product Restriction Model. Taking data points as criteria and providing the available entities based on those criteria points.
To keep the example above simple, we focus on Products, but of course, other models would execute and re-execute as well, such as Pricing Models. Unlike most point solutions on the market, where pricing is straightforward and rarely supports B2B, viax’s Pricing Models are built for B2B pricing complexity and customer-facing performance.
You also see how we can listen to Events (e.g., changing a party) that trigger Services, giving you fine-grained control over where and when execution happens.
We also support serverless functions that run during services and model execution. This is an effective way to incorporate external systems API and current systems in your ecosystem. For example, here, we can achieve dynamic real-time pricing by including the price of copper in our pricing execution or by calculating tax. Another way viax helps our clients go to market faster is by maximizing your existing investments.
Rapid Development and Time-to-Market
Our core set of Services and Models are built to provide a robust foundation for a more significant number of your B2B needs. But if there is a Model that viax does not support OOTB, you have the freedom to build that Model on top of our engines — a rapid development approach that gives you the advantage of using robust architecture to get to market.
Maybe you offer custom services or transaction types, and you want to support the dynamic recommendation; this would be an excellent example of custom models. We find that building custom models takes about 2-3 days
Services Overview
Let’s take a look at on overview of each service and it’s role in the Process Engine.
Determination Service
Used in determining data sets. Examples are Party Determination, Pricing, Costing, Product Sourcing & ATP, Related Products.
Workflow Service
Build and execute complex workflows that power our Business Interactions.
Organization Management
Manage organizational hierarchy and roles for internal org and your customers. We can map to your existing CRM as the source of truth.
Order Management
Manage your Business Interactions.
Configuration Service
Provides a UI to build configuration models for users to interact with. Examples are Product Configuration, Guided Selling Models, Subscription Models, Task Models.
Product 360 Service
Manage serialized product and their history. Support for TDaaS, post-sales efforts, service, and be proactive.
Product Management
Manage products, categories, associations — assign the various configuration models for complex b2b support.
Client Module
Supports building custom applications within the Process Engine and gaining all the advantages of our architecture (e.g., events, API, process orchestration).