Steering Meeting #07

Where are we to date…

The UAT Sprint has been extended and is still ongoing. Priority now is to have a Minimal Viable Product with which to launch the Soft Go-Live phase and to get the sales teams involved with more extended testing. This will get us to a position where we can launch a full Go-Live, subject to the availability of the new SAP system at that time.

The principal remaining tasks to enable Soft Go-Live are, in order of significance:

• Zilliant, supported by BCS, to get CPQ performance to an acceptable level

  • It is now clear that the principal performance issue is the number of API calls to Price Manager which are needed to support the margin calculations

  • Zilliant have delivered an improved script for accessing PM data, which bundles individual calls for each line item into a single call to retrieve data for all line items

  • BCS are incorporating this functionality into appropriate existing scripts and will be able to assess the impact on performance this week

  • The impact will provide information to guide further work on other initiatives to reduce the number of calls and to make each call more efficient

• BCS to complete the margin calculations and the Margin Summary page

  • Margin calculations for each agreement line are complete

  • Specification of the Margin Summary Page has taken longer than expected and is still ongoing

  • We expect to have the Margin Summary Page ready for testing during next week

• Valio to provide look-up data to support the margin calculations

• The outstanding bugs in the Zilliant CPQ product have been fixed

  • Agreement start and end dates changing due to different time zones

  • Unable to copy lines from one agreement to another

  • Background scripts not running, causing data not to flow between PM and CPQ automatically

• All sides to resolve any further blocking bugs which arise from the current UAT

This extension to the UAT phase does not yet impact the overall Go Live date due to the delay in the SAP project.

Project Overview

Performance

Analysis to date shows that the principal cause of poor performance is the time needed to retrieve data from Price Manager into CPQ. This data is primarily needed to support the margin calculations and to provide an overall score for the agreement. These calculations are complex and data-intensive, and are driven by the relationships between finished goods and product groups on different lines as much as by the set-up of each individual line independently. This means that making edits to one line can trigger requirements to retrieve updated data for multiple agreement lines.

The current proposed solution is two-fold:

• Reduce the number of calls to PM which are required

• Make each call more efficient

Zilliant have delivered an improvement to the script which we run when adding a Product Group Bundle to an agreement, and which replaces a call for each line in the bundle with a single call for all lines at the same time. BCS is currently working to integrate that functionality into the relevant COQ scripts, following which we can assess the performance improvement and get some data on what will be the most promising elements of the processing to tackle next.

Solution defects (bugs)

The three blocking bugs in the Zilliant CPQ product have now been removed. We continue to have some open bugs, but the blocking CPQ product bugs have now been cleared. BCS and Zilliant are therefore now putting most focus on performance as above.

New Features

The only change requests currently in progress relate to the Margin Summary functionality. The table below summarises the hours worked already which have been submitted to Valio for invoicing, and the hours which have been worked but not yet submitted. We are working to obtain estimates of the work required to complete the items in progress and items which are not yet started. Commercial discussions are ongoing.

Timeline & Milestones

The updated roadmap, accounting for the delayed UAT phase, sets the initial deployment for mid February for the soft go-live.

Given the delay in the SAP go-live, planned for May 2026, the soft go-live may extend longer than anticipated. This adjustment considers user and data readiness for an effective go-live, now planned for April 2026.

Project Status

What does this all mean…

• We are not yet ready to commence the Soft Go-Live phase and to involve the Sales teams

• We have a clear set of tasks which will allow us to proceed to the Soft Go-Live

• Once we are in the Soft Go-Live, we should devise an alternative strategy to enable the CPQ system to function independently of SAP integration and gain benefit before SAP is ready

  • Recover data manually from the SAP systems for integration into Price Manager, the primary data source for CPQ.

  • Perform regular manual updates as needed

Open Discussion / Q & A

Wrap-Up & Next Steps