Retail life
Reflections on retail industry and technology
Moved
I have moved my blog to Dynamics 365 Community.
Date: 12/18/2018
Pricing and Discount – Product Price Precision
In the United States, the common price precision is two digits - for example, a mug costs $9.99 -...
Date: 07/18/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Extensibility – Engagement Notes
I have talked to many partners about pricing and discount extensibility, not just for Dynamics 365...
Date: 07/17/2017
Pricing and Discount – Dual Unit of Measures
For some products, we have to deal with dual unit of measures for pricing and discount. Example:...
Date: 07/17/2017
Retail Discount Design – Mix and Match with Amount Qualification
We covered mix and match with fixed quantity in the past. What about minimal amount threshold? Setup...
Date: 05/24/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Extensibility – Multiple ISVs
Update - this blog post has been moved to Dynamics 365 Community. The core of Dynamics retail...
Date: 05/05/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Extensibility - Sample Test
Update - this blog post has been moved to Dynamics 365 Community. It is under private review. If you...
Date: 04/12/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Extensibility - Test Foundation
Creating a new discount type is a complex task as we really need to understand how discount works...
Date: 04/12/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Extensibility - Main Picture
Update - this blog post has been moved to Dynamics 365 Community. Prerequisite: we assume you are...
Date: 04/12/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Sample – Rounding
Rounding is hard. Sometimes, we do not have a choice. Let’s get down to code....
Date: 04/04/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Tribe – Rounding
Rounding is a pain. And rounding is not cheap either, if you round too often. In Dynamics retail...
Date: 04/04/2017
Retail discount: Rounding I
When I first encountered rounding in retail discount, I wanted to solve it in discount design, i.e....
Date: 04/04/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Concept: Effective Discount Method for Compound Ordering
In the concurrency control model of best price and compound within priority and no compound across,...
Date: 04/04/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Tribe – Discount Totaling For Best Price Within Priority
Let’s recap the compounding behavior for concurrency control model of best price within priority and...
Date: 03/24/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Tribe – Discount Totaling For Best Price and Compound Within Priority
Before we get to the compounding discount totaling details for best price and compound within...
Date: 03/24/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Tribe – Discount Totaling
A tribe starts with a history. In enterprise POS (EPOS) in AX6 (a.k.a. Dynamics AX 2012), sales line...
Date: 03/24/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Tribe – Concurrency Mode vs Concurrency Control Model
Talk about confusion. As always, history first. In the beginning, we have three concurrency modes...
Date: 03/24/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Interface – IDiscountUsingMarginalValueRanking
We have talked about marginal value ranking algorithm as a backup plan for dynamic programming best...
Date: 03/08/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Extensibility - Discount Base Amount
We have talked about the concept of discount base amount. Now we will discuss technical details and...
Date: 02/25/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Concepts: Discount Base Amount
We know that retailers can be generous, stingy, or both regarding discount outcome. We will talk...
Date: 02/25/2017
Retail Discount: Generous or Stingy Retailers
Retailers want to have happy customers, so in general they want to get the best deal for customers...
Date: 02/25/2017
Discount Knapsack Dynamic Programming – Adjust for Two Remaining Quantities
As we examined in mixing in exclusive discounts in the concurrency mode of compete within priority...
Date: 02/25/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Details: Remain Quantities I
We will first talk about remaining quantities in the context of concurrency model of compete within...
Date: 02/25/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Concepts: Discount Deal Estimate
Please read marginal value ranking algorithm first, as discount deal estimate is a core ingredient...
Date: 02/19/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Extensibility – Register a New Discount Type
Update: this is out of date. The replacement: Dynamics Retail Discount Extensibility – Multiple ISVs...
Date: 02/17/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Extensibility – IDiscountForBestDeal I
In this post, we will talk about eligibility for IDiscountForBestDeal, which is for discounts...
Date: 02/17/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Extensibility – Three Discount Categories
We have decided to freeze concurrency models: partners choose either pricing zone, or compete within...
Date: 02/17/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Extensibility Overall Approach
I have covered extensively on retail discount design. Think of my past posts as a build-up to...
Date: 02/17/2017
Retail Discount Concurrency Control – Differences with Examples
Let’s have two examples to illustrate the difference between two discount concurrency models:...
Date: 02/14/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Concurrency – Pricing Zone
We will share the top-level implementation of pricing zone in Dynamics Retail Discount Engine. In...
Date: 02/01/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Extensibility – Scenarios IV
Yet more scenarios. Scenario – compound off of original price By default, we support real compound,...
Date: 01/31/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Extensibility – Scenarios III
And more scenarios. Scenario – concurrency control: compete within priority and compound across...
Date: 01/31/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Extensibility – Scenarios II
Let’s have more scenarios. Scenario – mix and match with flexible quantity setup Out of the box,...
Date: 01/30/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Extensibility – Scenarios I
It is impossible to cover every discount scenario for all retailers we support, so it is important...
Date: 01/30/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Concepts: Discountable Item Group
In Dynamics Retail, we allow retailer to configure whether to aggregate the newly scanned product...
Date: 01/29/2017
Retail Pricing and Discount Data Checkout Cache
For the performance of a business application, we can roughly split it into two areas: algorithm and...
Date: 01/28/2017
Retail Discount Knapsack – Marginal Value Ranking Algorithm I
We often interpret retail discount best deal problem as a strict multi-dimensional integer knapsack...
Date: 01/24/2017
Retail Discount Design – Threshold Discount I
Setup Qualifying products. We will aggregate (discounted) prices of all qualifying products and...
Date: 01/23/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount – Quantity Discount
I wish I had a chance to re-design quantity discount for Dynamics Retail Discount Engine. Let’s...
Date: 01/22/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount – Discount Offer
Discount offer in Dynamics Retail Discount Engine is the simple discount. We sometimes also call it...
Date: 01/21/2017
Dynamics Retail Discount Concepts: Discount Application I
I work for Microsoft Dynamics Retail team. From now on, I will talk more about Dynamics Retail...
Date: 01/20/2017
Retail Discount Design – Simplex Discount with Quantity Control
At the first glance, we add quantity control to simple discount, so it would appear to behave like a...
Date: 01/17/2017
Retail Discount Design – Mix and Match Discount I
Let’s design the mix and match. For the first installment, we will talk about fixed quantity setup...
Date: 01/12/2017
Threshold Discount in Retail Discount Concurrency
We have not talked about threshold discount so far. In fact, my hidden assumption is to evaluate...
Date: 01/11/2017
How to Choose a Retail Discount Concurrency Model?
We have discussed many ways for retailers to control concurrency. Now how do I design my model? I do...
Date: 01/10/2017
Retail Discount Concurrency Control – Simple Discounts First
If you pay attention when you check out at any major US grocery store, you will notice that Item...
Date: 01/09/2017
Retail Discount Concurrency Control – Compete Within Priority and Compound Across
To enable retailer to control the ordering of how to apply compounded discounts, we can have the...
Date: 01/08/2017
Retail Discount Concurrency Control – Pricing Zone
We examined discount override option for discount override problem. Now we’re taking a different...
Date: 01/07/2017
Retail Discount Concurrency Control – Direct Override
It’s obvious that we can have one discount override another discount directly for discount...
Date: 01/06/2017