Update pom to use released versions - maven

Question

Trying to find a way to update a pom to use latest versions of a RELEASED dependency instead of SNAPSHOT.
We have a assembly project that assembles an image to be deployed that during development uses SNAPSHOT dependencies.
But now I want to update the dependencies to use the latest released dependencies. Tried using versions:use-latest-releases but it only affects already released versions in the pom.
Any ideas?
EDIT (can not for security reasons post the pom but here's an example)
<project>
....
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>a.b.c</groupId>
<artifactId>c-d-f</artifactId>
<version>1.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
<type>war</type>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>a.b.c</groupId>
<artifactId>g-h-i</artifactId>
<version>1.1.6-SNAPSHOT</version>
<type>war</type>
</dependency>
...
</dependencies>
...
</project>
Given that component a-b-c and g-h-i has been released with version 1.0.1 and 1.1.6 I want to replace their versions in this pom with these version numbers. Basically remove any snapshot dependencies in the pom.
EDIT
I should add that is to be an automated process with minimal human interaction. For some reason I can only get versions:update-properties to work if versions are already in release state. If I have a snapshot version 0.0.1-SNAPSHOT and want to update it to 0.0.1 it doesn't happen and I have verified the release exists. Same thing with versions:use-latest-relese, and versions:use-releases does nothing at all.

Answer 1

I see two approaches here:
You can create multiple profiles in your maven pom. Best way is to create a profile of "snapshot" and one for "release". Described here: Different dependencies for different build profiles in maven
You can use maven pom properties to define variables for your dependency versions. See here: http://books.sonatype.com/mvnref-book/reference/resource-filtering-sect-properties.html#resource-filtering-sect-user-defined
Hope that helps!

Answer 2

You can use maven properties in your pom.xml, such as:
<properties>
<c-d-f.version>1.0.1-SNAPSHOT</c-d-f.version>
<g-h-i.version>1.1.6-SNAPSHOT</g-h-i.version>
</properties>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>a.b.c</groupId>
<artifactId>c-d-f</artifactId>
<version>${c-d-f.version}</version>
<type>war</type>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>a.b.c</groupId>
<artifactId>g-h-i</artifactId>
<version>${g-h-i.version}</version>
<type>war</type>
</dependency>
...
</dependencies>
and when you want to change the versions, you can use maven-versions-plugin, with the following command, such as:
versions:update-properties -Dproperties=[${release_version}] -DincludeProperties={c-d-f.version}
EDIT:
Note that if you wanna use SNAPSHOTS, you need to add -DallowSnapshots. Read here for more options. And yes, the version needs to exist in the repo, otherwise it will fail. BTW did you use brackets, such as -Dproperties=[0.0.1]? after you read the link I sent you, you will see that this commmand's input is a range, so you must use brackets in order to specify a unique version.