Assortment

The assortment management demands of retailers differ greatly. Some require identical assortments in all areas, while others demand assortments unique (for example) to each store. Assortment Management takes account of these differences and offers a variety of tools to allow any combination of article assortments as well as for the structuring of article assortments for wholesale.

The main tasks of assortment management for retail sites or customers are:

• Determining articles that can be sold at a point of sale in a store

• Adding these articles to the article assortment that is assigned to this store's distribution center.

• Determining the distribution centers from which articles are to be distributed, when stores are to be supplied from the warehouse

• Determining the stores in which the article can be sold at the point of sale

• Determining the articles that should be included in the customer assortment

In assortment management with the general assortment you can map areas (for example, beverages, sweets) that may reflect the departments in the stores. For each of these areas, you create one or more general assortments with different article assignments.

Then you assign the relevant general assortments to the stores.

An assortment is an object with article assignments valid for a particular validity period each. This assignment results in listing conditions, which serve as the basis for various evaluations.

Once an assortment user is assigned to an assortment, articles for the assortment user in question can be used in various business functions. The most important assortment user in Retail is the retail site. The assortments of a site include all the articles that are relevant in its business activities.

In many retail companies, the assortments, for example, for a distribution chain or for a particular region, are generally identical or are only slightly different. For this reason, you should only define a few general assortments and then assign them to a group of assortment users.

Depending on how the indicator for the multiple assignment of assortments to sites is set in Customizing, you have the following options:

• If the indicator is set, stores, distribution centers or customers can be used as assortment users.

• If the indicator is not set, only customers can be used as assortment users.

You can significantly reduce the number of listing condition records on the database by using multiple assignments, as a general assortment can sometimes be assigned to a large number of sites. This is due to the fact that articles are listed for assortments and not for sites, and therefore, the listing conditions created are valid for all the sites that are assigned to the assortment. Unlike local assortments - which you cannot change using the assortment maintenance and which you therefore cannot assign to other customers or sites - in general assortments (assortment category C) you can assign an unlimited number of sites or customers, provided that the multiple assignment (n:m assignment) of sites to assortments is activated in Customizing.

Exclusion modules can be used to define exceptions for assortments. This means that individual articles are explicitly excluded from being listed in an assortment.

In addition to the individual assignment of a general assortment to an assortment user, you also have the option of defining reference sites for assortment management, and assigning them sites in a 1:m assignment.

The main advantage of the reference site is the one-time assignment of general assortments. All dependent sites (sites that are assigned to the reference site) automatically adopt all the assortments from the reference site. Via this pointer function, changes made to general assortments, and changes relating to assignments of general assortments to the reference site, are automatically valid for the assigned sites.

General assortments can only be assigned by means of reference sites if multiple assignment (n:m) is set in Customizing.

If you delete the assignment of a site to a reference site, all the assignments of the reference site's assortments to the site are also deleted.

In our example, we assume that the three stores A, B and C in the north should have the same assortment assignments. Thus, these stores are assigned to the same reference site (north). The reference site in turn is assigned to the relevant assortments. Any changes to the general assortment affect all assortment users (i.e. the reference site along with its assigned stores). The same logic applies for the stores X and Y in the south: They are grouped under their reference site (south), which is then assigned to the assortments relevant for the southern stores. The reference site concept makes it easy to assign the right assortments to a brand new store: The new store just has to be assigned to the relevant reference site. With that, all assignments to the relevant general assortments are taken care of for the new store.

Every reference site can have several assortments (n:m).

Every store can be assigned to only one reference site for the assortment management (1:m).

A site cannot be assigned to an assortment twice (directly and via the reference site). However, the site can be assigned to an assortment directly and to another assortment via the reference site.

In the assortment maintenance, you can maintain general assortments, and assign assortment users to general assortments.

In the assortment maintenance, you can assign merchandise categories (and assortment grades, if applicable), a layout or layout module (depends on the assortment type control in customizing), and an article hierarchy (with the corresponding hierarchy node) to the assortment.

Regarding the assignment of assortment users: Customers can only be assigned in the 'Create/Change Assortments' transaction, while sites can be assigned both in the transaction for creating or changing the assortment, and in the tool for assigning assortment users:

A user-friendly assortment assignment tool is available for assigning sites to general assortments. This tool allows you to sort the displayed sites, for example, by region, or to select sites that are not yet assigned to the selected assortments, or new sites that have been created. The system displays two tree structures: a list of the selected general assortments and their already assigned sites on the left, and a list of sites for which assignments are still possible on the right. You drag and drop to assign the selected sites to the desired assortment.

You can also create, change, or display general assortments from that assortment assignment tool, and you can also display which articles are currently listed for the selected assortment.

To operationally use a new store that has just been created, not only must assortments be assigned to this store, but the right purchasing and logistics data also have to be maintained for this store. To proceed with this as efficiently as possible, you can arrange similar stores into groups and maintain data for a whole group at once, instead of for every individual store.

These store groupings can be formed on the basis of different criteria, for example according to geographical location, size and demographic aspects. Some retail companies use the same store groupings for all functional areas, while other retail companies use different store groupings for different functional areas. Large and rapidly expanding retail companies may open a new store every other day or even more often. It is critical that such store openings run smoothly, as this has a significant influence on the mark that a retail chain leaves in a new market. Therefore, simple and efficient data maintenance is very important in this process, both when setting up the master data of the new store and when processing the first purchase orders.

You can use store groupings for the maintenance of purchasing data (vendor/site data, purchasing info records and purchase conditions), assortment data, and logistics & replenishment data. In the system, these store groupings are defined by assigning stores to the relevant reference site of these functional areas (assortment, purchasing, logistics & replenishment.

After you used reference stores to set up the relevant (article listing/logistics and purchasing) master data for a new store, and after having determined a multiplier for the consumption data, you can carry out the forecast for the new store and then start a replenishment run to automatically generate the first store orders.

The reference stores for assortment management, purchasing, and logistics data are defined and assigned in transaction REFSITE.

You can maintain vendor and site data, purchasing info records and purchasing conditions for a purchasing reference site. Such a reference site represents all sites that are assigned to it. The data is only stored at reference site level and is always used if there is no specific corresponding data at store level.

Purchasing reference sites are defined at purchasing organization level.

As an extension of the supply source determination, the vendor and site data can also be used to limit vendors to only the assigned sites. If a vendor is assigned to a reference site, this vendor supplies all sites that are assigned to the reference site.

You can maintain logistics and replenishment data for all stores (general reference store) or for all stores of a certain distribution chain (reference store at distribution chain level). You can now also use transaction REFSITE to create a store grouping according to customer-specific criteria. Since the replenishment and logistics data usually do not differ in different distribution chains, but rather between groups of sites (that are defined by common attributes such as size, geographical location, and so on), you could define logistics and replenishment reference sites for mass maintenance: There is a separate mass maintenance tool that can be used to maintain logistics and replenishment data at this level (transaction: MASS_MARC).

The section Create Assortments for New Sites already dealt with the various ways you can create assortments for new stores.

SAP Fiori is SAP's central, role-specific and intuitive user experience (UX), which runs on any device. You can use various user interface (UI) technologies such as the SAPUI5 framework, UI5 Web Components, or the mobile iOS and Android SDKs to build SAP Fiori apps. As the SAP Fiori UX focuses on the individual user roles, new SAP Fiori apps are specifically created for individual roles. For example, in Retail, there are apps for store associates, and for store managers.

The SAP Fiori Launchpad (FLP) is a shell that hosts SAP Fiori apps, and it is the single point of entry for a user to access the assigned applications.

You can also manage assortments and list articles by using the new assortment module management function.

The app Manage Assortment Modules (F4892) allows you to create assortment modules and assortment module versions, to assign articles to the versions, and to assign stores (assortment users) to assortment modules.

The Assign Store to Assortment Module (F4893) app allows you to copy the assortment of an existing store to a target store, to select a store, and to display the existing assortment module assignments as well as to add further assortment modules.

The Assign Product to Assortment Modules (F4894) app allows to connect articles and assortment modules. As articles and assortment users are assigned to assortment modules with individual periods, the listing conditions are created for the intersections of both periods.

You use the app Assign Products to Distribution Centers (F4543) to list articles for your distribution centers (DC), that is, for the local assortments of your DCs. As for the stores, also for each DC, the system automatically creates a local assortment in the background when the DC is fully maintained, that is, including the business partner (customer data).