Introducing Product Content Management in Backoffice

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to describe the user interface and benefits of using the Product Cockpit in Backoffice.

Introducing Product Content Management in SAP Commerce Cloud

At its core, Product Content Management (PCM) in SAP Commerce Cloud is the centralized system and set of tools used to create, manage, enrich, and publish all product-related information across all your sales channels.

Think of it as the digital backbone for your entire product portfolio. It's the "single source of truth" that ensures customers see accurate, consistent, and compelling product information, whether they're on your website, a mobile app, an engaging B2C web shop, or a B2B store.

But don’t only think of PCM as a database or repository for product information. There's a lot more that it can do.

Most of the time, product information comes from backend systems, such as SAP S/4HANA, or other ERP systems, for example.

This basic product information can now be tailored in PCM to meet customers' needs. Additional price information and better media to products can be added, or products connected to others to improve up- and cross-sell potential and much more. The following figure outlines the main steps for turning basic product data into a great customer experience.

This image shows the steps in a possible product enrichment process, outlining PCM's capabilities, including importing and exporting products, defining dynamic product attributes, and validating and approving product information, culminating in product publication.

Throughout this course, we'll introduce you to these steps in more detail.

Beyond just using the power of PCM, you can make your life even easier by using the SAP CX AI Toolkit. The Toolkit helps to speed up this enrichment process by using AI to add new product descriptions, generate new product media, and more. If this piques your interest, take the time to complete our CX AI Toolkit course on learning.sap.com.

The Backoffice Product Cockpit – The UI for Product Content Management

Product content is managed in a dedicated interface in Backoffice, called the Backoffice Product Cockpit. As part of Backoffice, it can leverage the intuitive, adaptable Backoffice user interface (UI) to help product managers quickly get up to speed and feel comfortable using SAP Commerce Cloud. In this next section, we’ll introduce you to the basic layout of the Product Cockpit to help you find your way in the system.

Note

SAP Commerce Cloud is a very flexible solution. Some tasks related to the management of product content can also be handled in the Backoffice Administration Cockpit. This, however, is out of scope for this course. We'll focus on the Backoffice Product Cockpit, the main UI for working with product information.

This screenshot shows the View Selector in the Backoffice Product Cockpit.

Five OOTB (out-of-the-box) views are available to help you effectively manage your product information.

Each view provides a different perspective on product information:

The Bundles view helps you create and manage bundles.
The Dashboard provides an overview of essential product information in diagrams.
The Products view helps you manage the products.
The Assortment view helps you manage the catalog versions and structure product categories inside the catalogs.
The Comparison view helps you make property-level comparisons between the products.

Bundles View

Product bundles provide discounts when specific products are purchased together. They're also often a combination of matching products, such as a camera, tripod, and case, making the selection more convenient. Bundles are discussed in more detail in a later unit of this course.

This screenshot shows the Bundling view in the Backoffice Product Cockpict.

Dashboard

The Product Cockpit Dashboard, which is displayed by default when you first log in, provides a visual representation of your product data. Its Edit button (1) allows you to move the existing widgets around on the page.

The interactive charts allow product managers to navigate directly to the products they represent. For example, clicking on the orange wedge (2) representing products in "check" status will display all products with said status.

This screenshot shows the Dashboard, visible when first signing in to the Backoffice Product Cockpit. The Edit button and the pie chart indicating products with approval status check are highlighted.

Products View

The Products view provides a product-centric UI that facilitates product management tasks. This view allows you to set and modify any product attribute.

You can determine which products need your attention by performing a search for products with specific property values, for instance, by filtering the list to show only products whose approval status is check.

After selecting multiple products, you may edit them together by switching between them in the editor window.

Alternatively, this view can help you determine which products need your attention. You can use the search field to locate the products you want to work on, and quickly switch between these products as you edit them. You may also flip between all the products attached to a workflow.

Note

Throughout this course, we'll be referring to the Products View. If you want to read more on this topic in the official documentation, refer to the full official name: Products Search and Browse View.

This screenshot shows the Products view in the Backoffice Products Cockpit, with catalogs and filter options on the left and product information visible in the main screen on the right.

When editing a product, the Backoffice Product Cockpit displays a product’s properties on a tabbed page. Every tab starts with an Essential section, which displays the same properties on every tab, followed by that tab’s specific sections. In the example below, the Properties tab displays three sections: Essentials, Validity Period, and Descriptions.

You can find the product’s prices on the Prices tab, its images on the Multimedia tab, product reviews on the Reviews tab, and so on. Most standard properties are allocated to their respective tabs in Backoffice configuration files. All properties that aren't assigned in these configuration files can be found in the last tab, Administration.

The image below shows the tabbed product editing page. On the right, the four products being edited together are displayed, allowing you to switch between them with a single click.

This screenshot shows the Properties tab in a product's Edit view, with four products selected for editing.

Assortment View

The Assortment view helps the product manager categorize products. While you can place a product under any number of categories by editing its parent category property in the Product view, the Assortment view allows you to do so using drag-and-drop.

To make drag-and-drop easier, you can split the Assortment view into as many as four window panes to show both the source and target of a drag-and-drop operation. Take a look at the four different split view options in the following screenshot.

This screenshot shows the first step in splitting a screen in the Assortment View for drag-and-drop product categorization. The Split Views Selector is highlighted.

You can split the page vertically or horizontally and resize the panes to make the best use of your screen’s real estate.

For example, you might show an explorer tree in the left pane, the products in the selected category in the middle pane, and a second explorer tree on the right displaying the category to which you wish to drag one or more of the products.

The following screenshot showcases the Assortment view after the desired split screen has been selected. In this case, a vertical split in two.

This screenshot shows the split screen after the desired split screen has been selected. In this case, a vertical split in two. The chosen split view is highlighted.

Comparison View

You can use the Comparison view to compare products. The compared properties may include the product overview, properties, prices, variants, and extended attributes. The product you select first will serve as the reference item for the comparison. The result is displayed as a grid, with differences highlighted in red. If you toggle "Show Diff only," only red properties are shown.

This screenshot shows the Comparison View, with four products selected. The attributes listed for comparison are highlighted on the left.

Several functionalities in the Compare View allow you to:

See a report of attribute values and the differences between them for all provided items
Change which of the selected products serves as the reference item
Add more items to the comparison grid at any time
Dismiss an item from the comparison grid
Collapse and expand sections to manage your screen real estate

Product Editing Toolbar

The Product Editing Toolbar in the Backoffice Product Cockpit simplifies and streamlines the process of managing product information. It's displayed in the Assortment, Bundles, and Products views. The Products view has the most complete toolbar, which allows you to create or search for products. Once located, a product can be edited, deleted, cloned, or synchronized.

The toolbar also lets you create, import, or export products, as well as bulk edit and compare them.

Each icon in the Products View Toolbar affects the selected product(s) as described in the following annotated screenshot:

This screenshot shows the Product Editing Toolbar, with associated labels for each available tool, which are further explained in a following video.

Using the Product Editing Toolbar

Let's check now how Milly uses the Product Editing Toolbar for some of her common tasks.

Summary

Product Content Management (PCM) is SAP Commerce Cloud’s single source of truth for product data that serves product data to customers across all sales channels.
Product information can be created or imported into PCM and then further enriched to improve the customer experience, add additional information, and more.
The Backoffice Product Cockpit uses the Backoffice User Interface framework and, as such, provides an intuitive and adaptable user experience.
The UI includes five main views for working with product information: the Bundles View, Products View, Assortment View, Comparison View, and Dashboard. Each view offers features to support various product management tasks.

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