Explaining Promotion

The motivation for promotion management can be very different for different materials and retail businesses. Promotion management helps to boost sales, test new materials on the market or reduce stock levels. Promotions are often limited to a time frame. Depending on the intention of a promotion, the processes are set up in different ways.

There are two ways of creating a promotion:

• Create a retail promotion in the master data.
• Create a retail promotion in the Price Planning Workbench.

In transaction WAK1 - Create Promotion, enter the promotion type in the initial screen and, optionally copy a reference promotion whose data could be adopted. Then enter data such as promotion period, currency, materials, planned quantities and promotion prices and store groups. If required, it is also possible to use transaction WAK2 - Change Promotion to add coupons, bonus buys and free goods.

If Price Planning Workbench is used to create a promotion, it is possible to work with promotion budgets. A promotion budget is planned for a particular period and a particular material group, with the price reductions for these materials being subtracted from the budget in the Price Planning Workbench.

All sales price-relevant changes must then be made in the Price Planning Workbench, with the remaining data and subsequent processing steps being maintained via the retail promotion transactions. Bonus buys, coupons and free goods are not integrated in the Price Planning Workbench.

However, the Price Planning Workbench allows to maintain prices for several price lists. Only one price list can be used in the retail promotion transaction.

Promotions can be defined as higher-level promotions, or assigned to a higher-level promotion. A higher-level promotion is used to group the operational promotions assigned to it according to logical criteria. However, the actual processing of promotions is reserved for the operational promotions, that is there is no subsequent promotion processing for higher-level promotions.

When plant groups are assigned, it is possible to choose whether to assign plant groups from the classification system or local plant groups. Unlike plant groups from the classification system, intra-promotional plant groups can only be created and used within the promotion. By contrast, plant groups from the classification system are for all promotions. plant groups can be converted from the classification system to local plant groups. The assigned plant groups can also be checked for duplicate plants.

It is possible to create discounts at material hierarchy node level in a promotion. There is the option to choose between percentage and absolute discounts. The material hierarchy node can also be restricted to a particular season and season year.

In addition discounts can be created at material level, base merchandise category, merchandise category hierarchy or all materials.

The figure illustrates the most important terms in promotion.

Promotion period:

Specifies the total duration of the promotion. However, there are other periods in the promotion that are calculated based on the configurations in the promotion type.

Purchasing lead time:

Specifies the number of days the promotion price conditions are already valid before the promotional sales period starts.

Purchasing follow-up time:

Indicates the number of days the promotion price conditions are valid after the promotional sales period ends.

Listing lead time:

Indicates the number of days the promotional merchandise is already listed before the promotional sales period starts. The assortment list is created on this date and the goods can be delivered.

Listing follow-up time:

Indicates the number of days the promotional merchandise is listed after the promotional sales period ends. The promotional merchandise can be managed up to this date, and changes to prices are loaded in the POS systems.

Announcement lead time:

Specifies how many days before the beginning of the promotion sale the promotion announcement should be sent to all stores involved in the promotion.

Store GR lead time:

Indicates the number of days before the promotional sales period that the promotional merchandise is delivered to the stores.

Coupons are treated as materials in SAP Retail and therefore have their own material master record (material type COUP). The material type controls which views for the coupon material are maintained.

Coupons entitle customers to a bonus when they buy merchandise. However, the bonus is only settled using a bonus buy, which the coupon must be assigned to. Coupon data is downloaded to the POS system at the same time as other bonus buy data. If the coupon is valid for a specified amount on a specific material (for example, EUR 5 price reduction on laundry detergent) the amount appears as a negative amount on the POS cash receipt (- EUR 5) when the coupon is scanned. The amounts involved are posted to the vendor and/or store in line with the distribution ratio (shares for the cost object) in the coupon profile.

Bonus buy conditions are special conditions that only apply when certain prerequisite and requirements you define are met. For example, you could offer a price reduction if customers buy a certain quantity of particular materials at the same time.

In the above example, the prerequisite are flagged as a Combination Deal. This means that there is a discount of USD 0.50 if a coupon is presented and four materials are purchased from the material group.

The figure illustrates the process steps for promotion. In greater detail, these are:

• In a series of subsequent steps, the promotion is activated and a series of activities is initiated by the system.
• Based on prices entered and activated for the merchandise in the promotion, the system automatically triggers the outbound processing of the pricing conditions to the POS systems in the stores.
• There are different communication methods available to distribute the conditions like IDOC, Assortment list and Retail Enterprise Services.
• Promotion purchase prices can be activated.
• The creation of allocation tables leads to the splitting up of the total quantity of merchandise among the stores.
• The listing function for promotion subsequent processing leads to the creation of listing conditions valid for the merchandise in the stores.
• The stores receive an announcement about the promotion and receive detailed information on the materials in the promotion, the allocated quantities for the individual stores and the required logistics control data.
• A supply source determination can be carried out to define the internal and/ or external vendor.
• Additions can be attached to a promotion.