Technical Articles
Handling Long Tail / Supplier Products in an SAP SD/MM Order environment – Realization Concepts
In this blog I describe feasible realization concepts for Long Tail / Supplier Product handling scenarios in various business cases, mostly leveraging the hybris PCM as product catalog management tool, while the article master creation is performed by the ERP based Enhanced Material Search with Creation.
- Preparation of Supplier Product data
- Supplier Products / Long Tail product handling in SAP ERP orders (for professional sales reps and buyers)
- Supplier Products handling in SAP Retail InStore MIM (for occasional/remote users)
- Long Tail business in a Web Shop using an SAP ERP Backend (for end customers and business partners)
Preparation: Supplier Products – Data Import and Management
Fig.2: Managing Supplier Product Information with hybris Product Content Management. Multiple catalogs of different origin can be imported and compiled into one single master catalog.
Please note: Having all your supplier products accessible in a single repository may not be enough. In customer projects we have learned that the supplier product data should be best further enriched with SAP material master data, e.g. (future) material group, product hierarchy, SAP vendor number and vendor subrange …, to streamline the processing of master data creation in the SAP backend, both on SD side (basic data, sales data) and MM side (purchasing info record).
Realization Concepts
1) Supplier Products / Long Tail product handling in SAP ERP orders
Fig.5: Catalog Search and Material Creation with the ERP based Enhanced Material Search mit Creation function.
- The user calls the Enhanced Material Search (EMS) function from within the SAPGui based order
- SD: Sales Order va01, quotation, inquiry (from ERP 6.0 EhP2)
- MM: Purchase Order me21n, purchase requisition me51n (from ERP 6.0 EhP5)
- Within the Enhanced Material Search screen the user performs a search for supplier products (called “Catalog Search”). The Search Engine that holds the supplier products index provides the results back to EMS. Before the results are shown the EMS triggers an existence check in order to identify supplier products which are already maintained as master data, by comparing the search results with the information of purchasing info records in ERP.
- The Catalog Search results are displayed. The users selects a search result line and presses the button “Create Material”
- Based on the material creation method the EMS creates a material master with Basic Data, Sales Data (MVKE), Plant Data (MARC), a purchasing info record and (optional) carries out a pricing to calculate the sales price out of the purchasing price which was given in the search result. This is done either in the background within seconds (Simplified Material Creation method), or with a user interface allowing the sales rep to control and change fields manually.
- A new material has now been created, has a material number and the user can order it like any other existing material.
- The user calls the Enhanced Material Search (EMS) function from within the SAPGui based order
- SD: Sales Order va01, quotation, inquiry (from ERP 6.0 EhP2)
- MM: Purchase Order me21n, purchase requisition me51n (from ERP 6.0 EhP5)
- Within the Enhanced Material Search screen the user directly presses the button “Create Material”, without selectiong a search result.
- A Material Creation UI is shown based on the EMS material creation customizing.
- The user selects a vendor and some start parameters, enters the product data based on the EMS material creation customizing. At the end the user saves the new material.
- The EMS creates a material master with Basic Data, Sales Data (MVKE), Plant Data (MARC), a purchasing info record and (optional) carries out a pricing to calculate the sales price out of the purchasing price which was given in the search result.
- A new material has now been created, has a material number and the user can order it like any other existing material.
- The user calls the Enhanced Material Search (EMS) function from within the SAPGui based order
- SD: Sales Order va01, quotation, inquiry (from ERP 6.0 EhP2)
- MM: Purchase Order me21n, purchase requisition me51n (from ERP 6.0 EhP5)
- Within the Enhanced Material Search screen the user performs a search for materials (with material numbers, called “Material Search”). The Search Engine that holds the material index provides the results back to EMS.
- The Material Search results are displayed. The users selects a search result line and presses the button “Create Material”
- A Material Creation UI is shown based on the EMS material creation customizing.
- The user changes the product data where it differs from the material used as template. At the end the user saves the new material.
- The EMS creates a material master with Basic Data, Sales Data (MVKE), Plant Data (MARC), a purchasing info record and (optional) carries out a pricing to calculate the sales price out of the purchasing price which was given in the search result.
- A new material has now been created, has a material number and the user can order it like any other existing material.
Even IS Retail specific Generic Articles can be created with one click when the Retail functionality Price Catalog (PRICAT) is used to manage supplier products.
Variant of scenario 1: Long Tail in a Cooperative / Franching Business
Fig.7: Performing catalog search via local Enhanced Material Search in a central hybris PCM based Supplier Product Data Repository
(slide available as PDF)
For a SAP user performing the catalog search in the Enhanced Material Search there is no difference at all in the behavior of the EMS. This makes this variant an elegant way to search for supplier products without the effort to import, harmonize, consolidate, manage and maintain the data coming from multiple suppliers in as many format.
As in the intra-company variant (see Fig.3), using the hybris PCM is particularly elegant as it allows to “mix” different catalogs into one common basis for a Long Tail / Supplier Product handling along with regular ERP materials. This is shown in Fig.7.
Scenario 1) shown in Fig.1 and Fig.7 is depending on the ERP based Enhanced Material Search with Creation, which is available in SD Order/quotation/inquiry since EhP2, and in MM order (me21n) and purchase requisition (me51n) since EhP5. This makes it possible to implement a long tail / supplier product creation in both SD and MM order processes using the same application for searching and creating supplier products.
In 2012 a German car parts dealer cooperative has implemented the scenario in Fig.8 using a central SAP Enterprise Search with a BWA server to run the central data repository:
2. Supplier Products handling in SAP Retail InStore MIM
for occasional/remote users
3) Long Tail business in a Web Shop
The web shop used in the scenario is based on a product catalog, which has to hold not only products with an SAP master data record, but also supplier products without a material number.
The supplier product data entries need product content to allow a material master creation with the ERP based Material Creation module of the Enhanced Material Search, like SAP vendor, vendor material number, purchasing price, delivery time, minimum order quantity, ideally also sales list price, matching ERP material group, matching ERP product hierarchy, etc.
During the navigation of a customer within a webshop both supplier products and ERP materials are shown. For a web shop customer there must be no difference between the two kinds of products.
During the order creation or the creation of a request for quotation, the missing material masters are created:
- I recommend the usage of the “Simplified Material Creation” method, which allows a creation of a new (single” material master within 1-2 seconds in ERP.
- The Material Creation Module is part of the EMS and is contained in ABAP package WSD_CS_UI.
- The Material Creation module sends the material number back to the calling web shop application
The web shop order has now all the material numbers and is created in the SAP ERP backend
a) SAP Commerce Cloud triggers supplier product creation in SAP ERP / S/4 backend
The SAP Commerce Cloud product content management has to contain the supplier product data in addition to the ERP material information. Alternatively, within hybris, a supplier products master catalog has to be mixed with an ERP material catalog (see Fig.2).
The order process goes on as described in the general concept.
b) External PIM integrated with SAP Commerce Cloud triggers supplier product creation
Feedback is welcome
Again, I published these concepts as food for thought, not as the ONLY way of truth to realize long tail scenarios. But I believe all concepts are feasible without much complexity to be realized on project basis.
My blogs are partly a bit technical, but I hope I can serve the needs of both business analysts as well as SAP experts to understand the concepts.
As always comments, feedback and critique are welcome. Ideally we can start a serious discussion here to bust the myth of complexity for realizing a long tail scenario. In case it is business confidential please contact me in person for an individual concept discussion of your particular business case.
Please check my SD Enhancement Series Index blog for other valuable SD order enhancements.
Best regards,
Ingo Woesner
Dr. Ingo Woesner
Product Manager
SAP Customer Experience
SAP SE
Informative
Helpful document shared. 🙂 thanks for sharing.
thanks,
Srinu.
Ingo, very informative document for everyone.
Regards
Waza
WOW !