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Co-authored by Mandheer Walia and Christiane Erzgraeber.
Media companies want to report financial figures by title. Title in this case means any type of content (physical or digital) represented by a media product or a group of products that are structured in a product hierarchy. Examples can be
- Series --> Season --> Episodes and Merchandise
- Digital or Physical publications: Publication --> Edition --> Issue
- Any type of digital content e.g., Games, Journal, Assessment, ….
What’s unique about the industry is that, in the product hierarchy, a product can be assigned to any level or node of the hierarchy. In addition, several products can be assigned to a sub node in the hierarchy, but each media product has only one superordinate product. Lastly, there is support for multiple hierarchies e.g., content hierarchy, merchandize, ….
The generic capabilities of product hierarchies are documented in SAP Help Portal
To support the special requirements of media and entertainment companies for product hierarchy, a new hierarchy type - Product Hierarchy – Type 2 is available in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.
How to create a Media Product Hierarchy
To create and edit hierarchies use app “Manage Product Hierarchies” (App ID: F4359) and make sure that role Master Data Specialist – Product (SAP_BR_PRODMASTER_SPECIALIST) is assigned to your user.
In the entry screen you can see a list of all existing hierarchies in your system. Choose “create”.
In window “New Hierarchy” choose “Product Hierarchy - Type 2” and fill in values for all other required fields.
The hierarchy ID represents the level 1 entry or root note for your hierarchy. All further nodes are created as child of this ID. You can restrict the validity period of your product hierarchy.
Press “create” to continue.
After initial creation you are back in the overview screen. Next you need to maintain nodes and assign products. To do so, make sure that you are in edit mode of your hierarchy.
You can maintain your hierarchy either manually or import / export from spreadsheet. For manual maintenance, mark your product hierarchy and click on either “Add” or “Fast Entry” on the right side of the screen.
The user can decide whether to create a subnode or a product node. A product can be assigned at either, subnode level or product node level, but the difference is that a subnode can always have further nodes whereas a product node is always the lowest node in that hierarchy.
In our example, we first want to create a subnode that represents series “Underworld”. The required product master records are already created in the system. Enter the respective product ID.
By expanding value help for field “Node” you can search for products. Mark the right one and click “OK”.
Series “Underworld” is now assigned to product hierarchy “CONTENT_HIERARCHY”. Don’t forget to save your changes.
Next, we want to assign the first season to our series. Open the hierarchy in edit mode and choose “Add”. Create a subnode to the series and search for the product that represents the first season.
Finally, we need to assign the episodes to our season. For the episodes we are pretty sure that they will be the lowest level in our hierarchy, so that we can create them as product. We have four episodes and want to create them using the fast entry function.
Mark “Product” and make use of the search help for the products to be assigned.
When finished press “OK”.
Back in the hierarchy overview press “Save”.
You now have created a media product hierarchy that is the basis in use cases where you want to report Title means not only a single product but also parts or the complete hierarchy you have set up. The product hierarchy can be consumed by apps like “Trial Balance”, and it is possible to drill down to all levels in the hierarchy. We will cover this in a separate blog.
