eCatalog Best Practices

[Former Member]

Hi Folks,

Would anyone be able to share their experience on how organizations determine which product categories/products should be in an e-catalog (punch out or local)?

Any insights will be much appreciated.

Best regards

GT

[masa_139]

Hi,

Based on my project experience, most of customers use both Internal Catalog and External Catalog.

Internal Catalog:

+ Stocked Items in Material Master

+ Service Categories

+ In case supplier can not provide OCI enabled External Catalog

External Catalog:

+ Category has huge items. Buyer can not handle it. For example, Chemical items for Labs

+ Office Stationary - Suppliers have nice catalog

+ Safety Equipments for factory

+ Engineering parts, Electric parts

+ Price is changed every day. For example, Vegetables

Regards,

Masa

[Former Member]

My friend GT:

I am not sure of any Best Practice available for Product Category selection as such, I can share my experience with you.

For Punchout Catalogs, most of the providers comply to UNSPSC standards of classifying the products/services, it is 8 character nomenclature (family, segment, class, commodity) numeric code. Hence it depends on ERP system (ECC) how the Material Groups are codified or created.

You are lucky if your ERP system is also following UNSPSC (version that Catalog provider must support), if this is the case then you can easily map the catalog transferred item with UNSPSC code.

If you are not using UNSPSC classification of Material groups in your ERP/SRM, you need to map the catalog supplied UNSPSC code with ERP/SRM material group, this can be done using Catalog Transfer BAdI and fill up the Enrich and SC Item structure with custom mapping.

You have to decide on three factors while mapping: Mapping Logic Design, Type of Mapping.

There are two type of mapping of Product Category:

A) Catalog is in UNSPSC - ERP/SRM is also UNSPSC but not UNSPSC codes are available in your ERP/SRM

B) Catalog is in UNSPSC - ERP/SRM is not UNSPSC

depending on above type of mapping you need to make a mapping logic design.

For Type - A, I will prefer Specific to Generic UNSPSC code look-up logic, meaning first you will find exact mapping (commodity)available in your SRM with that of Catalog, if not then you will do search at Class level, then go to Segement Level and then Family level. If you do not get any match at any level, then map that catalog product category with a common ZdefaultCategory to be used for Punchout Catalogs, so that buyers can sort those Purchase Requisitions/Purchase Orders and manually can change.

For Type - B, I will prefer to write a Version dependent (I will decide to stick to a common UNSPSC version that is supported by all the suppliers) Z custom table, where each UNSPSC code is mapped to corresponding non-UNSPSC product Category of SRM. The situation becomes complex when you have multiple backend system, then you will have to add another field of Backend System as well.

I hope above logic will help you to move ahead.

All the best for the catalog implementation.

Remember my friend, there is no best practice, what you use and that makes your customer happy...is the best practice.

Regards,

Ashok Kawa

Edited by: Ashok Kawa on Sep 25, 2009 8:51 PM