Merchandise and Assortment Planning supports planning and reporting for all business activities involving assortment and merchandise, as a smoothly integrated process. This enables you to plan on a value and quantity basis on any level you choose, within a planning hierarchy, for example, purchasing organization, store group, or merchandise category level. You define, for example, your strategic targets at a higher hierarchy level, and then transfer them step-by-step to the more detailed assortment, price band or even article. While doing so, you can compare various plan versions that were created manually and then develop a final version based on these plan versions.

The plan is used to establish important key figures such as sales, gross margin, stock, assortment width, and assortment depth for a time period in the future, for example, a season. By comparing planning data, actual data, and historical data, you can plan future business developments in the best possible way.

You can define the planning process flow, the structure of the planning hierarchy, and the key figures to be included in planning to meet your own particular requirements.

The structure of your planning process and thus the scope of your planning are defined in the planning scenario. Planning scenarios represent self-contained planning processes and are used to manage all system activities involving planning. You can create more than one planning scenario at the same time. Network graphics simplify maintenance and implementation, resulting in a more manageable number of planning processes.

You can use SAP Business Workflow to control the time-frame for your plan. This ensures that the sequence and deadlines for the different planning activities are observed by the associates.

Planning steps are the main components in a planning scenario. You can choose which planning step method you want to use. Manual planning is the most important planning method. In manual planning, you enter the planning data for selected key figures in freely-definable entry screens (planning layouts). The system then uses this data to calculate further planning data.

If you use Excel Integration in your planning, Microsoft Excel is used as the interface for entering planning data, thus replacing the SAP interface. This allows you to combine SAP functions with the functional flexibility offered by Excel.

Planning can be done on any level of the planning hierarchy. Planning data is, however, stored on the lowest level of the planning step. As a result, data is consistent at every planning level when the planning data is aggregated or disaggregated.

Time-related distribution keys are used to distribute planning data among periods.

Plan versions enable you to keep different planning strategies separately in your database in the system, so that you can, for example, compare historical and current planning or plan versions.

Automatic planning is used to copy actual or planning data to other plan versions. SAP Copy Management can be used to edit the data you are copying.

Planning step links are used to exchange planning data between linked planning steps.

The database table (info structure) contains the required characteristics and key figures for which you want to generate planning data. For each planning step, you define which of the characteristics and key figures in the info structure are to represent plan characteristics (for example, purchasing organizations, merchandise categories) and planning key figures (for example, sales, sales quantities).

Planning data, actual data, and historical data can also be compared using the reporting functions in the Retail Information System (RIS). Standard analyses are available in the Merchandise and Assortment Planning component and allow you to compare the different types of data.

You can also use the SAP Business Warehouse in your plan, thus copying data from the BW system to the info structure and saving planning data in the BW system, to enable you to run user-friendly and efficient Reporting (comparison of planning, actual and historical data).

Interfaces can be used to create allocation tables and promotions in the system using the planning data that you have created.

You can also integrate your own programs and transactions in planning scenarios.

Planned articles can be created for articles that have no master data in the SAP System. You can thus integrate the planned articles in your planning.

You can use the Business Document Navigator to create information as Office documents or graphics for planning scenarios, planning steps, and planning step links. This allows you to define targets and strategies for your company.

Authorization objects can be used to ensure that only particular associates can create and display planning data.

Even if you use various currencies when entering data for your company, all planning data for a scenario is stored in the same database currency.

Merchandise and Assortment Planning was a new development for Release 4.6A, thereby replacing Open-To-Buy (OTB). Release 4.5B of SAP Retail still contains the original OTB functions. No new developments will, however, be made to these functions in the future.