Season
Purpose
Currently the Season component consists of markdown planning.
Markdown planning allows you to establish dates for scheduled markdowns before the start of a season and monitor planned vs. actual sales on a regular basis to see how well the markdown strategy is working. It is also possible to schedule markups as well as markdowns, although this is less common.
Implementation Considerations
To create markdown plans, you must first configure the Article Master Data, Pricing, and Business Warehouse (BW) or Retail Information System (RIS) components.
You must first create markdown rules (standard discount schedules you use most frequently) in the Markdown Planning function, then create markdown types in Customizing. Then you will be able to create markdown plans.
Integration
Markdown Planning passes markdown information on scheduled dates to the Pricing component, so that prices for clearance merchandise can be automatically recalculated. The system may round prices to price points you have established, if applicable. Markdowns do not take effect until you activate them.
- New prices are subsequently downloaded to the store POS systems via the POS interface.
- During the season, sales data is passed from the BW or RIS to Markdown Planning so that you can monitor planned vs. actual revenues.
Features
Ability to schedule dates for multiple markdowns based on percentages of the original sale price.
- Ability to create standard markdown rules that reflect your pricing policies, then assign them to merchandise, thus streamlining the markdown planning function.
- Ability to enter plans for a range of articles and stores.
- Ability to assign a standard markdown rule to an article while you are entering plan data, then modify the rule at that time. The modifications only apply to this instance, and do not affect other articles to which that rule has been or may be assigned.
- An interactive planning screen allows you to create plans and see how they affect expected revenues. If you modify a markdown percentage, expected revenues are automatically recalculated on the screen. You can continue to make adjustments until you are satisfied with the results.
- Ability to check whether an article is listed in two or more different markdown plans or promotions with overlapping validity periods.
- A mass maintenance tool that enable you to make changes to several articles or price phases at once, making data entry easier and less prone to error.
- Support for markdown-only price points that differ from those in standard pricing.
- Support for rounding down (for example, for an item that normally sells for $9.99, a 50% markdown yields a markdown price of $4.99, not $5.00). This complies with US legal requirements.
- Special authorizations for markdown plans; for example, at the merchandise category level, sales organization level, or distribution chain level. This can be used to allow planners to make changes to their own plans, but view the plans of their coworkers in read-only mode.
- Although you can include several articles in your plan, you can choose to activate some and not others, or activate only certain markdown phases for a specific article.
- Actual data is updated automatically. This includes not only sales revenue, but also weeks-on-hand, current inventory and value, mount of open purchase orders, etc.
- Ability to make modifications at any time, even adding or deleting price phases (dates when markdowns are to occur). You can also delete markdown plans entirely.
- Support for a multi-user environment. Several people can work simultaneously on a markdown plan, although they cannot modify the same article at the same time. (In other words, the lock is at the item line level rather than at the header data level.)
Constraints
The system does not suggest markdown percentages or any changes to your plan based on actual results. Instead, you decide, based on sales revenues, whether to modify your plan or not.
SAP also provides a seasonal model with weighting factors that can be used to forecast seasonal consumption in planning. Weighting factors for forecasts are calculated on the basis of weekly consumption figures in the previous year and are taken into account when forecast values are determined.
For more information on the seasonal model with weighting factors, see the corresponding general documentation.
See also:
Pricing
Promotion