Refine Assortment Workbook

As an assortment planner, you use the Refine Assortment workbook to determine which products from the assortment list will be available at which locations based on the location assignment.

As a result, the combinations of products and locations or clusters are determined that are used in the Plan Assortment workbook. You can only edit combinations of products and locations in the Plan Assortment workbook planning that have been selected in the Refine Assortment workbook.

The Refine Assortment workbook contains two worksheets:

• Refine by Cluster

  Displays all the clusters for each product within a group that is filtered by category and module.

• Refine by Location

  Displays locations within a selected cluster.

These worksheets allow you to quickly and easily assign products to groups of locations and easily modify individual locations. In the initial stage, you focus on assigning products to clusters in the Refine by Cluster worksheet. Upon completion of this stage, distribute the values to all the locations. This allows you to fine tune exception locations at the micro level in the Refine by Location worksheet.

• Authorizations for working on the Refine Assortment workbook. For more information, see the Authorizations section in the SAP Assortment Planning for Retail Administrator’s Guide.

• An assortment plan has been created in the My Assortment Plans (Version 2) app, but it has not been released.

• The refinement step creates the assortment plan that is used as input for the Plan Assortment workbook.

• The refinement step determines the combinations of products and locations that can be planned.

• During processing the Plan Assortment workbook, you may determine that a product is not suitable for a location. You can go back to the Refine Assortment workbook and remove the product from this location. This clears all planned values in the Plan Assortment workbook, and this combination of product and location is then no longer editable.

• You must use the planning function Finalize Workbook in the Refinement Functions ribbon to integrate with the Plan Assortment workbook.

• Ability to display two different attributes for different categories that have been defined in the Manage Product Attributes app.

  When changing the categories, the headers and values are automatically refreshed with the new attributes. You can view KPI values for one attribute or a combination of two attributes.

• Allows for planning on the level that is defined by the aggregation level attribute or function type as set up in the Manage Product Attributes app. Examples for this attribute or function type are color or taste.

• Ability to set all of the location assignments with sales values to 1 (true) using the planning function Assign Reference. This is very useful if you want to offer most of the products in most of the locations. You can then work on the exceptions to remove the product assignments that you do not want.

• View products according to the selected category.

• View products by modules utilizing a simple filter.

• The summary table in the upper part of the worksheets displays selected KPIs as an overview, for example No. of Products Selected as the number of selected products that are assigned to your assortment plan.

• Presentation of the values in a selectable Display Currency although they are stored in the planning currency. The planning currency is defined during the creation of the assortment plan and available in the variable Plan Currency.

Major activities

The following list of activities is not a strict order but a recommendation.

• Mandatory: When starting to refine the assortment, select values in this mandatory step for the following variables in the dialog box Prompts:

  • Assortment Plan: The assortment plans contain products that have already been assigned to different location clusters.

  • Category : Product category. You must select one category at a time to work on. This allows for the dynamic attributes to be displayed by category.

  • Exchange Rate Type (Retail Planning): The exchange rate type defines how currency values are converted.

  • Display Currency (optional): Monetary values are displayed in this currency. You can use Display Currency to view your plan in a currency other than the base currency.

  • Cluster (optional): Location cluster. You can select a cluster to filter selections.

• Mandatory: Initialize the worksheet for all valid combinations of products, colors, clusters, and locations with zero values to ensure consistency. Do this by running the planning function Initialize Worksheet.

• Recommended: To set all of the product assignments with sales values to 1 (true), use the planning function Assign Reference.

  Caution

  To ensure that your generated listing is synchronized with the Refine Assortment workbook, only delete product assignments from locations but do not assign additional products to locations. If you add product assignments that do not match your generated listing, an error will occur during export and the receipt units for these product locations will not be exported. For more information about listings, see Generate Listings (Optional).

• Optional: If you want to plan on location level, open the Refine by Location worksheet and select the cluster you want to plan on.

• Mandatory: In the Refine by Cluster worksheet or in the Refine by Location worksheet, determine which products you want to offer in the cluster set by cluster or selling location.

  Set the value 1 for these products on category level, product level, or aggregation level.

• Recommended: Enter values for the KPIs Presentation Date and Phase-Out Date. If nothing is entered, the system automatically uses the begin and end date of the validity period as values for these KPIs.

  Note

  You can enter these KPIs only in the Refine Assortment workbook to influence Plan Weekly Sales and Receipts. You cannot change these KPIs in the following steps Plan Assortments and Plan Weekly Sales and Receipts.

• Recommended: To distribute values to the locations and to update the location assignments in the summary table, run the Update Summary planning function in the Refinement Functions ribbon.

• Optional: If you use modules and want to filter, use the filter for the Module cell.

• Recommended: Review the details of the selected product and cluster level, or the product and location within a selected cluster.

• Recommended: Save the plan values using the Save Data planning function of SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for Microsoft Office (Analysis Office).

• Optional: If you want to work only on certain products that you select manually, you can use the planning function Delete Assignments to set all of the product assignments to zero.

• Note

  You can run the Finalize Workbook planning function only once per session. If you have to run this planning function again, reopen the Refine Assortment workbook.

  Mandatory: Save the refined assortment by using the Finalize Workbook planning function. This step updates the plan data with the most up-to-date assortment listing and cluster set assignments associated with the assortment plan. Any new products assigned are now available in the Plan Assortment workbook after the refresh is complete. Deleted products are no longer available in the Plan Assortment workbook after the refresh.