Store Grouping 
Store Grouping
Use
You can group similar stores together and maintain data for the entire group at once, rather than each store individually. This increases the performance and manageability of listing, makes changes to store data easier, and decreases the time required to set up data for new stores. It also provides an overview of the existing data at group level or at individual store level.
Site groups may be defined for different reasons: geographic location, size, or demographics . Some retailers use the same store groups for all functional areas, others use different store groups for different functional areas. Also, large retailers and retailers in rapid growth sometimes can open a new store every other day or even more frequently. The store opening process is critical because it can be the first impression a retail chain makes in a new market. Therefore, this process requires simple and efficient maintenance, including the setup of the new store's master data as well as its initial ordering.
You can use of store groups for purchasing data (vendor/site data and purchasing info records, purchasing conditions), assortment data, and logistics/replenishment data. After the master data for the new store has been set up using a reference store and a multiplier for consumption data, you can now run the forecast for the new store and afterwards run replenishment to create the initial store orders automatically.
Integration
You can maintain vendor/site data as well as purchasing info records and purchasing conditions for a group of sites. To accomplish this, you can use reference sites for purchasing; these reference sites represent all sites assigned to the reference site. The data is only stored at the level of the reference site and is used where no specific site level data exists.
As an extension of supply source definition, vendor/site data can be used to limit the vendor only to the assigned sites. If an assignment is made for a reference site, all sites assigned to this reference site are to be supplied by the vendor.
Vendor discounts for new store opening can easily be defined using trigger conditions. These conditions are set up when a new store is opened and trigger the appropriate vendor discounts for the time the trigger condition is active.
You can choose whether to have allow an n:m assignment of sites to assortments, rather than the more restrictive 1:1 assignment. That is, a site may have several different assortments, and an assortment may be assigned to several different sites. This function is similar to the multiple assignment of customers to assortments. Because articles are listed for assortments (not for sites), the listing conditions that are created are valid for all the sites assigned to this assortment. You could, for example, define multiple assortments for each merchandise category and list those products for each assortment that are considered to be the optimal mix for the assigned group of sites (list high fashion products store groups in large urban areas).
For more information, see 
Creating Assortments for New Sites and Multiple Assignment of Assortments to Sites.
Logistics and replenishment data for stores can be maintained for all stores (general reference store), for all stores belonging to a specific distribution chain (reference store at distribution chain level), or for a store group. Thus the only grouping level for maintaining logistics data is the distribution chain. Since replenishment and logistics data typically do not differ by distribution chain, but rather vary by site group (based on store size, geographical location, and so on) it can be useful to maintain data at the site group level.
The maintenance of logistics and replenishment data at site group level is provided in a separate mass maintenance tool. Fore more information, see Mass Maintenance of Master Data.
See also:
Creating Store Groups
Calculating Prices For Site Groups