Retail companies are rarely organized along strictly uniform lines. Different stores in the same corporate group are often different sizes. Some stores have a different status (legally independent companies with the status of an external customer) while others take on different functions (wholesaling, for example). All these different parts of the same company or group must be kept up to date with changes that affect them. Stores that replenish stocks by manual inspection require up-to-date information about the articles they can carry in their assortment (for example, the merchandise category to which an article belongs or the vendor from which an article can be procured). Stock planners often find it useful when planning new orders to have information about the last order placed. This information often has to be made available in a variety of media (printout, PC file, or EDI message) for all articles in an assortment, for articles for which changes have been made, or for an even more specific subset of data.

In SAP Retail, the assortment list fulfills this function.

How the assortment list is used in practice differs from one company to the next. Assortment lists in the food sector, for example, are totally different from assortment lists in the apparel sector. In wholesaling, the assortment list is often used as a price list.

To allow for these different uses, the assortment list in SAP Retail is a standard solution that can be configured with a high degree of flexibility.

• Different assortment list types can be defined (e.g., food and non-food)

• Assortment list profiles can be assigned to sites or site groups

• Different creation and transmission cycles can be defined

• The assortment list can be output using a number of different media (printout, EDI, file transfer)

An assortment list can therefore be easily tailored to your individual company requirements.

Conventionally, an assortment list is produced as a printout. SAP Retail also supports assortment list output in the form of an electronic message for distributed retailing purposes (when a store-based merchandise management system is in place). This is done through the POS interface - outbound.

The most important part of an assortment list is the "assortment list message," which involves the retrieval and preparation of article-related data. After a message has been prepared, it can be sent directly to other systems. Messages created in the assortment list function are structured as intermediate documents (IDocs) with segment hierarchy. The intermediate document provides the interface to other systems.