How an Internet Transaction Is Handled (SAP Library - Product Catalog and Online Store on the Internet (LO-MD-AM))

How an Internet Transaction Is Handled

Use

The Internet product catalog is based on the data from the Product Catalog component in the R/3 System. The planning of product catalogs in R/3 allows you to save, call up, and manage data that has been created in connection with advertising media such as catalogs, brochures, CD-ROM’s, online catalogs or multimedia kiosk systems. This data can be combined to suit your advertising requirements.

You can find information about product catalogs in the R/3 System in the document Product Catalog.

Online stores can be (but are not required to) run in a distributed processing environment involving multiple R/3 systems and ALE (Application Linking Enabling) technology. Communication can take place directly (synchronously) between the systems via BAPIs, or asynchronously via IDocs. For example, you may have one R/3 system that handles the actual Internet transactions, another R/3 system responsible for handling sales order processing, and another for handling catalog and article data. This offers the following benefits:

Enhanced performance: The processing load is spread among multiple systems.

Greater security: The R/3 system used for Internet transactions serves as a buffer between the user and the other R/3 systems. A user with access to the Internet R/3 system does not have access to the other systems.

Reduced upgrade time: You can choose to upgrade the systems individually. For example, you can choose to upgrade to the next release of SAP Retail for your online store without updating the server where FI CO resides. However, all must run release 4.5A or higher.

Activities

Before online store customers place an order, the system asks them whether they are new or existing customers.

If they are new, there are two possible scenarios:

One-time customers are not permitted. In this case, customers are required to register. If they do, then R/3 creates a customer master record for them and assigns them a customer number and initial password.

One-time customers are allowed. In this case, customers do not register. Instead, they only need to enter basic data needed for the sales transaction, such as the address. R/3 will not create customer master records for these customers, since the data will not be needed for future use.

If they are existing customers, they are prompted to enter their password. After customers are registered, identified, or verified and they enter payment information, the transaction is complete. Customers can choose payment by invoice, credit card, or COD . For credit cards, you can determine whether authorization takes place online or offline. You can also determine whether customers are to receive a confirmation of the order via email or not.

The system proposes a delivery date, but the customer can override this and type in a different delivery date, if desired. The system will then check availability and verify whether the desired date can be met or not.

You can have a ship-to address that differs from the sold-to address. This is useful when customers want to have their merchandise delivered to the office rather than to their homes, or are purchasing gifts for others.

In addition to individual customers, you can also handle business-to-business transactions via the online store. Instead of requiring a personal name, the form requires the customer to enter up to four lines for the company address. As a minimum, an entry must be made on the first line.

Depending on whether the early registration flag in the Customer Management Profile is checked, you can also have customer-specific prices appear in the online store. See the Customer Management Profile for more information.

If for some reason an error occurs which causes an online store transaction to fail (for example, because something hasn’t been entered properly in the master data), then:

R/3 informs the customer that the transaction was not completed.

R/3 Workflow sends a message to the person responsible, indicating where the problem lies, so that he or she can resolve it.