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 Demand Data Foundation

 

Use

Demand Data Foundation (DDF) is one of the modules of SAP Customer Activity Repository. It includes a reusable data layer that supports the planning, analysis, and forecasting required by different retail business processes. DDF acts as a liaison between the consuming application installed on top of SAP Customer Activity Repository and the modules within the repository that provide the analysis, modeling, forecasting services.

DDF supports the mass maintenance of data and stores master data. It handles the creation, import, and export of data to and from external master data systems (such as SAP ERP). It also manages the exceptions for the consuming application.

DDF includes, for example, a proprietary data model, data import infrastructure, reuse frameworks (such as the process controller), user interfaces for data maintenance, and mass maintenance tools.

Additionally, DDF supports Unified Demand Forecast. UDF is the module of SAP Customer Activity Repository that provides the demand modeling and demand forecasting services. For more information, see Unified Demand Forecast.

Implementation Considerations

DDF manages master data such as products, locations, product hierarchy, location hierarchy, offers, or prices. You can import the master data into DDF either from an SAP ERP system or from a non-SAP system. For more information, see the following sources:

  • Administrator's Guide, Demand Data Foundation (DDF) with Unified Demand Forecast (UDF) on SAP HANA, section Introduction to Demand Data Foundation (DDF). You can find this guide on SAP Help Portal at Start of the navigation path http://help.sap.com/carInformation published on non-SAP site Next navigation step <your release> Next navigation step Integration Information End of the navigation path.

  • Business process Enabling Demand Data Foundation and Creating Demand Forecast in the business scenario Customer Activity Repository in SAP Solution Manager

Integration

Note Note

For more information about the DDF inbound interfaces, see Integration Information.

End of the note.

Although DDF can be integrated with any SAP system to import and export data, it is delivered with ready-to-go Remote Function Call (RFC) integration with SAP ERP to support the reception of the following inbound master data:

  • Products

    Products can be either tangible, such as physical goods, or intangible, such as services.

  • Retail Articles

    Retail standard articles, including generic articles and the standard SAP ERP material.

  • Locations

    DDF supports the following standard location types:

    • Distribution center

    • Customer

    • Store

    • Vendor

  • Product Location

    Information on a specific product in a specific location:

    • Sales price of the product in this location

    • Listing information

    • Specific process control settings

  • Distribution Chain, Sales Organization, and Distribution Channel

    Master data with multichannel information. A distribution chain is an organizational unit for structuring sales in a retail company. A distribution chain consists of a sales organization and a distribution channel.

  • Source of Supply

    A procurement option for materials and products. A source of supply can be an external source (such as a vendor) or an internal source (such as a company's own manufacturing plant).

  • Product Hierarchies

    A product hierarchy organizes products in a structure. You can use product hierarchies to define pricing segments or describe other demand-related behavior.

    DDF supports several product hierarchy types:

    • Merchandise Category Hierarchy

    • Article Hierarchy

    • Product Groupings

  • Location Hierarchies

    A location hierarchy organizes locations in a structure. For example, in a store hierarchy you can organize locations based on their geography.

  • Image

    The visual representation of a product in DDF.

  • Historical Offer

    The promotions that ran prior to modeling and forecasting demand with UDF.

  • Vendor Fund (not master data)

    The agreement between the manufacturer and the retailer about the (promotional) sales of a product by the retailer under certain conditions, such as sales price or sales tactics. In addition, the vendor fund describes how the retailer is reimbursed for the efforts and cost associated to this promotional activity.

Additionally, DDF provides integration with SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) to support the inbound historical sales data for the following data types:

  • Generic Consumption Data

    A daily aggregate key figure per product and location. The source of this data is the transaction log (TLOG) data generated in the point-of-sale data (POS data) system. In some cases (for example, in a distribution center scenario), this data can also be shipment data per day, product, and distribution center.

  • Point of Sale (POS) Data

    The daily aggregated historical sales per product, location, and offer (promotion).

  • Inventory Data

    Data related to the inventory for specific products in a specific location at a given date. Several inventory types are supported:

    • Unrestricted-use stock

    • Blocked stock

    • Quality inspection stock

In addition to supporting inbound data from SAP ERP and SAP BW, DDF supports the creation and export of the following objects:

  • Retail Events

    A group of offers that match the SAP ERP promotion objects.

  • Placeholder Product

    A product that is not known yet to the retailer or the manufacturer in its entirety but is already used for planning purposes.

  • Attributes

    Attributes can be assigned to master data objects (such as products or locations) and to planning objects (such as templates during promotional planning processes). The supported attribute types include, for example:

    • Text

    • Image

    • Price

  • Offer

    An offer describes how a promotional product (or a set of promotional products) will be advertised and how its price execution will be handled.

    DDF supports most promotional parameters, such as:

    • Discount type

    • Discount value

    • Tactic

    • Tactic type

    • Financial data