Marketing-Specific Customer Defaults 

Purpose

This screen allows you to make customer-specific settings which can then be used in the Marketing Planner and Marketing Calendar. To access the marketing-specific customer defaults, go to Marketing  ® Marketing Planning and Campaign Management  ® Administration  ® Customer Defaults in the Easy Access menu.

Prerequisites

You should define the date ranges you wish to work with in Customizing for Marketing Planning and Campaign Management under Basic Data  ® Define Additional Date Ranges. You can define up to five customer-specific date ranges.

If you define an additional date range that has a specific meaning, for example, pre-dip or post-dip, you need to select the corresponding period type in this activity. This is used to trigger validation of the dates in the SAP BW System.

You should define at least one buying pattern type in Customizing for Marketing Planning and Campaign Management under Basic Data  ® Define Default Buying Pattern Types.

Process Flow

·        First select the customer for whom you are going to set your customer defaults and enter the relevant sales area for this customer.

If you enter a target group as your planning customer, customer defaults are not maintained for each individual combination of target group, type and sales area. They are maintained for all target groups for a particular campaign type and sales area.

You can then define the following information:

Default Dates

On the Default Dates tab page, you can enter defaults for all of the relevant dates in a customer promotion. These could be dates for the buying period, the “dip” period before buying begins, the “dip” period after buying ends or any other date.

·        To enter a new line, choose the icon Append row.

·        In the field Description, enter the type of promotion.

·        In the field Day, enter the day of the week on which the promotion should begin.

·        Specify the duration of the promotion in days or weeks.

·        You can then specify the following information for the additional date ranges that you have defined in Customizing:

-          the reference date for the start of this additional date range, e.g. if it is before the start of the promotion

-          the offset to this reference date, for example, whether it is two weeks before the start of – the promotion

-          the reference date for the end of this additional date range

-          the offset to this reference date

Only the planned start and finish dates are supported as reference dates. You cannot maintain dependencies between different date ranges from the additional date ranges.

Example

You can define that the buying period should start 4 weeks before the promotion takes place and that buying finishes two weeks before the end of the promotion. You define the buying period as a date range in Customizing and then you can enter the actual dates here. A buying pattern can be defined for each combination of campaign type, buying pattern type and duration.

Buying Pattern

On the Buying Pattern tab page, you can define buying patterns, for example, for various different buying pattern types such as confectionery, drinks and so on.

·        Enter the campaign type again as on the previous tab page.

·        Select the particular buying pattern type you wish to make settings for.

·        Enter a duration for the buying pattern.

·        The length that you have defined for the buying pattern determines how many buying percentage fields are available. For example, if you specify a buying pattern of two weeks, there will be two fields available for the buying percentages. You can then plan whether the retailer (customer) purchases 20% of the goods in the first week and 80% in the second. Any other combination that adds up to 100% is permitted. The aim of the buying pattern is to increase the accuracy of the planned increase in sales before sending the values over to Demand Planning.

 

If no other buying pattern is assigned in a trade promotion, the system defaults to an equal distribution. In this 2 week example, that would be 50% and 50%. If promotion starts on any other day other than a Monday, the distribution may differ.

  Promotion Calendar

On the Promotion Calendar tab page you can record the start and end dates for special events or promotions held by the customer, such as “Back to School” events. It may be that you want to tie your promotion in with these events or that you wish to avoid promoting a product during this period. This information does not appear on the Marketing Planner but merely acts as a reference. You can, however, show these events in the Marketing Calendar if you select the view Customer.

·        Enter a text and ID for the customer event.

·        Enter the start and end dates for the customer event.
If you enter a target group as your planning customer, the Promotion Calendar tab page is inactive.

Result

The information that you enter on this page on the tab pages Default Dates and Buying Patterns can be seen on the Basic Data tab page in the Marketing Planner. The buying pattern defined in Customer Defaults is used to calculate promotion planning.

Specifics of MobileSales

·        You maintain the customer default values for a planning customer in the Marketing/Planning Customer/Default Values tile set.