Create Product Catalogs 

Purpose

You create a product catalog to present and sell your products in a Web shop, or using other media.

Prerequisites

You have created a product master in the SAP CRM System, or have downloaded it from the SAP R/3 System.

Process Flow

You must carry out the following steps to create a product catalog:

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       1.      You create a concept for your product catalog, to do this you specify the catalog type. (See: Catalog Types)

       2.      You define the structure of the product catalog (see Product Catalog Structure). To do this, you create a catalog header (see Creating Catalog Headers), and arrange the hierarchy of the catalog areas below it.

       3.      You create one or more product catalog variants. In addition, you determine how many features of a product catalog you want to create.

       4.      You assign the products of the product master to the individual catalog areas (see Assigning Products). This is also important for the clear presentation of products in the Web shop.

       5.      You characterize the products. This is important for clear presentation and quick search capability in the Web shop (see Managing Lists of Catalog Characteristics). This function of the product catalog allows you to freely group existing attributes created in the CRM system with new catalog characteristics created in the product catalog.

       6.      You activate products, catalog areas, catalog variants and the catalog header, in order to make them visible for publication in the Web shop (see Activation for Publication and Withdrawal from Publication).

       7.      To publish the catalog data in the Web shop, you have to trigger a replication of the product catalog contents. This takes place using a simple function, which you execute only once at the start, (see Initial Replication of Product Catalog Contents). If changes are made to the product catalog, you trigger a Change Replication of Product Catalog Contents. You can also make changes to catalog contents that have already been published (see Staging the Release of Catalog Contents).

       8.      You have the option of transferring the product catalog data in XML format. This could be necessary, for example, if you want to make the data available to a business partner or to third-party software to generate print-outs. (see XML Export).

Result

You can present and sell your products in the Web shop. You can check the presence of your products in your Web shop using the standard templates that are delivered with it. You can fit the standard templates with your corporate identity design.