Media, Press Distribution 

Technical Data

Technical Name of Business Function	MED_PDEX
Type of Business Function	Industry Business Function
Available As Of	SAP Enhancement Package 2 for SAP ERP 6.0
Technical Usage	Media
Application Component	Media Product Sales (IS-M-SD-MS) Master Data (IS-M-MD)
Directly Dependent Business Function Requiring Activation in Addition	Not relevant To use processes such as assortment processing from SAP Retail, you must also activate the business function Single Copy Sales of Newspapers & Magazines (Wholesaler).

You can use this business function to plan and process sales and distribution of media products (such as newspapers, magazines, books, CDs, DVDs, or promotional articles) reliably. Benefit from integrated supply chain planning and execution in this business function and keep tabs on the central areas of your business, from title management through purchasing, sales, delivery, and invoicing. You can view goods and value movements at all times, guaranteeing efficient end-to-end processing.

High-performance planning functions allow you to avoid errors in costing, optimizing your purchase order quantities and reducing storage costs and return rates. You can also increase customer satisfaction thanks to precision service functions. In addition, you can adjust the functions according to your company's or country-specific requirements.

Integration

If you have activated the business function Single Copy Sales of Newspapers & Magazines (Wholesaler), you can use the master data from SAP Retail in combination with the media-specific fields in the business function Media, Press Distribution. This means you can use the assortment planning and sales promotion functions from SAP Retail for your media products.

You use the visit lists from Direct Store Delivery in transportation planning. The sales key figures are updated in the Logistics Information System (LIS).

Prerequisites

You have installed the following components as of the version mentioned:

Type of Component	Component	Is Needed Only for the Following Features
Software Component	IS-M 602 FI-CA 602 EA-APPL 602 SAP_APPL 6.02
Business Intelligence content	SAP NW 2004s BI Content Add-On 3 SP06

You have made all the required settings in Customizing for SAP Media under Media Sales and Distribution → Press Distribution and under Customer Interaction Center (CIC).

Before you can use transportation planning, you must have made the settings in Customizing for Logistics Execution under Direct Store Delivery → Basic Functions → Activate Direct Store Delivery.

Features

The most important functions that are available with this business function for press distribution (wholesale) and for newspaper and magazine publishers include the following:

●      Business partner roles

The SAP Business Partner contains the new roles Wholesaler and Point of Sale. You can enter data on a point of sale including information for the retail structure analysis (EHASTRA), or sales aids to define characteristics. This information on a point of sale is also available in SAP BI.

●      Sales planning

You can use a variety of algorithms based on sales time series to make detailed forecasts of sales and surcharge quantities on the basis of existing sales figures. You can then fine-tune your sales forecasts using an easy-to-read list for all customers and data. You can specify constant service quantities and minimum and maximum quantities for customer groups that request the same delivery quantity each day (for example, hotels or airlines).

Sales planning has been implemented as a customizable framework and also contains functions for exchanging and reconciling data between the individual steps in the sales forecast, the constant service, and purchase planning. These functions allow you to take both plannable and unforeseeable events into account.

●      Purchase planning

You can automate planning of purchase orders by calculating and distributing quantities based on historical order data. The functions for purchase quantity planning have also been implemented as a framework that you can configure and adjust as you wish (for example, defining user-specific planning views).

●      Customer Interaction Center

The Customer Interaction Center contains functions for entering and processing quantity planning, subsequent deliveries, complaints, and returns when dealing with customers and vendors.

●      Goods receipt

You can perform tasks such as entering goods receipts, adding to the media product master data, and creating quality notifications, from a worklist that contains the expected goods receipts of media products for a specific date and the expected delivery quantities. The system creates purchase orders for inbound deliveries that do not yet have a purchase order.

●      Returns

You generate recalls for your customers. You can define a calculation procedure in the media issue and assign it calculation methods for calculating the recall dates. You can use fixed or periodical recall dates.

You can enter customer returns manually. You can check whether returns are missing and if they are, enter them. When you release returns, credit memos are created for them for your customers. You can generate a goods receipt document for full-copy returns and post it to stocks.

Based on the returns reported and the goods receipts entered for return deliveries, you can plan returns to the publisher using a worklist that contains all the returns to the publisher that are currently relevant for delivery. You can report both return quantities that are relevant for credit memos and those relevant for delivery to the publisher and generate return purchase orders for them.

For further information, see the SAP Mediadocumentation under Media Sales and Distribution → Press Distribution and the documentation on the BI Content under Industry Solutions → Media → Media Product Sales and Distribution (M/PS).