Season 
Purpose
Currently the Season component consists of markdown planning.
Markdown planning allows you to establish dates for scheduled markdowns before the start of a season and monitor planned and actual sales on a regular basis to see how well the markdown strategy is working. It is also possible to schedule markups as well as markdowns, although this is less common.
Implementation Considerations
These functions are part of the business function Retail Enhancements (ISR_RETAILSYSTEM) that you usually activate with the Retail business function set.
To create markdown plans, you must first configure the Article Master, Pricing, and Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW) or Retail Information System (RIS) components.
You must first create markdown rules (standard discount schedules you use most frequently) in the Markdown Planning function, then create markdown types in Customizing. You will then be able to create markdown plans.
Integration
· Markdown Planning passes markdown information on scheduled dates to the Pricing component, so that prices for clearance merchandise can be recalculated automatically. The system may round prices to print points you have established, if applicable. Markdowns do not take effect until you activate them.
· New prices are subsequently downloaded to the store POS systems via the POS interface.
· During the season, sales data is passed from SAP BW or RIS to Markdown Planning so that you can compare planned and actual revenues.
Features
· You can schedule dates for multiple markdowns based on percentages of the original sales price.
· You can create standard markdown rules that reflect your pricing policies, then assign them to merchandise, thus streamlining the markdown planning function.
· You can enter plans for a range of articles and stores.
· You can assign a standard markdown rule to an article while you are entering plan data, then modify the rule at that time. The modifications only apply to this instance, and do not affect other articles to which that rule has been or may be assigned.
· An interactive planning screen allows you to create plans and see how they affect expected revenues. If you modify a markdown percentage, expected revenues are automatically recalculated on the screen. You can continue to make adjustments until you are satisfied with the results.
· You can check whether an article is listed in two or more different markdown plans or promotions with overlapping validity periods.
· Mass maintenance allows you to make changes to several articles or price phases at once, making data entry easier and less prone to error.
· You can define markdown price points that differ from those in standard pricing.
· Prices can be rounded down automatically (for example, for an item that normally sells for $9.99, a 50% markdown yields a markdown price of $4.99, not $5.00). This ensures compliance with any legal requirements that stipulate that absolute price reductions must correspond to the entire percentage specified.
· Special authorizations for markdown plans, for example, at merchandise category level, sales organization level or distribution chain level. This means that planners can change their own data but can only view coworkers' plans in read-only mode.
· Although you can include several articles in your plan, you can choose to activate some and not others, or activate only certain markdown phases for a specific article.
· Actual data is updated automatically. This includes not only sales revenue, but also weeks-on-hand, current inventory and value, or mount of open purchase orders, etc.
· You can make modifications at any time, even adding or deleting price phases (dates when markdowns are to occur). You can also delete markdown plans entirely.
· Multi-user environment is supported. This allows several people to work on a markdown plan simultaneously, although they cannot modify the same article at the same time. (In other words, the lock is at item line level rather than at header data level.)
To process markdown proposals that were planned and generated in the SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW) and SAP Strategic Enterprise Management (SAP SEM), you can use the Price Planning Workbench.
For more information, see Price Planning.
Constraints
The system does not suggest markdown percentages or any changes to your plan based on actual results. Instead, you decide, based on sales revenues, whether to modify your plan or not.
SAP also provides a seasonal model with weighting factors that can be used to forecast seasonal consumption in planning. Weighting factors for forecasts are calculated on the basis of weekly consumption figures in the previous year and are taken into account when forecast values are determined.
For more information on the seasonal model with weighting factors, see the relevant general documentation.
See also: