Internal Catalogs

[Former Member]

Hi SRM Gurus,

I am re-posting the same query that I posted in SRM-General category.

I wanted to know the difference between using an Internal Catalog for making a shopping cart and using Internal Goods/Services option for making a shopping cart (I mean procurement through selecting the product from the Product Master maintained in SRM Master Data).

In case I have replicated the R/3 material master to SRM server, will it be of any advantage to use Internal Catalogs by replicating all material master details into CCM server?

Also if any of you can tell me whether price maintained in Internal catalogs is to be manually uploaded like the pictures, etc or the price is picked from the R/3 Material Master?

Useful answers will surely be rewarded.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Ancy

[jason_boggans · Accepted solution]

Hi.

To use SRM Product Masters directly from the CCM catalog you can use the report BBP_CCM_TRANSFER_CATALOG (providing you have XI configured for catalog update notification) to directly transfer the SRM master data to CCM. This can then be mapped to a prcurement catalog and shopped for through the catalog search engine.

Regards

Jason

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the quick respose Jason.

But, I would like to know the difference in procuring from Internal catalogs and that from procuring using internal goods/services option. Will the former have any added advantage over the latter for the SRM user?

Also, what about the price of the product? Is that transferred to CCM from SRM using the program that you mentioned?

Regards,

Ancy

[jason_boggans · Accepted solution]

Hi,

But, I would like to know the difference in procuring from Internal catalogs and that from procuring using internal goods/services option. Will the former have any added advantage over the latter for the SRM user?

There is no specific advantage, however, in CCM catalog or most other catalogs the product data can be enriched with additional details like pictures etc so catlaog option would then seem better for end user perspective.

Also, what about the price of the product? Is that transferred to CCM from SRM using the program that you mentioned?

If the price exists in the product master in SRM, then it will be transferred to the catalog application and returned to SRM when shopping from the catalog.

Regards,

Jason

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Jason,

Thanks a lot for clearing my doubts.

But few more queries:

Can we maintain the supplier id in the internal catalogs, because as I understand, internal catalogs are for maintaining the stock items of R3?

Also, will the pictures have to be uploaded one by one for each product or can they be mass uploaded using some program?

Regards,

Ancy

[jason_boggans · Accepted solution]

Hi Ancy,

In CCM you can only maintain 1 catalog per supplier, i.e. if you have 100 vendors, you need to maintain 100 Supplier catalogs.

Your other question I have answered in your other post.

Regards,

Jason

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Jason,

Thanks for the inputs.

But I am still getting confused between Product Catalogs and Supplier Catalogs.

Is maintainence of supplier id mandatory in both these catalogs? Can I have my Product catalog with only the product, picture and the price(from R3)?

Regards,

Ancy

[jason_boggans · Accepted solution]

Hi Ancy,

In the SRM Extracted Catalog, the Supplier ID is not required. It will be sent from SRM to CCM if it exists there in the first place, unless then you mark this as a required characteristic in the CCM catalog there will be no ill effect of not retaining this valuation in the extracted cat.

For supplier catalog it is mandatory, as when you create each supplier catalog you are asked for a supplier id which is assigned to the catalog directly.

With the extracted cat and suppliers cat please remember that they still need to be mapped to the Master and/or subsequent procurement catalog to use then for shopping purposes!

Regards,

Jason

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Jason,

Just to re-confirm:

You mean that in Product Catalogs, the supplier id is not mandatory.

Also, in CCM, only one supplier can be maintained per product. So, we cannot have 2-3 supplier ids maintained for the same product in Product Catalogs.

Am I right?

Regards,

Ancy

[jason_boggans · Accepted solution]

Hi Ancy,

Yes - and kind of!!

You mean that in Product Catalogs, the supplier id is not mandatory. -> Yes

Also, in CCM, only one supplier can be maintained per product. So, we cannot have 2-3 supplier ids maintained for the same product in Product Catalogs -> Only one Supplier can be maintained per SUPPLIER CATALOG! The same product can be contained in every single supplier catalog if you like ....then you have a product with multiple suppliers, but this will appear in your search engine as multiple entries of the same product. However, from there you can compare which is the best option.

Lets look at a really simple example: You have product 'Pens', you have 5 different Office Supplies catalogs. Each Office Supplier supplies different pens at different rates but ALL are just described as pens.

All these pens are made available in the search engine, a user searches for pens, he/she receives 5 hits. From here they can compare and contrast or search within results to further narrow down the requirement, e.g. within these results search for 'Blue' etc.

Hope this makes sense.

Regards,

Jason