How to proceed with article hierarchy

[colin_cheong]

Hi ALL,

We have just upgraded to ECC6.0 and wanted to use the article hierarchy.

Currently, we are having the merchandise category hierarchy.

can some one tell me how can I advice my User how to design the article hierarchy?

My user are selling multimedia items, eg computer, printers, etc

Thanks

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi there,

Article Hierarchy is an alternate hierarchy provided with ECC 6 which is highly functional and useful for Planning (Strategic with BI IP or operational with OAPC) as well as analytical reporting both in ECC and BI.

The orientation of "merchandise category hierarchy" is for the procurement and inventory operation whereas the orientation of "article hierarchy" is from sales and customer prospective i.e. why it is also called the CDT hierarchy which stands for the "consumer decision tree".

Now there is no set rules of how to define it as completely depend upon how you want to structure your article under different nodes (an article hierarchy node is parallel to merchandise category hierarchy level, completely definable by the super user) and how you want to structure your nodes under the Hierarchy id / Industry (level 0 of article hierarchy) and Category (Level 1 of article hierarchy). Ideally one should not create more than 7 levels in the article hierarchy, and the lowest node has the article assigned to it, though technically more levels can be created and maintained.

Also an article can be assigned to more than one node as there is no such restriction here, unlike MC hierarchy where an article can be assigned to one MC only.

When it comes to functional and business decision of structuring and grouping of article hierarchy, there can be different ways and let me advise few ways as per my experience, like depending upon the Category heads and categories one is accountable for or in the way a store is organized for example, say, Category- computers, Sub-category- Laptops, Segment- 17", Subsegment-Brand (say sony or apple).

I hope your query is reasonably answered, please award the points.

All the Best

Kind Regards,

Kunwar

[Former Member]

Article hierarchy is sales perspective, where as merchandise category is purchasing perspective.

As describe in previous thread; it is totally depends on the client side how they design there article to display in sales.