Product is at the center of any supply chain. It is the reason why the company exists in the first place. It touches pretty much every part of the organization – procurement, manufacturing, logistics, sales, distribution, planning, etc. Since it needs to accommodate diverse business requirements across several functions, its data structure is one of the most complex ones in an ERP system. Most of the times, legacy systems cannot keep up with such a demand on the product data. Thus, product masters tend to be one of the most customized parts of an ERP system.
This is especially prevalent for companies with diverse product lines. For example, a lifestyle brand may offer its goods under apparel, footwear, accessories, hand bags, cosmetics, furniture categories. Each of these product groups introduce a new set of attribution to the product structure. For example, fiber content for fabric, finish for furniture, flammability for apparel, water resistance for watches. These products are then sold through multiple channels such as wholesale, retail, e-commerce, catalog, etc. These channels also introduce their unique attribution to the same product structure. In short, product masters become bloated with custom fields triggering different logic for different business functions.
In a new ERP deployment, it is crucial to step back and think about how to handle the product attribution before jumping into the solution. This is a rare moment in time when a company can really clean its house. Here is my suggestion on how to do it right.
First, identify the attributes that cut across the product categories and channels – such as brand, gender, etc. These are the attributes (let’s call them hard attributes) are heavily used by the business to quickly filter and sort all the products. They can be easily identified in main forms and reports. There will be few of them.
The second set of attributes are more challenging to manage. They are the product category specific attributes – such as flammability, water resistance, finish, etc. These attributes (let’s call them soft attributes) are only meaningful within the product category they represent. There will be dozens of these attributes. Most customizations in the legacy systems make the big mistake of showing all the possible soft attributes for all the products all the time. Business users are then confused on which attributes to maintain for the product in hand.
This is why the product hierarchies play an important role in soft attribution. If you have the right system, attributes can be attached to the relevant nodes in the product hierarchy. Moreover, attributes at a child node can be inherited from a parent node. When a product is then attached to a specific node, only the attributes related to that node are presented to the business user for entry and maintenance.