Catalog management concepts

Catalogs are hierarchies of items, organized into groups for different purposes.

This module enables you to define how you are going to categorize your items for selling, maintenance, and partner based selling. Catalogs are organized into groups of items called categories, for example, Clothing, Womens, Shirts. Categories enable your catalog to classify an entire item set in a number of different hierarchical and easy to navigate groupings.

Attributes are characteristics or specifications that define the corresponding product. For example, a computer's attributes might include: Type of CPU, Hard drive size in GB, or Number of USB ports. For apparel, you can define attributes such as Brand, Country of Origin, Flammable, and so on. Attributes can be defined with complete flexibility at a category level and attributes can have a defined set of allowed values. Attributes can be inherited from a higher level in a category hierarchy.

This module also enables you to manage entitlements, such as which partner can sell which items, and which customer can buy which items.

The search catalog index is a service you would use to represent your selling catalog.

The Catalog Management aggregates and manages detailed product and catalog data across multiple divisions, enterprises and participants. It acts as a multi-tenant management tool that supports sharing and collaboration. It enables categorization, product cross-sell, up-sell, substitution and other features.

Products

Sterling™ Order Management System refers to products as Items. Various types of items such as basic, style size color, bundles (groupings of item), and configurable bundles are supported. Sterling Order Management System also supports delivery and provided service items. For all of your items, you can define a specific catalog for selling and maintenance. The module enables management of various characteristics of an item that can be classified broadly as sales, fulfillment, inventory and classifications and attributes. This information can be managed on the item itself or for a grouping of items using classifications. Classifications are similar to categories, however, classifications are used for actions such as sourcing, associating services, determining shipping preferences, obtaining a list of items for ordering, and so on. You can also define hierarchical item groupings for a classification. These groupings can be used to further refine the items affected by classification purpose. You can also define the relationship between each item, such as items to show as up-sell, cross-sell, or replacement items.

Catalog and subcatalog organizations

The catalog organization is an enterprise that maintains the master catalog which can be shared across multiple organizations.

To facilitate partner based selling, a catalog organization can define subcatalog organizations, which can contribute and extend the content of the catalog organization. The catalog organization authorizes subcatalog organizations to manage the categories within the master catalog and defines seller entitlements that grant or restrict other organizations' access to categories within the master catalog. Depending on an organization's seller entitlements, the organization may be able to view or sell catalog items that are maintained by the catalog organization or other organizations. Subcatalog organizations are enterprises that refer to a catalog organization as their catalog organization.

Entitlements

This module enables you to set entitlements, which determine items you can sell to which customer and who can sell which items. It enables organizations to manage access to items for buying and selling purposes.

This is referred to as:

Seller Entitlements
Customer Entitlements

Bundles

A bundle is a group of items that are based on configuration models and are modeled by using the product configurator. A model represents the possible valid configurations for a bundle item. Bundles are organized into three groups, including the following:

Bundles: A group of items that are non configurable.

Configurable bundles: A group of items that is added to an order that uses Product Configurator to select the components the shopper chooses to include in their bundle. These bundles are priced as the sum of the components and as an additional option, the parent. Inventory is checked at the component item level.

PreConfigured bundles: A group of items that are bundled into a group that is predefined by the business user. Inventory is checked for the parent item in the bundle.