Size Value Conversions

Have you ever wondered what is the use of the value conversions in S/4 HANA Fashion and Vertical businesses + Retail? Many companies who are still in legacy ERPs or existing inhouse ERPs have challenges in maintaining the size breakdowns or size conversions based on various reasons. When such a company plans their move towards S/4 Fashion and Retail, some of the questions that comes are

1. How does S/4 HANA Support the maintenance of sizes with one master data across various breakdowns?
2. What are the levels and combinations that this is determined?
3. How does this support my operations downstream in the warehouse?

This article is aimed to answer some of these questions in a short manner and this is not intended to deep dive to the S/4 HANA Fashion and Retail Value conversion functionalities.

So lets take a look at each of the problems above.

1. S/4 HANA Fashion and Retail supports the maintenance of sizes for various articles through a functionality called size value conversions. This helps to maintain sizes for many different geographies and detected automatically or manually based on the different business scenarios like purchasing or sales.
2. This functionality is supported at the customer, vendor, Material and the user level where there is a priority order based on the different combinations.
3. When the value conversions are determined, these are added to the description of the material that is either being sold or procured there by helping the downstream systems to receive or issue the stock and compare accurately based on the packages.

There are multiple steps to set this up in the system and the requirements can vary from company to company. The key benefit of this solution is that it

1. helps reduce the maintenance of multiple articles just because of different sizes.
2. It can be used in multiple functions like procure to pay and order to cash (any channel).
3. We can setup any combination of levels there by flexibly controlling the size value conversions.
4. This also prevents the situations where we have to change the sizes of the materials that is once created.
5. Flexibility to always change the conversion value mapping.
6. Also this solution is not just specific to size (only mentioned here because it is a common use case across the industry) and hence any parameter specific to various organizational requirements can be configured.

This also comes with a change management aspect where proper training to the SME's and end users are given where A to Z of this is taught which includes but not limited to

1. How to maintain the value conversions.
2. What are the priority order of determination of value conversions.
3. Identifying the right stakeholder groups where this is directly impacted like the Buying, Operations, Sales department etc.
4. Showcasing the various screens and controls associated with the size value conversions and explaining the limitations( arising from business requirements).

Stay tuned for more articles on SAP Fashion and Vertical business and IS Retail products.