Overview of Planning Level Profiles

Planning level profiles enable you to aggregate, store, and analyze information for the Customer dimension at a specified level in your demand plans instead of storing information at the lowest Customer Site level and aggregating the information on demand.

When you use a planning level profile, you can specify the level at which you want to aggregate and store plan measure data, such as historical shipments and forecasted shipments. If you're using a user-defined hierarchy, you can specify a user-defined level at which data should be aggregated and stored.

For example, if you're using the predefined Customer hierarchy, and your business needs to view and analyze the forecast at the Customer level, then you can use a planning level profile to aggregate and save the collected information at the Customer level.

You can create multiple planning level profiles for use in different demand plans. In each planning level profile, you can select a maximum of three hierarchy levels for the Customer dimension. Each level must be from a different predefined or user-defined hierarchy. The planning level profile can have a mix of predefined and user-defined hierarchies.

If your demand plan has no need for customer-level detail, then this feature enables you to completely ignore the Customer dimension in the plan.

If you don't use a planning level profile, all collected data for measures that include the Customer Site level store information at this level.

Benefits of Using Planning Level Profiles

Planning level profiles provide you with these benefits:

You can control the level at which measure data is aggregated and stored in your demand plan.
Often, you, as the demand planner, don't need to save and view data at the Customer Site level.
You can plan at the level that's required by your business.
You can reduce the volume of data in your demand plan and thereby improve its performance.
If your forecast analysis doesn't require customer information, you can use the planning level profile to ignore the Customer dimension in your demand plan.
You've the flexibility of using both predefined and user-defined hierarchies for the Customer dimension to aggregate and store your data.

More Points About Planning Level Profiles

Note these points about planning level profiles:

Planning level profiles aggregate data for only those measures that are stored at the Customer Site level.
You can use planning level profiles in only demand plans.
Moreover, the demand plans mustn't use the Day planning time level, and the Aggregate non-key customer data to an All Other level member check box can't be selected on the Demand tab on the Plan Options page.
You can associate a planning level profile with multiple demand plans.
However, you can associate a demand plan with only one planning level profile.
You can associate a planning level profile with a demand plan only before it has been run for the first time. After you attach the planning level profile to the plan and successfully run it, you can't change the planning level profile or remove it from the plan.
If the first plan run isn't successful, you can change the planning level profile or remove it from the plan. If you've attached the planning level profile to multiple plans, you can't edit the planning level profile even if you've successfully run only one of the plans.
You can't use the Load Measures from Other Plans functionality or the scheduled process named Orchestrate Load Measures Processes when either the source or target plan is a demand plan that uses a planning level profile.
When you use a planning level profile in a demand plan, the Sales Orders measure isn't populated.
The Collected Measure Data table doesn't return aggregated data for a planning level profile.
You can't use the scheduled process named Orchestrate Refresh Measures Processes to refresh the measures in a demand plan that has a planning level profile.
Every time you collect measure data at the Customer Site level for Customer dimension hierarchies, you must run the Aggregate Collected Planning Data scheduled process for the affected planning level profiles and Create Trees for Dimensions scheduled process in the net change mode for the Customer dimension.
The Aggregate Collected Planning Data scheduled process aggregates the customer data according to the hierarchy-level combination in a planning level profile. When this scheduled process is run, a pseudo member is created for each member at the selected hierarchy level of the planning level profile. For example, if you've 100 customer sites that come under five customer zones (East, West, North, South, and Central), and your planning level profile is aggregating data at the zone level, the scheduled process creates five pseudo members, one for each level. The data for the 100 customer sites is aggregated under these five pseudo members. The names of the pseudo members will be in the ~~<member name> format, and a number might be appended to a pseudo member's name to make it unique. In the example, the created pseudo members will be ~~East, ~~West, ~~North, ~~South, and ~~Central.
The Create Trees for Dimensions scheduled process aligns the pseudo members with their parents.
To automatically run the Aggregate Collected Planning Data scheduled process in the targeted mode after the collections process, for the SCP_PARAMETER_OVERRIDES profile option code, add the following profile value: InvokeAggregateCollectedPlanningDataFromCollection=Yes
To automatically run the Create Trees for Dimensions scheduled process in the net change mode for the Customer dimension after the Aggregate Collected Planning Data scheduled process, for the SCP_PARAMETER_OVERRIDES profile option code, add the following profile value: InvokeCreateTreesFromAggregateCollectedPlanningData=Yes
If you use a job set for collections, you can add the Aggregate Collected Planning Data and Create Trees for Dimensions scheduled processes to the job set.
After you purge Customer dimension data or measure data at the Customer Site level using the Purge Data Repository scheduled process or delete measure data at the Customer Site level using the Load Planning Data from Flat Files scheduled process, you must manually run the Aggregate Collected Planning Data scheduled process. Then, you must manually run the Create Trees for Dimensions scheduled process in the net change mode for the Customer dimension.
If a user-defined hierarchy is configured in a planning level profile, and the status of the planning level profile is Enabled or Ready, you can't change the structure of the hierarchy or delete it.
If a planning level profile is using a predefined or user-defined hierarchy for the Customer dimension, if you add members to or delete members from hierarchy levels, you must collect data for the dimension again. Then, you must run the Aggregate Collected Planning Data scheduled process and finally the Create Trees for Dimensions scheduled process in the net change mode for the Customer dimension.