What You Can Do in Product Master Data Management

Product Information Management Work Area Tasks

The Product Information Management work area provides these lists of tasks in the panel drawer:

Item Management
Data Governance
Data Consolidation

The tasks related to these lists are described in the following tables.

Item Management Tasks

These tasks enable you to create and modify items, and the entities built with items. Items are the basic unit of product information data.

Task	What you do in this task
Define Product	Create items and apply predefined templates that provide all of the basic information to help you get started quickly.
Manage Product Specifications	Specify values for product operational attributes at a product level as well as product revision level, allowing you to control how an item is processed by downstream applications.
Manage Product Relationships and Associations	Define item relationships to relate two internal items using predefined as well as user defined relationship types. Capture attributes to further qualify the relationship as well as specify effectivity dates to phase the relationships in or out. Define and maintain GTIN (Global Trade Identification Number) cross references to relate items using the industry standard allowing for tracking and identification of trading partner items. Assign items to multiple organizations to manage them in context of locations they're manufactured, stocked, and distributed from.
Manage Product Packs	Define and manage product pack information by creating homogeneous and heterogeneous packaging configurations of sellable items.
Manage Product Bundles and Structures	Define and manage product structures to represent various product hierarchies. Copy product structures from existing structures with the ability to preview the components you're copying. Associate common product structures to a master product structure to maintain a single definition across multiple organizations.
Manage Product Attachments	Associate unstructured content as attachments to a product. Categorize attachments in various predefined and user defined categories to organize and provide quick access to important documents for the product.
Manage Product Revisions	Manage item revisions to track major changes to an item in terms of its form, fit, or function. Introduce new item revisions through a formal change order framework to generate an audit trail as well as streamline implementation of new revisions.
Define Catalogs	Define and manage catalogs to categorize items in a structured hierarchy. Associate images and attachments to catalogs and categories to help you quickly build rich catalog content. Share category and item associations from a source or master catalog with multiple catalogs enabling you to reuse existing data and ease administration of catalogs.
Define Advanced Catalogs	Manage catalog mapping between two catalog hierarchies as well as attributes for the catalog and categories.
Access and Search Product Master Data	Quickly search for items using single keywords. Perform advanced searches by specifying various parameters and criteria as well as building more complex searches using search operators to quickly find products. Define saved searches enabling you to promote reuse and provide quick access to searches that need to be performed frequently.
Manage Product Mass Updates	Perform mass updates on item information including changes to item attributes, item supplier associations, item reclassification, and organization assignments.
Manage Product Security	Assign role based security at a product level to control access to items. Assign data level security at each individual attribute group level to further control access to sensitive information. Assign appropriate functions and privileges to users or groups of users to control who can create, edit, and view item data.
Obsolete Products and Services	Define and manage deletion groups to process purging and obsoleting products and services that are no longer being transacted in the enterprise. Create deletion constraints to identify and account for all transactions and entities that reference a product, thus maintaining integrity before a product can be purged.

Data Governance Tasks

These tasks enable you to govern the currency and integrity of your product information data.

Task	What You Do in This Task
Manage Product Revisions	Manage item revisions to track major changes to an item in terms of its form, fit, or function. Introduce new item revisions through a formal change order framework to generate an audit trail as well as streamline implementation of new revisions.
Manage New Product Definition and Approval	Define and manage new item requests to enable a formal definition and approval workflow. Definition steps can include product attributes, product structures, item relationships, item attachments, and organization assignment. Manage multiple item definition belonging to different item classes in a single new item request.
Manage Product Change Orders	Create product change orders to process changes to product attributes, lifecycle phases, item statues and product structures. Submit changes through a formal review and approval workflow to ensure successful and validated implementation of change orders. Implement changes through multiple organizations by propagating change orders to organizations while still having the flexibility to adapt implementation schedule based on individual organizations. Move or split change order lines to new or existing change orders to avoid bottlenecks in processing and implementation.
Define Product Rules	Create and edit rules for products. Rules can be used to assign values to attributes, validate dependencies between attributes and require approval through change orders for certain types of attribute updates.

Data Consolidation Tasks

These tasks enable you to consolidate product information data from external sources with your internal master data.

Task	What you do in this task
Manage Imports	Manage the import of items and related entities using industry standard open interface tables allowing you to quickly import data into the production schema as well as enabling migration of data from existing applications.
Manage Import Batches	Define item batches to import sets of item data including product structures and packaging hierarchies from multiple product source systems. Specify import options for an item batch to schedule batch loads, governance and workflow policies for new item definition and approval and product changes. Specify data quality options for matching and standardization for an item batch to cleanse product data during batch import.
Manage Supplier Collaboration	Collaborate with trading partners on item data including item attributes, product structures, and packaging configurations. Secure trading partner access by assigning privileges. Communicate critical changes with suppliers through change order workflows to review, validate accuracy, and approve changes for supplier items. Associate external items such as supplier items and specify supplier item attributes to capture rich detail for the supplier items. Extend the supplier item relationships to associate supplier items to multiple organizations from which they're supplied and received.
Manage Trading Partners' Products	Define and manage trading partner items such as customer items, and associate them with an internal item. Define and manage manufacturer part numbers and associated attributes, which enables you to relate multiple manufacturer parts to an internal item. Define and manage competitor items to relate similar items that might be sold or manufactured by your competitors.
Standardize Product and Service Data	Eliminate potential duplicates by standardization of product numbers and descriptions based on user defined rules and formats.