SAP IS Retail Interview Questions and Answers

1. What version’s of SAP IS Retail have you worked with?

SAP IS Retail has many different versions active in market, 4.0, 4.7 and currently more common new implementations are being done in ECC 5.0 and ECC 6.0.

2. What is MAP?

MAP stands for Merchandise and Assortments Planning

3. Is it required that the distribution center and stores involved in the STO are in the same company code?

Yes

 4. How do you maintain promotions in SAP IS Retail?

Promotions are maintained via a transaction called WAK1, the pricing conditions are created and transferred down to POS or other systems.

5. How is the physical goods issue posted when the merchandise is returned in SAP MM?

Physical goods issue is posted as negative goods receipt when merchandise is returned

 6. What are some of the features of Markdown tool in SAP IS Retail?

Plan markdown items, quantities, and prices Assign stores Use markdown rules and schedules to control which items are active at what prices during each phase Slow-Seller Management tool automates markdown schedule based on inventory and timing Pre-season or in-season planning and execution Visibility to costs and key figures Flexible ‘what-if’ simulations to achieve desired goals and margins Mass maintenance – many items, multiple levels, concurrent users can work the same markdown plan Analytics – create tailored reports to track KPIs, sell-through, and make adjustments, as needed Integration to regular retail price management

7. Can you configure the system to handle multiple currencies?

Yes

8. Where else can you use the space management data in Retail?

We can use the space management data in requirements planning and replenishment.

 9. What are the drawbacks of using change pointers?

One of the biggest drawback of using change pointers in a retail environment is the volume of change pointers that may get created and the ability of the system to handle those changes. Performance of batch jobs is severly affected when we have many change pointers. Proper care
should be taken to create only those change pointers, which will be consumed by the system.

10. How do you create a article in SAP IS Retail?

Using MM41 transaction

11. What are your thoughts on the data conversion for SAP Projects?

Data migration should be handled as early as possible. It is recommended that even during the prototyping stage, do not stub the test data, and use the actual migrated sample test data from existing systems. This way business user will be looking at the actual data during demo. The most prevalent risk to conducting an SAP test whether it is integration, functional, string, volume, smoke, or security test is obtaining valid SAP test data. Where will the test data come from? How will one produce new data for transactions that require unique data? How will the data be loaded into a new SAP client and instance? What happens when an interface or conversion needs to send data into core SAP R/3 from a legacy system and the interface or conversion is not executing properly or has yet to be developed? What happens when the transactional data has not been created? All these are very important aspects and should be handled at a much earlier stage.

12. What is a stock transfer order?

A stock transfer order is a PO that triggers the transfer of stocks between sites/stores within the same company

13. How do you do price execution in retail?

Normal Pricing in SAP IS Retail are maintained using VK11 using different condition type. Change pointers can be configured in the SAP system that will be triggered when any price change or price addition happens and these change pointers are transferred down to the POS
systems using POSDM or other custom solutions. The changes can transferred to other channels like website and mobile devices using the same strategy.

 14. Can we generate return deliveries from stock transfer orders in SAP MM?

Yes, we can generate return deliveries to the sending store in the STO

15. What is a Markdown and what does SAP IS Retail provides in this regard?

Markdown are phased down reduction in prices, which may due to seasonal pricing, vendor sponsored price changes, effort to reduce inventory etc. Basically, markdowns provide strategy to reduce the price of a particular article in a phased down manners, equal or varying % of
price being reduced at a regular intervals. SAP IS Retail provides tools to manage this. It provides tools to plan a markdown, activate and send the data down to the stores. It also provides various reports to see how the different markdowns are doing.

16. Can you have multiple vendors associated with a single PO in SAP MM in SAP IS Retail solution?

No, a single vendor can always be associated with the PO

17. What do you understand by space management in SAP IS Retail?

Space management deals with optimizing the positioning of an article on a shelf. key figures are defined that determine how the space will be managed, which is usually done based on sales data, revenue data or the gross margin.

18. What is a change pointer?

Change pointers is a concept in SAP which allows the system to manage the changes happening to Master data, pricing or in general anything data change. Different change pointers are created and they are used to transfer the changes down to other systems like BW, POS, eBusiness,
Manugistics etc.

19. Is it possible to solve the following scenario through SAP- Retail: If you buy two books, you will get the cheaper one free?

A: The bonus buy functionality in IS-Retail can be used to solve this case. You can create a bonus buy via a retail promotion or via sales condition master data.

If you first create a material grouping with all the articles in the combination, and then you create the bonus buy condition using that material grouping.

Check the bonus buy customizing in IMG —> Sales and distribution –> Basic functions —> Bonus.

 20. What is a listing in retail?

Listing is a process which controls what stores get what articles. Articles which are listed to a particular store or DC will not get be able to process them. The Master data related with those articles will not be available in the stores where that article is not listed.

21. What is EAN/UPC?

EAN is a European Artcile number and UPC is Universal Product Code.Each article should have a unqiue number.

22. How many UPC’s will be present for an article with 3 unit of measures?

Each unit of measures will have it’s own UPC or EAN numbers

23. What is stored in the table WLK1?

Listing conditions are stored in the table WLK1. The important things apart from listing that WLK1 contains are validity dates and module numbers.

24. What other tables are updated when listing is created?

MARA, WLK2, MBEW, MAW1, MARC.

25. What does the reference site provides?

Reference site provides certain logistics data when creating or changing article data.

26. What is a generic article?

Generic article example – T-shirt is a generic article and the different variants of this article are Yellow, Red, Blue T shirts.

27. What is a Pricing profile of an article?

Pricing profile controls whether the variant sales prices are the same or different to the sales price of the generic article.

28.  If we take a business scenario in which there are coupons published in newspaper and customer takes the cutting to store to buy articles.

At POS when he presents coupons, POS gets details of coupons from SAP in form of IDoc, based on this, customer can avail a discount of X% on Apparel and Footwear Merchandise Category (MC). This percentage offer is not applicable for other MCs.

29. What is a source list?

Source list is a list which determines from where a particular article can be procured from. Source list contains the vendor info, validity dates etc. A vendor could also be a store.

30. What is equivalent Transaction of MM43 of the Retail-System in the Industrial System?

The equivalent Transaction of MM43 of the Retail-System in the Industrial System is MMo3.

31. What is the use of HPR (High Performance Retail)?

HPR in Retail consists of programs specifically on the SAP to POS/BOS interface to improve the runtime of Master data (e.g. Article master/assortment list) IDoc generation. These programs are more efficient than the standard SAP programs. However, the end results are not exactly identical and certain enhancements are also not available in HPR.

32. If you are purchasing a Sugar Bag of too kg and in warehouse, you are packing it in pieces oft Kg each. How can you account for the cost that has incurred in W/H (i.e. How can you account for the cost of Bulk Breaking in SAP-IS-Retail)?

It can be done through a couple of workarounds. First, using a little bit of PP. You can setup a production order, which consumes the Sugar in bulk bags and produces Sugar in 1 Kg bags. You can do costing on this and settle it to the finished product to get accurate costs. This will handle both the stock movement and also cost calculation.

Alternatively, you can have an additional surcharge condition type (e.g. packaging costs) that applies a fixed amount or % of cost to the specific products whenever the sell price (VKPo) is calculated. This is simpler and a one-off exercise that requires almost no maintenance on a day-to-day basis.

33. How SAP runs replenishment for the locations in a warehouse, which are used for sales and when the stock is lower in these locations, the stock from other locations are moved there?

SAP WM perfectly manages this scenario. This will take several steps:

Define a fixed bin putway strategy for the warehouse/storage type (customizing for WM).

34. Now where and how can we create these bonus buy promotions in SAP (i.e. How are these coupons created and how are they linked to promotions)?

These coupons are created in IS-Retail using MM4i. Then you can use it in the bonus buy functionality as any other article. To limit the use of coupons to the Apparel and Footwear Merchandise Category you will have to create a material grouping including just these categories. The bonus buy condition will use the material grouping to grant the coupons.