Subject Area Concepts The Item Supplier View subject area contains entities that link retailer items (SKUs) with supplier items. It provides the entities needed to correctly handle scenarios where a retailer has multiple suppliers (and supplier item numbers) for one SKU. It also handles the converse situation where a retailer has to maintain two different SKU's for one supplier item. Additionally this subject area provides information about suppliers and vendors. Vendors In the ARTS data model a Vendor is a subtype of PartyRoleAssignment. A vendor's role involves selling products and services to the retailer. There are different kinds of vendors which are reflected in vendor subtype entities. These include: •Supplier vendors who sell merchandise that a retailer resells and supplies a retailer consumes itself in running its business; •Manufacturer vendors who fabricate and assemble the merchandise sold by the retailer; •ServiceProvider vendors who provide services that may be resold or consumed by the retailer; •Carrier vendors who handle freight transportation of in and outbound goods; and •ReturnAgent vendors who specialize in processing returns for retailers. This subject area highlights the vendors whose products and services are marked up and resold by the retailer (i.e., Supplier and ServiceProvider entity types). Cross Reference Between Retailer Items and Supplier Items Retailers use the Item and StockItem entity types to identify, name and describe the merchandise they sell. These are internal views of items. When retailers order products from suppliers, they use the SupplierItem entity to identify, name and describe merchandise they are ordering. As noted in the introduction, retailers require a flexible mechanism to translate internal items (or SKU's) into supplier items (catalog or part numbers). The ItemSupplierItem associative entity type provides that flexible mechanism and allows retailers to decide how to map their internal view of items to their supplier's view of items. Service Items ServiceItem entities identify, name and describe retailer sold services. These items are linked to a ServiceProvider service designation through the ServiceItemProvider associative entity type. Supplier Merchandise and Service Costs and Deals Retailers and vendors frequently negotiate deals which offer retailers a discount (some times in the form of bill backs) in exchange for agreeing to purchase a certain volume of product. This subject area provides entities to represent base costs for merchandise plus different discounts (deals). The SupplierItemCatalogBaseCost entity captures a vendor's published cost for items. The SupplierItemCatalogBaseCostBreak captures published catalog discounts based on volume purchasing thresholds. Collectively these two entities represent the published (i.e. pre-deal) cost of product purchased by the retailer for resale. The Deal, DealSupplierItem and DealSupplierItemCostBreak entities identify and describe supplementary discounts that may be used to reduce the purchase cost of product below the catalog price (including catalog discount price). The ARTS model approach is fairly simple. Many retailers negotiate very complex deal terms and conditions. Some of these complex deals may require retailers to extend this part of the data model. The variety and complexity of some negotiated deals makes it impractical to define a more granular data model so ARTS is keeping it simple. Supplier - Retailer Product Unit Conversions Retailers purchase merchandise in large quantities, break it down into retail selling units and sell it. This view provides entities to represent the unit breakdown and conversion factors retailers need to translate vendor quantities into retail selling unit quantities. The SupplierReceivingUnit, SupplierReceivingUnitConversionRule, ContainerType and SupplierItemReceivingLevel entities provide the information needed to handle the translation. |