Perform a catalog area analysis

Applies To: Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3

This topic describes how to perform an analysis of the catalog area in a printed catalog. This analysis helps you determine whether page space is being used efficiently to generate sales. To perform this analysis, you specify where each product appears on the page, the amount of space that is given to the product, and the total cost of producing the page. The sales for each item can then be compared to the cost of displaying the item on the page.

Prerequisites

The following table shows the prerequisites that must be in place before you start.

1. Define page types, page positions, and catalog sections

Before you specify where products are put on the page, you must define the following types of data:

• Page types—The types of pages that a catalog can contain, such as front cover, back cover, and general page.

• Page positions—The areas on the page where you can put a product.

• Catalog sections—The sections of the catalog. You can have sections for items on sale, regular-priced items, ordering instructions, and so on.

To define page types, page positions, and catalog sections, follow these steps.

1. Click Call center > Setup > Pages > Page positions.

2. Click New, and then enter a unique name and a brief description for the first page position. Repeat this step to add all the page positions that you require.

3. Close the Page positions form.

4. Click Call center > Setup > Pages > Page types.

5. Click New, and then enter a unique name and a brief description for the first page type. Repeat this step to add all the page types that you require.

6. Close the Page types form.

7. Click Retail > Common > Catalogs > Catalogs.

8. Double-click the name of the catalog to work with. On the Action Pane, in the Call center group, click Catalog pages.

9. On the Action Pane, click Catalog section.

10. Click New, and then enter a name and description for a catalog section. Repeat this step to add all the sections that you require.

2. Specify catalog page layout and page costs

Next, for each page in the catalog, specify the page type, the section in which the page appears, how many products appear on each page, and the cost of publishing each page. For each product that you want to analyze, specify the page on which the product appears, where the product appears on the page, and what percent of the page is allocated to the product.

To specify the layout and cost for a catalog page, follow these steps.

1. Click Retail > Common > Catalogs > Catalogs.

2. Double-click the name of the catalog to work with. On the Action Pane, in the Call center group, click Catalog pages.

3. Click New, and then enter the page number, page type, page cost, number of products on the page, and section information for a page. Repeat this step to add lines for each page to analyze.

4. Close the Catalog pages form.

5. In the Category hierarchy area on the left side of the Catalogs form, select a node. On the Products FastTab, select a product in the list, and then click Product page layout.

6. Click New, and then enter the following information:

   • Page number – The number of the page on which the product appears.

   • Percent of page – The percentage of page space that is allocated to the product.

   • Page position – The location of the product on the page.

7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 to define the layout data for each product to analyze.

3. Perform catalog area analysis

After a catalog has generated sales, you can perform a catalog area analysis that compares the cost of displaying a product in a page area to the sales and profit that are generated by that page area.

To perform a catalog area analysis, follow these steps.

1. Click Retail > Reports > Catalog area analysis.

2. In the Catalog area analysis form, on the General tab, click Select.

3. On the Range tab, click Add. In the Table field, select the hierarchy level to analyze. You can analyze data for the whole catalog, for individual pages, or for individual items.

4. In the Criteria field, enter the name of the entity to analyze. For example, if you want to analyze a catalog, enter the catalog name.

5. Repeat steps 3 through 4 to add more lines to the query, if more lines are required.

6. Click OK, and then click OK in the Catalog area analysis form.

   The catalog area analysis report is displayed. Each line shows data for a single product. The cost and profit associated with each product are shown in the following fields:

   • Space cost – The cost of the space that is allocated to the product. This value is calculated as the cost per page multiplied by the percentage of the page that the product uses.

   • Contribution to profit – The amount that the space contributes to profits. This value is calculated as the sales for the product minus the space cost.

7. Optional: To set up the catalog area analysis to run as a batch job, in the Catalog area analysis form, on the Batch tab, enter the batch specifications.

Related tasks

Create call center catalogs

Set up catalog source codes

Analyze source code data

Technical information for system administrators

If you don't have access to the pages that are used to complete this task, contact your system administrator and provide the information that is shown in the following table.