Overview
The Product Hierarchy refers to the hierarchal structural which defines how items are categorized and organized. This structure is established from the highest level, broadest attribute down to the lowest level, most granular attribute. Utilizing Product Hierarchy in Toolio helps streamline Merchandise Planning and ensures that your plans are always attributed correctly against your hierarchy.
Pre-requisites & Limits
Before you can configure and start using a Product Hierarchy in Toolio, please make sure that the following requirements have been met:
All attributes used in product hierarchy must be single select
All attributes used in product hierarchy must be defined on Product/Variant
Attributes & Option configuration must be completed
Product Import has completed successfully and is up to date
Please also note the following boundaries of Product Hierarchy:
Product Hierarchy can only be configured with attributes defined on Product & Variant tables
Product Hierarchy definition supports up to 10 levels of attributes
If you have any questions around the above, please reach out to your Customer Success team before continuing.
What Attributes Should be Included in a Product Hierarchy?
💡 You should generally not have more than 5 attributes in your hierarchy, unless there is a very valid use-case.
Granular information like Style, Color or Size should NOT be included in hierarchy.
As you're deciding which attributes should be included as part of your product hierarchy, it's important to consider any product attributes which are utilized within your site placement and merchandising methodology. It's best to think from your customer's shoes and consider what hierarchy definition would make the most sense to a shopper.
For example, you may want to select attributes such as Division, Department, Class, Subclass, Collection, etc. since these are all attributes which impact how your customers navigate through your products.
Even though you may want to evaluate other attributes such as Seasonality, Lifecycle, Markdown Status - these kind of attributes should be considered internal planning attributes and not included as part of your product hierarchy. You will still be able to add additional attributes outside of your product hierarchy (such as the ones listed above) to your Merchandise Plan.
Defining a Product Hierarchy
To configure a new Product Hierarchy, simply navigate to Settings > Configuration > Organization Settings > Product Hierarchy. Here, you should see an empty page since no Hierarchy has been defined yet - click the 'Configuration' button on the top right hand corner to get started. You should be met with the following menu:
Here, you will find 10 available levels of your hierarchy. Each level can be assigned with a Product/Variant attribute which is selectable by dropdown. When configuring your hierarchy, please pay particular attention to the following guidelines:
Ensure the hierarchy definition starts at Level 1 (highest level) and works down to the lowest level
Ensure all levels are defined consecutively - do not leave any levels empty in between attributes
Please make sure any particular attribute is only assigned to one level in the hierarchy
You only need to define the levels you require - you do not need to define all 10 levels
Once you've completed configuration, please hit 'Create' - this will trigger the system to compile all possible combinations of your product hierarchy based on the current Product data in Toolio:
On this page, you'll fine every existing combination of your hierarchy levels defined. In addition, you'll find a few extra import features available:
Number of Variants - this number returns the count of SKUs matching the hierarchy node from your Product Master Data. You can right click on any node > 'Show Raw Data' to jump to the underlying SKUs in Product Master Data.
Status - this field determines whether the node is in use - i.e. whether the plan values are editable. By default, it is set to active. You can simply click and assign any node to inactive if you no longer wish to plan at that level. Doing so will not impact your existing plan values at that node.
Assigning a Product Hierarchy to your Merchandise Plan
Once you have configured a Product Hierarchy to your liking, you can assign it to a Merchandise Plan by navigating to Settings > Configuration > Module Settings > Merchandise Plan.
From here, you can either edit an existing Merchandise Plan or create a new plan. You will see the Product Hierarchy you defined available to select in the dropdown list here:
Please note that your Product Hierarchy assignment is independent of the attributes selected for the plan. This means that you can select additional non-product attributes to be included in your merchandise plan. However, any product attributes you'd like to include in MP must be defined as part of your Product Hierarchy.
Additionally, you do not need to include every attribute defined in the Product Hierarchy in your Merchandise Plan. However, you must include at least the L1 attribute. You also cannot skip any levels in the attribute definition.
For example, for the Division / Department / Class Product Hierarchy shown above, you are able to define all of the following configurations for attribute:
Division, Department, Class - this simply utilizes the 3 levels of the Product Hierarchy
Division, Department, Class, Channel - this builds upon the Product Hierarchy attributes by adding Channel from the location table
Division, Channel - this only utilizes L1 of the product hierarchy and adds Channel from the location table
Division, Department - this only utilizes L1 and L2 of the Product Hierarchy
As you can see, the attribute configuration can be quite customizable to your needs and specific plan. Here would be the only 2 examples of invalid attribute definitions, along with an explanation:
Division, Class - this utilizes L1 and L3, but skips L2 in the Product Hierarchy, you cannot skip levels
Division, Vendor - this utilizes a product attribute which is not defined in the Product Hierarchy
If you have any questions with your product hierarchy definition or assignment to a plan, please reach out to your Toolio Customer Success team.
Using Merchandise Plan with Product Hierarchy Defined
So, what exactly changes once a Product Hierarchy is assigned to a Merchandise Plan? You'll find that the Product Hierarchy features focus on maintaining the data integrity of your plan values by preventing any plans being saved at uncategorized or invalid nodes. Please find a quick summary below of the features available to Merchandise Plan once a Product Hierarchy is assigned:
Prevents Uncategorized Plan values from being created
Prevents Plan values from being saved to hierarchy nodes marked as 'inactive'
Only allows you to create and save plan values to nodes defined in the Product Hierarchy
Allows you to enable 'Show Non-Hierarchal Values' in the Scenario menu which displays values outside of your hierarchy definition in read only mode
FAQs
I'm not seeing nodes I'm expecting after Product Hierarchy creation.
This is typically due to misattributed/missing product data. For example, if you're expecting to see Men/Clothing/Shorts but it isn't populating automatically into the Product Hierarchy page, it's likely due to the fact that no SKUs in your product data match the values in this node. To address the issue, please navigate to Product Master Data to investigate any problematic SKU attribution.
How do I refresh Product Hierarchy?
Product Hierarchy values (nodes & SKU counts) automatically update with every product import. This means that every time a product import is processed, Toolio scans the entirety of the Product Master Data table to create every possible attribute combination and update the SKU counts associated. For example, if you import new SKUs or update existing SKU attributes in your product import, these changes will be captured in the Product Hierarchy table after the import is complete.