Change externally replicated offer "basic data"

[SauMaris]

Hi, experts!

We are receiving offers from an external system and want to modify custom fields (in "Basic Data" tab) for these in SAP Marketing on-prem. Prior to version 1909 it was possible, but now it isn't.

We have defined some custom fields for offers and want to give a possibility for end users to adjust them before releasing an offer.

What are our options?

[ralf_freyler]

The behavior you are experiencing is the intended behavior of our reference architecture and it was wrong in the previous release 1809. The reasoning behind this decision is that in scenarios where offers are imported into the SAP Marketing system, the external system is defined to be the leading system for offers. The SAP Marketing system is only a distributor of the offer content to the respective communication channels (e.g. email) within marketing processes.

Especially in your case where external system (e.g. PMR) is the leading system, an external system provides a lot of functionalities to add arbitrary attributes to promotions. Each individual promotion can have a bunch of different attributes which the SAP Marketing system can not provide out of the box. Therefore we have the extensibility fields in SAP Marketing and are able to expose those at the offer import API. The attributes from the external system should be mapped within the iFlow or direct OData call to the respective extensibility field of the SAP Marketing Offer.

When defining the external system as the leading system, we also expected that data maintenance should be part of the leading object, so that the users don't have to maintain the data in two different systems.

[SauMaris]

Ralf,

I have been all this time thinking about your response and it still does not make sense in my mind, especially because you allow offer sender to decide with a flag in the interface, whether content and target groups are externally maintained or can be changed in the Marketing, but you don't do the same for other data. If you would have a flag like for content and target groups in the interface, then it would make sense in my mind.

[ralf_freyler]

"Reason for pause" is an interesting aspect

[ralf_freyler]

Hi Maris,

thanks for your thoughts.

For offer content, target groups and coupon we made an exception here, because of different business scenarios. SMC target groups could be managed internally and are not known in a leading system (e.g. commerce system). Coupon come from an external coupon management system and the codes needs to be imported via CSV file. Offer content comes from agencies in all the different layouts, languages, channels and positions and will be maintained directly in SMC and not within the leading system.

In general we expect everything coming from the leading system(s)

I hope I could answer your thoughts

Best Regards
Ralf

[SauMaris]

I totally understand your point of view, but don't agree with it.

For example, due to process specifics, we want to pause an offer in the marketing for public use. We want to have a custom field "Reason for pause" that is used in other parts of the process. We cannot have it now, because it is not possible to change its value. You can say that there are workarounds to pause the offer in marketing and update "reason for pause" in the leading system, but imagine doing that on daily basis when pausing is not concerning the leading system.

P.S. I appreciate a lot that you dedicate time to respond and maybe (maybe!) my reasons will make you think about giving more freedom of choice in the future.