Managing Product, Suppliers, and Buyers Families

What is "Family" Management?

• In Buymanager, "Families" are essentially categories for your parts. Think of them as smart folders that help you organize your inventory and procurement efforts.
• They allow you to group similar items together, making everything easier to find and manage.

Why Do You Need It? 

• Streamlined Procurement: Assign specific suppliers and even individual buyers to entire product families. This simplifies purchasing workflows and clarifies responsibilities.
• Boosted Efficiency: Quickly identify your preferred suppliers and the responsible buyer for any product group. This saves time and minimizes potential errors.
• Strategic Sourcing: Easily prioritize suppliers within a family, ensuring you always engage with your most important partners first.

Who is This For? 

• Audience: This guide is perfect for Procurement Managers, Purchasing Agents, and System Administrators who are responsible for organizing product catalogs, managing supplier relationships, and assigning purchasing roles within Buymanager
• Prerequisites:
  • You'll need access to the Deal module in Buymanager
  • To create, group, and assign buyers or suppliers to families, you will typically need Administrator or specific Procurement Management rights.
  • A basic understanding of your organization's product catalog and supplier base will be very helpful!

 

How It Works: Step-by-Step Guides

1. Creating and Organizing Product Families

This section covers how to set up new categories and arrange them logically.

• How to Add a New Product Family

This allows you to create new categories for your parts

1. Go to  Parts - Prices > Families.
2.  Click the "Create" button.
3. Name It: Enter a clear and descriptive name for your new family (e.g., "Capacitors," "Resistors," "Office Supplies").
4. Confirm: Click "OK" to save your new family.

 

• How to Group and Organize Families (create sub-familly) 

You can arrange your families into a hierarchical structure, making navigation and management even easier. Think of it like creating sub-folders for better organization!

1. Go to  Parts - Prices > Families.
2. Create a familly, that you will be able to move after. 
3. Choose the family you wish to move (e.g., "Transistor").
4. Click the "Move" button.
5. Choose Parent: Select the parent family category you want to group it under.
6. Confirm: Click "Move" again to apply the change.
7. Tip for Root: If you ever want to move a family back to the top level (not under any parent category), simply select it and click the "Root" button.

2. Associating Suppliers with Product Families

This feature helps you define which suppliers are relevant for a particular product family. 

 

• How to Link Suppliers to a Family

1. Go toSuppliers > search for your supplier
2. Open your supplier and go to Familly qualified 
3. Click on "add a familly" 
4. Select the relevant product family for this supplier.
5. Save: Click "OK" or "Save" to confirm the association.
6. Tips: you can add multiple familly or sub-familly, but only one at a time. 

3. Assigning Buyers to Product Families

This allows you to designate specific buyers who are responsible for purchasing items within a particular product family, clarifying roles and responsibilities across your team. Especially useful if you are workking with sub-deal. 

• How to Assign a Buyer to a Family

1.  Go to  Parts - Prices > Families.
2. Choose the desired Family Category (e.g., "Transistor").
3. Enable Purchasing: In the "Purchasing family" column, ensure "Yes" is selected for this family. This indicates it's an active category for purchasing.
   
   
    
4.  Double-click on the Family Category to open its detailed information.
5. Navigate to the "General info" tab.
6. Locate the "Buyer" field and select the appropriate buyer from the dropdown list.
7. Click "Save" (Floppy symbol)