PLM Choices in Toolio
PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) choices can be a key component in the product development process. Toolio now enables you to easily import and utilize PLM Choices directly in our Next Generation Assortment Plan, where you can begin rationalizing and planning your assortment with placeholders while simultaneously designing and developing choices in your PLM system.
Once you’re ready to import data from your PLM solution to Toolio, you can do so easily via Toolio Importers (either manually or via SFTP deliveries). Then, you’ll see all of your PLM Choices populate directly into the Style Bank, allowing you to easily assign them to your existing placeholder plans. Upon assignment, your prototypes will update the placeholder lines in Toolio to reflect the latest attributes from your PLM solution. Even if you were to make future changes to your prototypes in your PLM system, Toolio will continue to synchronize the attributes to your Assortment Plan lines.
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e5425d805f2a8e3635bf087/665069c6b214db0e93f60c44_Untitled%20(29).png)
Once your choices are finalized and fully created in your ERP, Toolio will also allow you to assign the finalized choices to your existing Assortment Plan lines, so that the most up to date attributes from your ERP are reflected in your plans.
Please find a detailed walkthrough of the PLM and ERP workflows in Toolio Assortment Plan here.
Choice Count Multiplier
If you want to add a new style and not sure about its details, such as its colors, I can create a placeholder plan on multi-choice level. By default, the multiplier attribute is blank, which represents one. You can specify in multiplier attribute that you will offer this style in three or five different colors. The system will automatically multiply your projected rate of sale by the number of colors. Once the actual colors are determined, you can split the plan accordingly and plan individual style-color level choices.
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e5425d805f2a8e3635bf087/665069faf1ffb0e271f7a3d3_Untitled%20(30).png)
Allocation Defaults
Allocation strategies offer a number of inputs to control the strategic intent of your allocation plan, adding these inputs can be time consuming and repetitive when numerous new products are added on a regular basis. Toolio has added a process where defaults for many of the inputs can be defined and automatically assigned to choices when they are activated to improve the efficiency of the allocation strategy setup process.
Users can specify default sets which are filter based, allowing for specific types of products to receive a set of defaults. Defaults can be assigned or left blank, depending on the situation. When a choice strategy is activated, multiple allocation default sets may match the product in question, the highest priority set based on the ordering of the default sets will take precedence.
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e5425d805f2a8e3635bf087/66506a2b2e2cef5657ff3573_Settings___Allocation_Defaults_Add.png)
NS PO Exporter Improvements
Our NetSuite PO Export workflows have been updated to support custom form and custom date fields! Simply navigate to any existing NS Exporter or create a new NetSuite exporter. You can then define a new field directly in the mappings.
For defining a NS Custom Form to use, simply create a field titled ‘customForm’ and hardcode the NetSuite internal ID of the form you’d like to assign.
If you’d like to define a custom date field, you can define the name and formula you’d like first. Then, you just need to specify the field type to be ‘DateCustomFieldRef’ via the purchaseOrderCustomFieldList line, as shown below:
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e5425d805f2a8e3635bf087/66506a6e831aeca95582a962_Untitled%20(31).png)
Be sure to check out our Roadmap for other planned features and updates to Toolio. Is there a feature you think would be a great addition? Let us know here!