CMT Automation – Basic Guide

Automated Forward Mapping - AFM is an AI Module which comes in place to improve the efficiency
of mapping at all levels. AFM is configured to search a product against the CMT monitored
competitors and map the same if all necessary attributes at a threshold level matches exactly with
Amazon. Mapping guidelines using condition matchers are incorporated with AFM configuration to
ensure “Quality & Accuracy” in automation.

AFM - which when given an ASIN, Marketplace, Competitor

 searches for that particular ASIN on that competitor site with different search query
parameters as configured
 extracts the relevant configured attributes for matching
 performs the darwin or RI( Robocop Inspection) based matching
 makes a decision of whether it is an IF/INF/PIF/PINF or other error codes.
 also returns the relevant data for each decision made . (Eg: For IF it returns the matched
URL)

All the CMT monitored competitors are tried for feasibility with AFM and over 90% of the
competitors are integrated with at least one of the modes of AFM integration.

Modes of Integration:
There are 3 primary modes of direct automation integration and 7 modes of semi-automation.

Direct AFM Integration /Mapping Updater – These integration modes allows the automation
configuration against the competitor to decide the mapping status of a listing by itself and it does
not require manual mapping efforts.

 IF Only – updates only the ITEM FOUND against the integrated competitors.
 INF Only – updates only the ITEM NOT FOUND against the integrated competitors.
 Regular – updates both ITEM FOUND and ITEM NOT FOUND against the integrated
competitors.

Semi-Automation Integrations/ Mapping Suggestor – In these modes of integration the

configuration against the competitor was unable to decide the mapping status and provides a
probable mapping status. AFM team provides these probable suggestions to the manual mapping
teams that are processed by the respective Org-GLs through manual suggestion consumption.

 AFMs/Assist - Assist Mapping is a part of AFM which is used to activate the Competitors
with less possibility of strong match keys to match. This will help the mappers to select the
IFs from AFM suggested Probable IF’s

 MAC - MAC (Mapping across Competitors), specific data points, such as brand specific
Style#, Item#, SKU ID etc., were scraped from existing product page of one competitor and
use that as a search key to surface products in other competitor sites within the same GL.

Below is an example where the UK Region competitors Littlewoods and Very have common
SKU IDs and a very similar URL pattern (only the Domain name needs to be changed)
 http://www.littlewoods.com/superdry-track-field-sparkle-ziphood/1460708203.prd
http://www.very.co.uk/superdry-track-field-sparkle-ziphood/1460708203.prd

ITEM FOUND ASINs available in Littlewoods are copied to Very competitor and the vice-
versa.

 CPM - Copy Product Mapping is a module in Auto Forward Mapping (AFM) that identifies
and executes cross border mapping. This is an efficient method to perform copy mapping
process by extracting competitor’s unique identifier and use that as a search key to find
products in other regions.

An example for CPM is Zalando a competitor that is monitored across the EU region,
FR Region: https://www.zalando.fr/nike-performance-veste-de-running-black-black-
reflective-silver-n1241d05b-q11.html
DE Region: https://www.zalando.de/nike-performance-laufjacke-black-black-reflective-
silver-n1241d05b-q11.html
UK Region: https://www.zalando.co.uk/nike-performance-sports-jacket-black-black-
reflective-silver-n1241d05b-q11.html

ITEM FOUND ASINs from one region is checked for its availability of retail offer in other
regions and copied across the regions

 SMS – Site Map Suggestions Mapping, Many Competitors carries a Sitemap which contain
Detail Page URLs of products in their site. The Site Map Extractor extracts all the product
URLs from the configured Sitemap Links. This can be extracted using “/robots.txt or
/sitemap.xml” followed by the Competitor URL.

For example:
http://www.toysrus.com/robots.txt
http://www.toysrus.com/sitemap.xml

 PMC - Plug-in Mapping Channel. This process involves price comparison plug-in that can be
used as an alternate source to generate IF suggestions for an Amazon product. It was
piloted with “Priceblink” plug-in using I-Macros framework of Firefox to extract suggestions
and filter the same based on CMT monitored competitor list. The filtered suggestions are
fed to RI service and the resultant RI Not Matched/Not-Enabled listings were flowed to
mapping tool for manual verification
 Deep Crawl – Deals Crawler is used to reverse map the products extracted from a
competitor through SMS to Amazon using A9 Search API (PAAPI) by either extracting the
title from the Competitors URL or by extracting any data point from the Competitor detail
page. This is being used by various teams in CMT to perform various Reverse Mapping
activities like Category Extraction, Amazon Reverse Mapping and Generic Attribute Scraper.

 Product Ads – Product Ads Channel is exclusively to deep crawl advertised products from
the competitor page and reverse map the extracted URLs.
The integration modes of the CMT monitored competitors could be found in this link
https://w.amazon.com/index.php/AFM_Reports which is updated on a weekly basis.

For the competitors to be integrated in any of the modes mentioned firstly the competitor should
be tested for its feasibility and configured with AFM. The configurations are broadly classified into
two types;

AFM Configuration: A set of defined rules confined in a package that contains details on how
search query should be generated, how and what attributes should be extracted from a page, which
AN nodes to use to crawl etc.

Robocop Configuration: Configuration package that contains the decision making configurations -
like what would be the score for each product attribute that matches and what is a good score to
make a confident decision.

Automation New Integration Algorithm

Step 1: Competitor Added to CMT

Step 2: Initial Seeding and adding at least 50 IF’s to the competitor
Step 3: Automation Integration Feasibility validation, checking for availability of Strong
Search/Match Keys and Java Script compatibility and RI integration compatibility.
Step 4: If the competitor passes the feasibility, the competitor is integrated in one of the modes of
Automation
Step 5: Initiate ad-hoc runs
Step 6: Upload RI matched listings directly to OMT.
Step 7: Check for availability of Site Map/ Deep Crawl options with the competitor, if available
initiate

Semi-Automation Suggestion Consumption:

The Forward Mapping Tool (FMT) is a tool developed for the CMT Mapping Team to map
suggestions generated by various Automated channels. Suggestions are uploaded into the Database
using the CMT-ForwardMappingUpload Tool by the Automation Team and SPOCS from the
Mapping Teams. FMT is built on SWT framework and provides two main browser options (IE and
Mozilla). Post mapping completion, SPOCS manually export the Mapped listings and upload them
into OMT after in-team focused audits.