Updating Hierarchies and categories in a CRM integrated with an ERP

Hello gurus,

We have a complicated business scenario regarding products on our system. Actually, we are using CRM for a pre-sales scenario and products have been created under the following hierarchy and category structure:

The first problem we find is that in order to use service request, we need to create product INVESTIGATION  of type 02. Service as it is mentioned on BP C54_CRM701_BB_ConfigGuide_EN_XX. But as we are already using most of the set types required on an existing hierarchy, we cannot assign them on a category of a new hierarchy, and on the other hand as ZCFUNNEL category has been created as 01. Material Product type, it won’t work If we create INVESTIGATION product as 01. Material.

The second problem is that in a future phase, we are going to integrate our CRM standalone system with a new ERP client. On our landscape, products are created on CRM and should be uploaded on ERP. One of your SAP collagues suggested to use the “Send to ERP” functionality. Does it work even though we do not download the hierarchies and categories from ERP? Is it possible to upload them from CRM to ERP?

The following link:
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_crm700_ehp01/helpdata/en/46/4067cd95b55d5ee10000000a1553f7/content.htm?frameset=/en/0c/f415e345194020a1bff65ad121c1ca/frameset.htm&current_toc=/en/0c/f415e345194020a1bff65ad121c1ca/plain.htm&node_id=3

says: "Product models for configurable products that were created in SAP CRM cannot be replicated to SAP ERP. For this reason, we recommend that you create configurable products in SAP ERP if the sales documents are also distributed to SAP ERP."

Do you have any suggestion on how to model our products?

Thanks in advance,

Marcelo.