SAP Solution Brief: A Single, Unified Data Platform for Retail Planning, Forecasting, and Analytics

SAP Solution BriefSAP for RetailSAP Customer Activity Repository

A Single, Unified Data Platform for Retail Planning, Forecasting, and Analytics

BenefitsSolutionObjectives Quick Facts

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Objectives

Predicting customer demand and buying behaviorToday’s retail customers use Web, mobile, and other sales channels interchangeably – often for the same purchase. And retailers have invested in point solutions to manage these channels as efficient silos. But what if you could unify all of your cross-channel customer and operational information – and convert this Big Data into breakthrough business insight and results?

Merging the customer data you’ve collected gives you a complete view of each customer. Combine it with sales, marketing, manufac-turing, and other data – and you have a powerful foundation that can be harnessed to drive retail excellence. For example, you can generate personalized customer insights and demand signals to fuel your back-end systems, including predictive planning appli-cations and fulfillment and logistics systems. And you can identify and respond swiftly to events and individual customers in ways that improve retention, customer service, and sales.

With the SAP® Customer Activity Repository application powered by the SAP HANA® plat-form you can do all this and more (see figure on the next page). Use it to break down data silos and establish a platform that enables real-time data access, visibility, and analytics for anticipating each customer’s needs, wants, and desires. And develop promotions, assortments, and programs that boost market share and optimize the customer experience across channels.

Predicting customer demand and buying behavior

Benefits Quick FactsSolution


Objectives

Predicting customer demand and buying behavior

Benefits Quick FactsSolution

SAP® Customer Activity Repository

Virtual data model – analytics

Figure: The building blocks of SAP Customer Activity Repository

SAP for Retail

SAP NetWeaver® Business Warehouse and SAP Customer Engagement Intelligence are optional co-deployments.

Master data

Sales documents

Inventory

SAP Promotion Management

for Retail

In-memory computing

POS data transfer

and audit

Unified demand forecast Inventory

visibility

Multichannel sales

transactions

On-shelf availability algorithms


Speed the transfer and auditing of POS dataWhile online retail channels are growing, the sales that occur every day in traditional brick-and-mortar stores still represent the vast majority of transactions. SAP Customer Activity Repository enables you to transfer and audit all of your POS data quickly and efficiently.

But it doesn’t just forward data to other trans-actional and analytical solutions; it actually prepares the data for subsequent processing. Data is collected via an inbound processing

engine. An inbound interface enables connec-tivity with POS systems through any connectiv-ity tool, such as the SAP NetWeaver® Process Integration offering. A POS workbench enables data monitoring, error handling, and process-ing control. And an outbound interface frame-work enables flexible distribution of the data to the SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse application for analysis (or other applications that need the data) and facilitates follow-on processes such as replenishment, inventory management, planning, and accounting.

SAP Customer Activity Repository can scale to support the needs of even the largest and fastest-growing retailers.

Speed the transfer and auditing of POS data

Gain a 360-degree customer view

Create unified demand forecasts in seconds

Gain real-time inventory visibility

Get on-shelf availability instantly

Analyze multichannel sales in real time

Solution BenefitsObjectives Quick Facts


Gain a 360-degree customer viewSAP Customer Activity Repository goes beyond the transfer and audit of POS data by enabling you to centrally store all POS transactions – even very granular data at the receipt level – together with sales documents from other channels (for example, your Web site and mobile shopping apps). Purchase transactions can also be combined with loyalty program data and other information for a 360-degree customer view across all sales channels.

Your data is always ready and available for consumption by advanced predictive and analytical retail applications, enabling you to respond and react to any analytical or trans-actional signal in real time. SAP Customer Activity Repository acts as a common data foundation designed to connect with various SAP retail applications (for example, the SAP Promotion Management for Retail application and SAP Planning for Retail rapid-deployment solution). These integrations help you maxi-mize the value of your data and related busi-ness systems. Data from non-SAP systems can also be imported into SAP Customer Activity Repository for inclusion in analyses.








Aggregate data on the fly to meet specific needs while preserving even the most granular data within SAP HANA for future analysis.


Create unified demand forecasts in secondsWith SAP Customer Activity Repository, you can generate a unified demand forecast based on powerful algorithms and statistical methods that account for the many factors impacting demand – price velocity, seasons and trends, events, product relations, and more – at lightning-fast speeds. The forecast-ing science built in to the solution processes near-real-time information about multichannel customer transactions collected in SAP Cus-tomer Activity Repository using in-memory technology. This way, you can have a unified prediction of future daily or even subdaily demand. These predictions can then be used by a wide range of consuming applications,

enabling people to create better assortment plans, promotional offers, and orders for automated replenishment.

Because you can better anticipate future demand across all customer channels – including store, Web shop, channel, regional, and category sales – you’re in the driver’s seat when it comes to optimizing plans and decisions across all levels of the value chain. You can also make vertical processes more efficient, and suppliers and manufacturers can better align their production with your demand for more efficient trade promotions.









Gain real-time inventory visibilityWith SAP Customer Activity Repository, you can get snapshots of your inventory and stock levels in near-real time and at any moment when you need this information during your business operations. You’ll always know how much is left of each item at all of your store locations, enabling real-time transparency and ad hoc interventions with-out waiting for the endless nightly inventory posting runs to be finalized.

This way, even if someone phones into your call center to make a purchase, the service agent can check store inventories, reserve stock, and arrange for shipping to the cus-tomer. This functionality can even be made

available to customers shopping online. For example, a customer could check the stock of a nearby store and opt for an in-store pickup to complete the purchase today – avoiding both the time lag and the cost of shipping. A sales associate can view inventory in other locations while the customer waits, have items shipped, and turn an out-of-stock situation into a sale.

Real-time inventory visibility can also be used to optimize in-store processes. For example, you can use it to support in-store replenish-ment processes from back-office storage, trigger physical inventory inspections at just the right time, and more.









Get on-shelf availability instantlySAP Customer Activity Repository includes on-shelf availability algorithms that you can use to detect and visualize out-of-shelf situations in stores as they happen and take immediate action that will prevent further lost sales. The algorithm sits on the SAP HANA platform, leveraging its in-memory computing power to execute millions of queries in real time.

Now you can analyze POS transactions in real time to detect products that may have on-shelf availability issues (for example, due to out-of-shelf or out-of-stock events). The solution also provides full transparency of on-shelf availability situations for regular and promotional products and calculates current stock at cost or retail.








On-shelf availability algorithms can help you improve customer and employee satisfaction, customer service, and store sales.


Analyze multichannel sales in real timeSAP Customer Activity Repository supports multichannel sales analysis and real-time insight into sales performance and customer behavior across channels (compared to fore-casts), which helps you optimize processes and interactions with other departments, cus-tomers, and suppliers. For example, you can: • Understand what has sold by category, where it was sold and through which channel, and more

• Compare data on actuals against forecasts

• Work with suppliers and manufacturers to align replenishment based on sales by channel to fulfill orders quickly and avoid stock-outs

• Develop personalized promotions to sell complementary products that align with what customers have already purchased

• Create in-store promotions to send to customers’ mobile devices for just-in-time marketing








Take advantage of unified demand forecasts – the latest generation of forecasting that will drive the SAP for Retail solution portfolio.


Become a more customer-centric enterprise With SAP Customer Activity Repository, deployed in conjunction with the back-end SAP Merchandising for Retail and Wholesale Distribution package, you have the foundation for creating a truly customer-centric enter-prise. Besides transforming multichannel data silos into a single source of truth, you can visualize, discover, and share in real time the insights hidden within this data. Then use this insight to improve customer experiences and drive sales. For example, you can:

• Base every plan and execution step on a common data foundation and a unified demand forecast about your customer

• Provide customers with a consistent, personalized brand experience across all channels and business models

• Accurately predict and react swiftly to changes in demand to have the right prod-ucts in the right place for the right price to meet demand

• Generate insights to prepare, plan, and develop promotions, assortments, and pro-grams that boost market share and sales

• Simplify your IT landscape by creating one source of all customer data, which reduces complexity, cuts costs, and eliminates data redundancy

Become a more customer-centric enterprise


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Summary The SAP® Customer Activity Repository appli-cation collects, cleanses, and centralizes all customer-related data across all channels in real time for analysis and makes it ready for consumption by other applications. You can also enrich data with social media feedback, enterprise data, and third-party data for a 360-degree view of customers. As a result, you can create highly accurate demand and trend forecasts, access real-time inventory data, and offer customers a consistent, personalized brand experience across all channels.

Objectives • Inventory visibility across channels and locations

• Accurate demand forecasting • Ability to use customer data to deliver personalized brand experiences

Solution • A unique source of information about each customer across all channels

• High-speed predictive analytics for accurate demand forecasts

• Near-real-time inventory data • Ability to integrate retail predictive applications

• Integration of channels for better customer service

Benefits • Increase promotion and assortment effectiveness

• Create a consistent brand experience across all channels to boost customer satisfaction and retention

• Personalize marketing for higher sales • Simplify your IT landscape by minimizing data replication

Learn moreTo find out more, call your SAP representative today or visit us online at www.sap.com.

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SAP Solution Brief: A Single, Unified Data Platform for Retail Planning, Forecasting, and Analytics

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