SAP delivers real-time insight, planning with merchandise data

SAP AG yesterday announced new solutions to fast track retailers onto real-time analytics. The SAP® Planning for Retail rapid-deployment solution enables real-time demand-driven forecasting and multiyear budget projections, while the SAP rapid-deployment solution for shopper insight delivers prebuilt analytics powered by the SAP HANA® platform in both mobile and Web formats. Retailers with limited resources that need to keep up with seasonal rushes or changing product demand can have these fully integrated analytics solutions up and running within seven to twelve weeks on average.
Accurate and immediate retail data have become increasingly difficult to secure. “With economic changes, customer fragmentation, erratic sale patterns and non-integrated IT systems that blur the operations aspect of retail,” said Nadine Rahman, head of RDS Sales of SAP Asia Pacific Japan. “SAP Planning for Retail helps retailers achieve prompt and efficient visibility across channels and merchandise categories over a comprehensive period of time.”
SAP Planning for Retail produces detailed sales projections that can define corporate budgets three to five years in advance. With this foresight, retailers can better guard against overstock and shortage scenarios while offering a more enticing mix of products and prices per channel and per store.
“SAP Planning for Retail is the desired solution as it provides accurate demand data and financial forecasting, that many planning solutions in the market are unable to do,” said Adaire Fox-Martin, senior vice president, Industries Business Solutions, SAP Asia Pacific Japan.
The SAP rapid-deployment solution for shopper insight helps solve the delay that retail managers experience in accessing and analyzing sales, returns, and other transactional data. SAP HANA provides sub-second rollup and interactive analysis of retail data not possible with traditional database technology. This data can be viewed though a mobile device for near-real-time analytics, accessible from anywhere.
SAP Planning for Retail and rapid deployment of shopper insight help ensure an implementation process with a fixed scope and fixed price. Leveraging preconfigured software encompassing SAP best practices, services, and end-user enablement, the assets help to support fewer risks, lower costs, and a more predictable return on investment (ROI) for retailers. They can gain immediate access to real-time capabilities and, because the solutions are fully scalable, retailers can keep adding to them as needed.
“It is important that SAP innovation is made available to retailers in order for them to maximize their yields,” said Claude Ringuet, head for Consumer Industries Solutions of SAP Asia Pacific Japan. “These solutions put forward the best practices and integrated processes across various industries.”