“SAP for Retail” is an industry-specific application software from the software vendor SAP AG and is focused on the global Retailing industry. SAP for Retail is a set of software solutions that supports demand management, merchandise management and planning, supply chain, store operations, and base financials and Human Resource Capital functions.
The solutions support most retailing processes, including:
• Contracting: Contracting makes the basic procurement decisions and updates the relevant base data.
• Demand Management/ Forecasting: group and analyze the demand from customers and replenish the stock accordingly.
• Purchasing: Purchasing involves the placing of orders by determining supplier, article, quantity and time. It also includes subtasks as limit calculation, requirements calculation, purchase order quantity calculation, stock allocation, order transfer and order monitoring.
• Goods receipt: Goods receipt is the quantity-related logistical equivalent to the purchasing order.
• Invoice verification: The value equivalent to the goods receipt are the invoice arrival and the invoice verification with the subtasks: invoice acquisition, invoice checking, invoice release, subsequent invoice processing and processing of subsequent conditions.
• Accounts payable: The major task of creditor accounting is handling payments, i.e. the payment for the open items resulting from the supplier’s invoice.
• Marketing: Here operational marketing is meant like updating of customer master data, the assortment and merchandise policies (in particular: assortment planning, sales planning and turn-over planning, listing and delisting of articles).
• Pricing: With pricing, the activities for business goals, product costs, competitive information, and business rules can be performed.
• Sales: Sales includes the subtasks of customer query processing, customer offer processing, creation of order records, order processing, possibly customer complaints processing, and sales representative support.
• Goods issue: Tasks of the goods issue involve the route planning, planning of the order picking, the actual order picking, the goods issue acquisition and adjusting of the inventory.
• Billing: evaluation of the customer delivery note, the various forms of invoicing the customer and the calculation of subsequent reimbursements, together with the production of any required credit and debit notes.
• Accounts receivable: The central task here is the administration of the debtor accounts and the monitoring of the payment.
• Warehousing: warehousing performs the bridging function between procurement side and the sales or demand side. This involves the subtasks updating of the warehouse master data, stock transfers and posting transfers, cross-docking, the stocktaking in the warehouse, and the warehouse control.
• Point-of-Sale: Place where the customer stops to purchase goods with the following tasks: process sales transactions and returns, process exchanges, with ability to declare sales transactions null and void and manage pending sales.
• Business analytics: Examples include: Customer Analytics (e.g. customer frequency, loyalty analysis), Store Operations Analytics (e.g. promotional sales, actual labor versus scheduled), Merchandising Analytics (e.g. Sales by item, top selling items, vendor scorecarding, inventory analysis), Supply Chain Analytics (e.g. fulfillment rates, deliveries, stock overview)
History
In 1994, SAP acquired Dacos Software GmbH, which was located in Saarbrücken, Germany and renamed it to “SAP Retail Solutions”. Before the acquisition SAP used the R/3 components MM (Materials Management), SD (Sales and Distribution) and Warehousing also for the retail industry. One of the most visible changes after the acquisition was a top-down menu, where users could add additional functionality, data and additional organizational units to the standard components. Over time the materialmaster became the article master, more functionality and applications were added and more acquisitions completed the offer.
In 1999 SAP acquired Campbell Software Inc. in Chicago (US). Campbell itself was founded in 1989 and developed a software for workforce management and personal time recording. The workforce management solution was called Staffworks and Campbell Time and Attendance. At the time of the acquisition Campbell Software had approximately 71 retail customers. SAP Campbell was created as a legal subsidiary after the acquisition. For those two years SAP Campbell continued to support their install base customers and also to attempt to expand the original install base. Around 2001–2002 SAP Campbell was integrated back into SAP. The original install base has dwindled to a few if any original customers and solution investment was reduced and eliminated over time. Thanks to the integration into SAP Human Capital Management (SAP HCM), it is possible to manage any time account reflecting the complex overtime and bonus rules defined in the various overall labor or company agreements.[1]
In 2006 SAP acquired Khimetrics (Scottsdale, AZ) and Triversity (Canada). Khimetrics developed demand management software, which supports retailers in the synchronization of their strategy and customer demands. The Khimetrics solutions included customer demand modeling and forecasting, base price optimization, promotion planning and optimization, and demand intelligence analytics. In 2006 Khimetrics had approximately 21 customers and slightly less than half of those customers were retail. Triversity developed a point-of-sale solution, which not only sums up the articles and prices, but allows also store inventory maintenance, customer relationship management and services for store and multi-channel processes.[2]
In 2009 SAP acquired SAF AG (Simulation, Analysis and Forecasting) -- they develop automatic order and forecasting software for retailers. SAF AG was founded in 1996 and is located in Tägerwillen (Switzerland) with subsidiaries in the U.S. and Slowakia. Before SAP acquired SAF, both companies had a long history of cooperation using SAF's order and forecasting software as part of SAP Forecasting and Replenishment solution.[3]
References
[1] http://www.inc.com/inc5000/2007/company-profile.html?id=1997204 [2] http://www1.sap.com/global/templates/press.epx?pressid=4959 [3] http://www1.sap.com/global/templates/press.epx?pressid=11785
External links
• Official Webpage of SAP AG for the Retail Industry (http://www.sap.com/industries/retail/index.epx) • SAP for Retail (http://scn.sap.com/community/retail) discussions, blogs, documents and videos on the SAP
Community Network (SCN) (http://scn.sap.com/welcome)
SAP IS-U
SAP IS-U is SAP's Industry Specific Solution for Utilities Industry. It is also referred to as SAP IS-U/CCS
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