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May 11, 2011

The Search for Retail Intelligence

By
Naresh Ramamurti
Practice Leader - SAP RETAIL

Customer Centricity and Cross-Channel shopping have been the two greatest trends in RETAIL since 2010. With Apple and Google taking the world's number 1 and 2 spots for global brands this year, these trends have taken a whole new meaning. On the foundation of tomorrow's mobile applications, customers have dynamited the way they interact with retailers - redefining and rewriting the shopper experience from product to point of sale. While organizations around the world continue to grapple with the challenges of reducing their cost of business, Retailers have an exceptional opportunity to take control of the shopping experience - from embracing social networks to crunching core analytics in real time.

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March 9, 2011

Tracking Consumer Loyalty in CPG Industry

While the CPG industry spends billions of dollars in advertising spend to enhance consumer loyalty towards its brands, it does not have a meaningful way to track and utilize loyalty information. The primary reason for this has been the reluctance of retailers to share the transaction level sales data with CPG organizations. In this blog, we explore a possible approach for CPG companies to track & utilize consumer buying data and reward loyalty for target brands.

This approach eliminates the dependence on Retailers for collecting consumer buying information. While it removes the dependence on retailers for the buying information, it will need to depend on consumers using a form of registration of purchase on their own will and hence needs to incentivize the consumers to register the purchase, and at the same time, make the process of registration as easy as possible. Also there is need to make this process be able to register genuine purchases only and hence would call for some level of changes in packaging of the consumer products. Thus in the current form the model will only justify the investment for atleast slightly higher-end products.

The proposed approach relies on leveraging the eco-system of social media and its integration with the mobile platform. The penetration of mobile phones around the world and the advent of social media platform, there a unique opportunity to leverage these 2 platforms and build a framework to enable consumer loyalty tracking in a very easy to use and relatively less expensive way.

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December 30, 2010

Implementing Vending Machine functionalities in SAP

Over the years, Vending machines have become a ubiquitous sales channel for Food and Beverage companies. Among their various benefits, they offer portability in terms of their set up, are low cost driven, and offer a wide reach due to less space constraints. 

In this blog, we will discuss the key vending machine functionalities and how can they be mapped into SAP. The scope of this blog is restricted to the processes where the vending machines are owned by the company

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May 15, 2010

How efficient Forecasting and Replenishment can increase margins

by Mark Everson

One of the most difficult aspects of high street retailing is managing in store availability in order to minimize lost sales while reducing overall inventory, especially where regular or in season replenishment occurs.

As a retailer, we would always want to satisfy the customer and also ensure that we do not have inventory taking up valuable shelf space and tying up working capital. Therefore we have a delicate balancing act to do between these different demands to always get the sale without having stock rooms the size of the store itself!

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May 14, 2010

How would SAP Retail affect my business?

by Mark Everson

The set of SAP Retail solutions are out of the box solutions aimed specifically at all Retailers in the market. Over the last 5 years, SAP has invested in the core ERP Retail solutions along with building solutions that can integrate with the core or stand by themselves. These are Merchandise and Assortment Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment, POS Data Mart, EPOS point of sales systems, Workforce Management, Price Optimization and Customer Loyalty solutions which overall make up a strong package to cover all retail scenarios.

So SAP has the processes covered but what does this mean for a retailer who is looking to implement these solutions?

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May 10, 2010

Don't rely on software alone to drive process transformation

Using package software solutions for Enterprise Resource Planning Solutions (ERP) or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for enterprise business transformation is very appealing. The reasons are many, not the least of which are:

•          Speed: Accelerated implementation

•          Knowledge: Built on industry best practices

•          Simplicity: Pre-integrated application suite or "stack"

 

Companies often speak of "vanilla" implementations where there is a strong reliance on "out-of-the-Box" functionality to drive process and organizational change.  However, it is a mistake to rely on software alone. Although fast implementation to achieve a target ROI is desirable, there are some risks that must be addressed. 

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May 7, 2010

One size does not fit all: Deliver more shareholder value by embedding "customer value" into your solution design for front-office transformations

Organizations have increasingly sought new, innovative, and (often) expensive ways to get a 360° view of the customer - the reality is that the customer doesn't exist. Customers are many and varied, they have different needs, different motivations, different ways they want to interact with companies and different expectations from the you. Too often companies undergo well-intentioned transformations in pursuit of meeting the customer's needs, only to end the project in frustration having spent millions and never having achieved their goal. The problem is that the companies start out with a goal that is too poorly defined. And when the solution is being developed, it is swamped by trying to solve all the ills the company has let fester for years (or decades).

Continue reading " One size does not fit all: Deliver more shareholder value by embedding "customer value" into your solution design for front-office transformations " »

April 30, 2010

Enabling Consumer Demand for Green Products : Generating Bottom-up Demand

With an increased focus on environmental impact of industrialization, most organizations are trying to take-up initiatives to improve their 'Green Image'. Most of these initiatives have been in trying to reduce the energy consumption in their facilities/operations. While these initiatives are good, we all know that these are not 'good enough'. To drive real environmental consciousness through the society, there needs to be a way, to generate the need to be 'Green', ground-up. What this implies is that business leaders/goverment leaders should help create an environment where 'Green' Products are made attractive to consumers and there is ground-up demand generated for 'Greener' products. This will make manufacturers see an incentive to reduce their carbon footprint or in other words make their products greener.

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February 23, 2010

Using BSP Element Expressions (BEEs) in HCM E-Recruiting

 Using BSP Element Expressions (BEEs) in HCM E-Recruiting:
Introduction:

 I got requirement to add custom fields for Standard HCM E-Recruiting Page, which is totally responsible for particular Infotype . Its can be easy to display custom fields in any standard BSP page, but updating the new custom field in the same Infotype and also to retrieve the same info in different portal BSP page is not a easy task. We should enhance several class methods to implement the same.

 I got an idea to use BEE methods in Class CL_HRRCF_UI_SERVICES .

 Instead of Enhancing class and Layouts we can use the BEEs to do the same with very less effort.

 Benefit:

By using this approach we can save great coding and layout designing effort.

Getting Started:

I am going to add one Drop down BOX in my Candidate-Job Description Standard BSP page.

 

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January 21, 2010

Trade Promotion Management in Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) business

What is Trade Promotion Management (TPM)?

 

 A simple definition is a set of processes that aim to manage promotional spending so that it maximizes sales up-lift, brand awareness, market share, and return on investment.

 

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July 10, 2009

Sales order management with SAP E-Commerce solution

Global business houses, in their innovation journey for being competitive, leverage existing distribution channel network evolving with a multi-commerce platform. Internet sales continue to grow healthier even at the economy tried times. Businesses are keen to value add their existing channel assets to collaborate with customers to personalize experiences thereby driving the market demand to enable a customer driven growth.

Your existing dealer, reseller or channel assets need to take advantage of Internet and improve the sales and distribution channels. It will not only be a value add to your existing reseller network asset but also key to establish a customer driven growth.
 

Improve value chain of your existing channel assets
What if you could provide customers with a unified and guided selling experience across your sales channels with a seamless selling experience integrating the value-add of your reseller network?  What if you could leverage the channel without additional investment of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) server? The answer could be to establish lean E-Commerce (focusing pre-sales and sales only) system that can meet such requirements.
E-Commerce solution leveraging your existing infrastructure
An e-Commerce system without additional investment of CRM server, where products, orders and promotions are properly configured to route the sales orders to the distributor. This brings in a truly collaborative commerce with distributor - you - customers with increased focus and participation in the sales cycle.

Distributor (vendor) managed inventory system while you still maintain with frequent updates from the distributor system. Replenishment of inventory could be planned, advised and executed reducing the touch points or improving the automation thereby helping increased focus more on the core activities. Additional core business areas of planning, availability and capability also receives improvised attention.

Collaborative platform
Collaboration with channel asset involving customer will allow active participation of all stakeholders in all aspects of your customer's sales and marketing experience, from shopping and product configuration to order fulfillment and feedback. It is a single platform offering from Infosys based on a composition environment that leverage SAP E-Commerce application. CSR, Customers and Vendor will have a single platform and a single view – bet it orders, products, promotions, status info etc.,

Return on investment (ROI)
Immediate returns are reduced cost of order processing and improved efficiencies. While on a steady state system, your returns include increased customer and partner loyalty and the ability to create strong sell-side partnerships that help differentiate products designed and created by you.
 

Web Based Channel Platform
Enable e-commerce with SAP ERP without the need for a full CRM implementation. Set up, manage, and extend your online presence to deliver best-in-class business experiences that are Web (2.0) enabled including:

  • Web shop management to quickly and easily setup and maintain Web shops
  • Master data management to manage customer and product data centrally and deploy it consistently across the enterprise
  • Service-enabled to empower organizations with flexible and open integration points to extend their online capabilities
  • Integrated with SAP Portal, seamlessly integrating other applications maintaining the brand identity and ease of navigation
  • Provide self-service capabilities for user management and services.
Business benefits
  • Increased market reach and therefore sales
  • Cultivate two-way customer realationship
  • Improve customer convenience and satisfaction
  • Increase profitability through differentiated levels of service
  • Reduced cost of sales and support
  • Lower total cost of ownership

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