Retail, Fashion and Vertical Business in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2502

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1. General Availability (2502)

SAP is proud to announce the general availability of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, retail, fashion, and vertical business solution, marking a pivotal step forward in delivering tailored enterprise resource planning (ERP) capabilities for retailers of all sizes. Built specifically to address the complexities of the retail industry, this solution enables seamless end-to-end integration of processes, providing the operational agility required in today’s fast-paced retail environment.

Retailers have often been constrained by fragmented solutions that excel in isolated areas but fail to deliver the integrated experience needed for cohesive retail operations. The SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition bridges this gap by offering an ERP system designed with retail-specific capabilities to support merchandising, store operations, and complex supply chain management.

Built on the flexibility of public cloud architecture, the platform combines industry-specific processes, unified data, and embedded AI, ensuring a comprehensive suite of tools for finance, procurement, merchandising, and customer experience management. This new offering provides retailers with the tools to streamline processes, deliver personalized experiences, and drive sustainable growth, all while leveraging out-of-the-box integrations for faster time to value. With SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, retailers can now achieve the agility and innovation needed to thrive in today’s digitally driven marketplace.

2. Solution Overview

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, retail, fashion, and vertical business provides comprehensive end-to-end process coverage, ensuring seamless operations across all roles and functions within a retail enterprise. This solution integrates key areas such as master data management, pricing and promotions, demand and supply planning, procurement, supply chain management, store commerce, and sales. For example, it enables master data specialists to manage assortments and product taxonomies while providing merchandise planners with tools for pricing and promotion strategies. Additionally, purchasers and supply chain specialists benefit from streamlined procurement and inventory management processes, including inbound and outbound logistics. Store associates and managers can handle in-store inventory, customer orders, and connectivity with ease, ensuring an efficient store-level operation. The solution also supports billing clerks in managing accounts receivable and sales processes, including omnichannel order fulfillment. With optional capabilities like retail logistics with third-party warehouses and seasonal planning, SAP S/4HANA Cloud delivers a flexible, scalable platform to drive operational efficiency, enhance customer experiences, and support strategic growth for retailers.

3. Roadmap & Localization:

Full Roadmap for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, retail, fashion, and vertical business: SAP Road Map Explorer

In 2025, the feature roadmap for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, retail, fashion, and vertical business highlights significant advancements designed to empower retailers with enhanced capabilities. Release 2502 includes features such as fast and intuitive order capturing via simplified Fiori apps, in-store merchandise management enhancements, rapid replenishment improvements, and advanced integrations with industry cloud applications for real-time inventory synchronization. It also introduces flexible business roles, granular authorization capabilities, and value-added services for foundational retail operations.

Looking ahead to Release 2508, the roadmap emphasizes enabling AI-driven insights and extensibility, including support for hybrid orders, enhanced assortment management with AI co-pilot integration, and advanced intercompany sales and stock transfers. These developments reflect SAP's focus on equipping retailers with tools to streamline processes, improve operational efficiency, and meet evolving customer expectations.

The localization roadmap for SAP S/4HANA Cloud ensures the solution's global relevance by expanding its availability to key markets. The 2502 release supports localization as a self-service in ten additional countries, including India, Australia, Mexico, Singapore, the UK, and Belgium, among others. This builds on the already robust localization support in markets such as Germany, France, the US, and Canada. The roadmap for future releases plans to further broaden the geographic reach, targeting additional countries in Europe, Asia, and South America. By addressing local tax, legal, and market-specific requirements, SAP S/4HANA Cloud ensures retailers worldwide can leverage its capabilities with confidence, fostering global adoption and operational consistency.

 4. 2502 Release Highlights

Fast and Easy Sales Order Capturing in Stores

Customers buying high-value goods from a retail store need an invoice for warranty or return purpose. Also they want to pay and pick-up the goods immediately or visit the store later for pick-up. Store Associate needs a very simple app to capture articles, calculate the total price and complete the transaction including goods movement in the system , in a very short time. Mange In-store sales order app provides the feature of single click generation of logistic documents.

Value Proposition:

• Quickly and intuitively meet customers' requests in the stores
• Support the sales order process for goods that need to be procured from a distribution center or a supplier, which is a must for the segments consumer electronics, DIY (do-it-yourself), specialty retail, or fashion retail
• Increase customer retention and revenue

Capabilities:

• Streamlined user interface for fast and intuitive maintenance
• Determination of order type, sales organization, and distribution channel
• Determination of the store
• Display of the gross price at the header and item levels
• Follow-on document creation in one click

For more information, see: Manage In-store Sales Orders

Efficient Assortment Management and Listing

Assortments are collections of articles for the purpose of defining which articles are relevant for which sites (stores and DCs). In particular, they are required to check whether an article can be procured by a site. In addition, assortments play an important role in other processes like Point of Sale outbound communication.

Assortments can be defined in terms of assortment modules that serve as article containers, which then are assigned to sites. As a result of listing assortment information is made available for operational usage in procurement. Analysis capabilities enriched by KPIs provide the needed transparency which articles are allocated to which sites, and serve as the basis for decision making processes. 

Value Proposition:

• Enhance revenue streams by strategically curating assortments
• Reduce operations costs by providing store managers correct information on what articles they are allowed to order, store and sell
• Streamline the process of assigning articles to assortments
• Assure optimal product placement across stores and distribution centers while minimizing markdowns and write-offs

Capabilities:

• Elaborate assortment analyses to make sure the right articles are allocated to the right locations
• Insights into KPIs with a user-friendly interface
• APIs for events, assortments maintenance and DC listing

For more information, see: Assortment Planning and Management

Enhancements of In-Store Apps

The way how store associates and managers execute relevant processes differs significantly from employees working in the headquarters. Complex user interfaces are not an option for in-store processes because of costly trainings, enforced by high fluctuation rates of store personnel. The in-store Fiori apps are user friendly, self-explanatory and streamlined for in-store processes. It enables store associates to: 

• Transfer article (from store to store/distribution center)
• Perform a planned or unplanned physical inventory count
• Adjust the stock quantity for different reasons such as shrinkage, damage

Value Proposition:

• Streamline store operations for all article types
• Support retailers of segments that require any of the specific article types listed below
• Reduce inventory carrying cost by efficiently managing inventory and stock movements to reduce obsolescence and shrinkage costs

Capabilities:

• Enhancing in-store apps to enable comprehensive support for:

• Full articles with assigned empty articles (typically to handle deposits)
• Structured articles, such as sales sets
• Weight articles, for which the base unit of measure is weight

For more information, see: In-Store Merchandise and Inventory Management

Value-Added Services for Fashion Retailers

In some scenarios it is required to associate additional activities to the actual product as part of the buying or selling process. That can either be physical products (like a hanger for a coat, or a price label), or services (like ironing, or special packaging). These are called value-added services (VAS), as they increase the value of the product for the recipient.

Relevant VAS information can be created in master data maintenance.
During order processing, VAS related information can be entered in the respective document (purchase order, stock transfer order, and sales order). From there, VAS information is then transferred to the follow-on documents, such as outbound delivery, inbound delivery. This enables personnel (for example a warehouse clerk) to carry out the special tasks needed before delivering the goods to the recipient.

Value Proposition:

• Increases the value of the delivered merchandise for the goods recipient by including necessary services
• Enhance operational efficiency by providing needed information to personnel so specific tasks can be executed

Capabilities:

• Maintenance of value-added services
• Definition and maintenance of VAS information in operational documents, such as purchase order, stock transfer order, sales order
• Availability of VAS information in logistic execution documents, such as inbound and outbound deliveries, to enable personnel to execute the needed tasks

For more information, see Value-Added Services Management

5. Further Information

• Official product page: SAP website | Partner portal
• Full retail solution processes: Process Navigator – SAP for Me
• Product assistance on SAP Help
• Learning journey: Exploring SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, retail, fashion and vertical business
• End-2-End Retail Demo: Interactive Value Journey
• Partner portal:
• Hands-on Tutorial: Content Discovery -  E2E Retail Demos

📽️ Watch the Replays of Our SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2502 Early Release Series!   

Between January 21 and January 24, we conducted a series of 21 engaging live sessions to showcase the thrilling innovations included in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2502 release. If you missed the live sessions, don't worry! You can still access the whole series or select the sessions that interest you the most. Seize this opportunity to watch them on demand at your convenience–anywhere, anytime.  

  

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