🌐 Welcome to the Future of Retail: Unveiling Insights through Data & Analytics!
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I would like to announce my new upcoming blog series as we delve into the dynamic world where data meets retail, unlocking the secrets behind successful business strategies and customer experiences.
Whether you're a seasoned retail professional, a data enthusiast, or simply curious about the future of retail, my series will provide insights, industry trends, and expert perspectives. I am happy to embrace the data revolution with you.
Get ready to decode the data, analyze the trends, and envision the future – because the retail landscape is about to be redefined, one insight at a time.
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Before we dive into todays topic let`s have a look into todays challenges when it comes to data & analytics in retail. Here are some challenges representing the current customer situation:
- Retail Big Data – mass data and performance
- Analysis across data from different sources
- Everyone talks about Generative AI!
- Self-Service
- Hybrid Architectures
- Real time Analysis
- Provide analytical business content to our customers
- Retail planning requirements
Today focus will be on the area of real time analysis specifically on operative reporting in an end-to-end process.
Business Scenario
In today's rapidly changing digital landscape, centralizing processes through a hub has become a necessity for most businesses. Retailers, especially, are acknowledging the need for harmonizing their order processes, as they deal with multiple sales channels and complex fulfillment dynamics. SAP’s Order Management Foundation (OMF) serves as a robust solution in this regard, acting as a central hub for managing orders in real-time.
Seamlessly integrated with different platforms, e.g. like SAP Commerce Cloud and S/4HANA, the OMF goes beyond mere integration.
It centralizes an entirely decoupled retail ecosystem. A clever bit of independency allows OMF to receive updates from individual systems independently, thereby providing superior flexibility.
Adding more sales channels? No problem! OMF rapidly scales to incorporate these new channels, ensuring your retail business remains flexible and agile.
Even fulfillment, a critical aspect of retail, is efficiently handled no matter if its a non-SAP fulfillment channel. Regardless of whether dealing with an existing sourcing system or new inventory system, the OMF's capabilities ensure that processes run smoothly.
A key differentiator of OMF is its nature as an information repository. By storing order updates within its system, it allows for real-time tracking of KPIs, such as order insights and on-time performance. This data-centric approach ensures that businesses have quick access to data, facilitating informed decision-making and strategic planning.
From Digital Storefront to Order Capturing to Insights to Action
Let's explore how this end-to-end process will be captured by the different SAP solutions.
Imagine: You're an online shopper, browsing through the multitude of products offered on a webshop powered by
SAP Commerce Cloud. You have a seamless, personalized shopping experience that speaks to your unique interests. After browsing through the array of products, you finally find that perfect item and make your purchase - placing an order online. This isn't just a purchase, but the start of an intricate journey tracing from order initiation to final delivery, tracked and visualized through the SAP ecosystem.
The moment you click and create an order, the
SAP Order Management Foundation springs into action. Acting as a central hub for all orders, OMF receives the order data from SAP Commerce Cloud.
Flexible and robust, OMF can initiate a series of processes. From validating the product availability in the inventory
to splitting the order to be fulfilled from the correct fulfilment system, the wheels are set in motion for your order. These processes are all performed in real-time.
But the journey doesn’t end here. The prowess of the SAP ecosystem extends beyond order processing, diving into the world of data & analytics.
SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) integrates the entire process data from OMF via live connection and provides further capabilities (e.g. detailed forecasts).
OMF contributes a remarkable pool of data. This becomes the basis for real-time analytics, feeding into metrics such as:
- Sales Revenue
- Order/Item Count
- Average Transaction Value
- On-Time Performance für Shipment und Delivery
- Current Orders at Risk
- Cycle Time Performance
Dimensions:
- Time
- Product
- Market
- Sales Channel
- (Ship-To) Location
- Fulfillment Site
- Various others (delivery option, payment method).
Equipped with these insights, business user are able to make verified decisions, strategize marketing campaigns, and work towards refining the customer experience for shoppers like you. Finally customers do not need to load 3rd party data to another environment to access reporting.
In conclusion this is a perfect example how solutions from CX portfolio, Retail portfolio and BTP are interconnected in an end-to-end process.
Stay tuned for more insights on how SAP solutions are revolutionizing retail experiences through my upcoming blog series in 2024.