SAP to Provide Retailers With Real-Time Data for Actionable Decision-Making

Keywords: Retail, Customer Demand, Sales Analysis, Point-Of-Sale, Inventory Management, POS.

SAP AG introduced the SAP BusinessObjects Sales Analysis for Retail analytic application powered by the SAP HANA platform. The application aims to offer prebuilt data models, key performance indicators (KPIs), role-specific dashboards and customized reports to provide retailers with a deeper understanding of all factors influencing the merchandising life cycle.

As the retail industry is inundated with large volumes of data, businesses need accurate insight into customer demand, along with a clear understanding of the impact of their promotions on stock levels and profits. SAP HANA provides retailers with real-time access to critical information and allows for nearly real-time interactive analysis not possible with traditional database technology. For retailers operating in separate sales, inventory and promotions systems, SAP BusinessObjects Sales Analysis for Retail aims to provide the integration needed for vastly improved scalability and performance.

Key features SAP BusinessObjects Sales Analysis for Retail aims to provide include:

• Point-of-sale (POS) analysis to allow retailers to assess performance and generate quick responses through the use of prebuilt dashboards, interactive reports and more than 70 KPIs
• Inventory management to provide retailers with the ability to identify critical stock and margin issues through close inventory alignment
• Promotional analysis to enable retailers to understand the return on investment (ROI) and impact of promotions in real time, allowing users to set up thresholds, alerts and workflows for an early response system that drives performance
• Store operations to help users understand which stores are performing best and why, allowing retailers to achieve visibility across different locations and manage by exception

SAP BusinessObjects Sales Analysis for Retail is planned for global availability to customers in the second quarter of 2012.

ARC Advisory Group