SAP announces new customer-centric solution to help retailers improve operations
Dallas -- To help retailers better understand and act on consumer behavior in the fast changing retail market place, SAP AG announced the SAP Customer Activity Repository application, a new retail data repository powered by the SAP HANA platform.
The new application is intended to support retailers in becoming more customer-centric by bringing together customer, sales and inventory information from siloed applications. A unified view of the customer shall help retailers drive consistent experiences across all channels and improve business efficiencies, profitability and brand perception. The announcement was made at the SAP Retail Forum North America, being held on Oct. 7 to Oct. 9 in Dallas.
“To present our brand to a growing base of digital natives and active sports enthusiasts, providing information right now is a key differentiator,” said Stephen McDonnold, CIO, PGA Tour Superstore. “Utilizing SAP Customer Activity Repository and SAP HANA will allow us to provide instantaneous inventory availability, targeted promotions and cross-channel fulfillment to our on-the-go consumers.”
Shoppers are demanding more choice and richer content at all times, on any device. To meet demand, retailers must deliver more personalized content, faster and across all channels. SAP Customer Activity Repository aims to empower retailers with consumer insights by consolidating customer interactions from stores, online and mobile channels with insight from social media feedback such as Twitter or Facebook posts. The information shall act as the basis for a “single source of truth” to help retailers optimize branding, marketing, promotions, pricing, merchandising, inventory management processes and more.
“As consumers expand their shopping experiences across multiple purchase channels, retailers have an opportunity to engage more fully and provide more personal interactions,” said Lori Mitchell-Keller, global head, industry business unit retail, SAP. “This is a daunting task, requiring access to multiple databases and tools. With SAP Customer Activity Repository, retailers will have access to powerful consumer insights, be able to centralize critical business data and run reports instantly, and make better business decisions that support both sales and the customer experience.”
SAP HANA is designed to help businesses make smarter, faster decisions through real-time analysis and reporting combined with dramatically accelerated business processes. As the backbone of the new SAP Customer Activity Repository app, it is intended to deliver lightning-fast insight at a user-determined level of detail, helping eliminate the time needed to handle multiple data transactions in the point-of-sale transaction log, other sales channels and reporting systems.