Brookshire Grocery Company Boosts Shopper Satisfaction and Business Growth With SAP(R) Software

TYLER, Texas, Jan. 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Taking a customer-centric approach and delivering outstanding customer service have propelled Brookshire Grocery Company's success story of growth and acquisitions since its founding in 1920. To better understand of the wants and needs of shoppers across its expanding operations at more than 150 Brookshire, Super 1 Food, Ole Foods and ALPS (Always Low Price Store) supermarkets in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, the company is further expanding its use of retail industry-specific software from SAP AG (NYSE: SAP).

(Logo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050310/SFTH009LOGO-a)

Working together with SAP, Brookshire Grocery Company engaged in value engineering, a practice that uses industry benchmarking data from SAP to help companies understand their business challenges and how they can best address these issues with their existing IT investments and complementary solutions. As a result, the Texas-based company realized it needed to gain clearer insight from data spread across its operations in order to understand what drives shopper engagement, optimize pricing and run promotions more effectively. Today, Brookshire Grocery Company is building upon its existing relationship with SAP, expanding its footprint of SAP® Business Suite software and SAP® for Retail solutions with applications for promotion management, demand management and business intelligence (BI). Document access and archiving applications from SAP partner Open Text round out the new solution set.  

"SAP understands how essential it is to our business to maintain both profitability and shopper satisfaction," said Rick Rayford, president and chief executive officer, Brookshire Grocery Company. "Working with SAP, we evaluated our current IT landscape and new solution sets with an eye to maximizing our existing investments and determining the tools and functionality to gain deeper insight into the effectiveness of our store promotions and pricing strategies. The new set of SAP retail solutions will enable us to act quickly, flexibly and appropriately, and to execute creative campaigns that attract and retain shoppers."

Optimizing Promotions and Prices

By streamlining promotion and pricing processes, retailers can achieve bottom-line savings and top-line growth. Brookshire Grocery Company plans to use the SAP® Promotion Management for Retail application to help it develop and execute effective promotions, create accurate print media, and place and price merchandise correctly. Available as a stand-alone application or integrated with SAP Business Suite, the application is designed to enable retailers to optimally manage promotions and to adapt offers and promotion schedules based on deep understanding of emerging customer trends.

Facing increased competition, rapidly changing shopper demands, a volatile economy and thin margins, retailers cannot afford to make pricing mistakes. To address this key business demand, Brookshire Grocery Company is replacing its current price optimization solution from DemandTec with the SAP® Price Optimization for Retail application to determine the best combination of competitive prices that will appeal to shoppers and also optimize profitability. The application helps retailers gain better insight into customers' needs and deliver prices that meet financial objectives without sacrificing shopper expectations.

Boosting Business Insight

With multiple store brands frequented by different types of customers, Brookshire Grocery Company requires a detailed understanding of shopper demand to drive differentiating and localized assortments, pricing, and promotion strategies. Business intelligence (BI) solutions from the SAP™ BusinessObjects® portfolio will enable Brookshire Grocery Company to offer one source of the truth for its merchandising, marketing and logistics staff to quickly make the right decisions.

Retail companies need to manage increasing amounts of information with a minimum amount of resources. The SAP® Document Access application by Open Text and the SAP® Archiving application by Open Text can improve access and management of all types of documents relating to transactions and processes run by SAP software. Brookshire will deploy the Open Text solutions to help reduce storage costs and optimize system performance. Third-party solution extensions such as the Open Text solutions are a dependable and trusted method for customers to make incremental IT investments that extend the core value of SAP application functionality, are easy to implement and address today's business issues. SAP® EcoHub provides an online marketplace that makes it easier for customers to discover, evaluate and buy these and other SAP solution extensions.  

"SAP is committed to helping retailers run a clear enterprise," said Bob McFarland, senior vice president and general manager of the U.S. Retail Organization, SAP America. "Our value engineering methodology helps retailers understand how to maximize their current investments and identify solutions that address unmet needs.  With SAP and partner solutions, retailers can realize improved insight into their data so they can better understand their shoppers, increase store productivity, and reduce costs .  The flexibility offered by SAP business solutions enables retailers to prepare for and capitalize on opportunities for profitable growth and competitive advantage."

About SAP

SAP is the world's leading provider of business software(*), offering applications and services that enable companies of all sizes and in more than 25 industries to become best-run businesses. With more than 92,000 customers in over 120 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE, under the symbol "SAP." For more information, visit www.sap.com.

(*) SAP defines business software as comprising enterprise resource planning, business intelligence, and related applications.

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "intend," "may," "plan," "project," "predict," "should" and "will" and similar expressions as they relate to SAP are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. SAP undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP's future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including SAP's most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.

Copyright © 2010 SAP AG. All rights reserved.

SAP, R/3, mySAP, mySAP.com, xApps, xApp, SAP NetWeaver and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. Data contained in this document serve informational purposes only. National product specifications may vary.

SOURCE SAP AG