Newsbyte: New Customer-Centric Solution from SAP to Help Retailers Improve Operations, Consumer Experience and Brand Perception

DALLAS, Oct. 8, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- To help retailers better understand and act on consumer behavior in the fast changing retail market place, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced the SAP® Customer Activity Repository application, a new retail data repository powered by the SAP HANA® platform. SAP Customer Activity Repository 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 October 7-9 in Dallas, Texas.

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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 helps businesses make smarter, faster decisions through real-time analysis and reporting combined with dramatically accelerated business processes. As the backbone of SAP Customer Activity Repository, 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 (POS) transaction log, other sales channels and reporting systems.

"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."

SAP Customer Activity Repository is intended to help retailers establish the foundational data that can be used to better understand customer demand and predict future buying behavior. Features such as real-time visibility into consumer sales data down to the transaction level are intended to enable retailers better understand what, when and where customers will make purchases. One consolidated data pool for all customer transactions across channels will support ease-of use and accessibility to the right information. Further, SAP plans to design better access to inventory levels, predictive models and analytics in the application for improved operational management. General availability of SAP Customer Activity Repository is planned for the first quarter of 2014.

For more information, visit the SAP Newsroom and view an infographic. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.

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. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.

Media Contacts:
Birgit Dolny, SAP, +49 (6227) 7-61664, [email protected], CET
Amy Fisher, PadillaCRT, +1 (612) 455-1773, [email protected], CDT

SOURCE SAP AG