SAP® Solutions for Retail Drive Omni-Channel Customer Experience

WALLDORF, Germany, Sept. 24, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- To meet customers' demand for a seamless shopping experience across all channels, devices and touch points, retailers nowadays have to meet organizational, operational and technological challenges. Customers want a simple, personalized and compelling shopper experience just like it was years ago, when merchants knew each shopper by name and personal buying habits by memory. These and other challenges in the retail and wholesale industry are being discussed during the 12th SAP Advisory Council for Retail and Wholesale, an invitation-only event taking place from September 23-25 at SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) headquarters in Walldorf, Germany.

Personalized and Seamless Customer Experience
In today's highly competitive and fast changing environment, it is essential for retailers to understand customer buying behavior, especially the interactions that take place across the retailer's different channels, including store, e-commerce, mobile, etc. To this end, customers expect that retailers know and understand them, meaning that retailers need to use the insights into the customer to offer relevant and personalized offers. This requires technology that can handle high data volumes in real time.

With the help of retail solutions from SAP, retailers gain the necessary 360-degree view of consumer behavior, get a real-time view of customers and inventories, improve operating efficiencies and revamp their supply chain. The retail solutions combine cloud, mobile, Big Data and advanced analytical technologies in order to deliver consistent, personalized shopping experiences, as well as to help customers identify opportunities and improve operational efficiency and margins. Retailers can engage with their target audience over any touch point and leverage merchandise management and supply channel functionality from SAP to support further growth while at the same time increasing their employees' mobile productivity.

Improved Customer Insights with SAP
Customers demand that all their interactions are consistent and seamless, so interaction points with a retailer must work together. For example, a customer may choose to look at an item online, purchase it using a mobile device and return it by bringing it to a store. The Internet and mobile technology are transforming shopping behavior. Consumers nowadays have access to nearly everything, and this access to this wealth of information is greater and faster like never before, leaving huge amounts of data. Retailers need to track, manage and leverage all of this data in real time to reach their customers in a meaningful way, exactly at the moment when it could actually make a difference to sales, customer retention and revenue.

SAP® Customer Activity Repository, a retail data repository powered by SAP HANA® that serves as an underlying foundation for all operations, enhances customer insight. Retailers can leverage the true potential of omni-channel as well as the demand for the personalization for the individualized shopping experience. The solution brings together transaction data across all channels and inventory data across all locations to overcome existing siloed applications and to deliver a unified customer-centric approach to decision-making for retail merchandising, promotions, allocations and supply chain processes.

"We wanted to replace our old system with a sustainable system which allows us to be flexible, and incorporate our own ideas. SAP has fulfilled all these requirements," said Dr. Gerd Robertz, CEO, buecher.de. "The positive feedback from customers is an excellent indication of how our processes have improved considerably, and above all, shows how the effects of this improvement are seen anew by our customers every day."

Effect of Social Media on Shopping Behavior
"The rise of social media not only causes huge amounts of data, but also affects shopper's views and purchases," said Bernd Leukert, member of the Executive Board of SAP SE. "Today, customers use several channels to evaluate and conduct a purchase. More and more customers are clicking from social networks to retail sites. Retailers using social media to connect with their audience are seeing better brand results, while those who fail to do so are fading away. Our solutions help retailers and wholesalers to run simple while at the same time offering their customers exactly what they want when they want it — across all devices, channels and touch points."

The 12th SAP Advisory Council for Retail and Wholesale is taking place in Walldorf, Germany, from September 23-25. Participation is by personal invitation only with a strong bias for leading companies, thought leaders and regional and global brands with high industry impact. Topics of discussion focus on global trends impacting the industries as well as industry-specific trends; business options, business models and strategies to leverage trends, and SAP industry road maps, offering the opportunity to make a direct impact on midterm and long-term deliverables.

For more information, visit the SAP News Center. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.

About SAP
As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP (NYSE: SAP) helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. From back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device – SAP empowers people and organizations to work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively to stay ahead of the competition. SAP applications and services enable more than 261,000 customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

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.

© 2014 SAP SE. All rights reserved.
SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see http://www.sap.com/corporate-en/legal/copyright/index.epx#trademark for additional trademark information and notices.

For customers interested in learning more about SAP products: 
Global Customer Center: +49 180 534-34-24
United States Only: 1 (800) 872-1SAP (1-800-872-1727)

For more information, press only:
Janice Tsoules, SAP, +1 (650) 320-3238, [email protected], EDT
SAP News Center press room; [email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110126/AQ34470LOGO

SOURCE SAP SE