SAP Tech Ed-How Groupsoft US is contributing

The SAP Tech Ed is a great place for IT companies, IT professionals, and SAP partners to gather together in one common area to network, exchange innovative ideas, and more importantly learn the newest SAP technologies in an interactive yet informative manner.  It is very important that IT companies and individuals stay up to date with the latest SAP has to offer because it helps them [IT companies and professionals] to help their retail customers in the best way possible.  In the technological arena, especially in this technological era there is no such thing as achieving maximum potential; one can always strive to be more knowledgeable, innovative, and aware of consumer needs and wants.   These are the reasons why Groupsoft US is not only excited to go but eager to attend the SAP Tech Ed conference; this conference allows us to not only hear fresh insights on new technologies but also to reveal our own special use case on SAP HANA. 

There are many challenges that come along with being a retailer, whether big or small, and the biggest of these challenges is tailoring the local assortment to appeal to the local crowd while keeping in styles in format with those of the overall stores.  The retailer has to make sure that the local SKU levels are preserved within the store; however there is a quandary when such things are considered in the grand scheme of things.  Each retailer has a core style but the local assortment varies greatly depending on the location; a retailer of the same brand may not have the same clientele across the country.

For instance, in a hypothetical retail scenario where there are 600 stores, each store being between 80,000-100,000 sq feet, which serves around 200 million customers annually with 3000 Merchandise Category and 125,000 SKU’s, the data that needs to be managed on a weekly and monthly basis is unimaginable.  Simple calculations deduce that there are 1.8 million MC lines that need to be managed and 75 million SKUs that needs to be managed. This is an incredible amount of data that takes up an immense amount of time. 

There are many different formats that stores use in order to determine the number of articles and  and data points for a year of planning data.  Retailers want to have the ability to handle the assortment at a higher hierarchy level but do not want to forego any changes that might happen as a result of actual sales, stock, or contribution basis at a local level. 

If a retailer wants to make a change at a class or city level for one month (let’s take the month of October for instance) from a 5% sales contribution to a 7% sales contribution there is an incredible amount of data that needs to be reconstructed in order to make that change and it would take anywhere between 4 to 4.5 hours to produce the computed results.

However, SAP HANA reduces the computational effort of this down from hours to mere seconds and produces the Local Assortment planning thoroughly and effectively.  Therefore, it is not only beneficial concerning its speed but also its ability to increase sales revenue by up to 5-6% annually going forward.  Lastly, with the aid of SAP HANA these technical processes will be performed within a fraction of the time it previously took and also the data management will be based off of a technical point of view. 

Thanks for reading this blog, hope it helped clarify the importance and necessity of SAP HANA (from the view point of Groupsoft US).  Please stay posted for more blogs! 

By: Anuja Gaikwad Team Groupsoft US