On the final day of the North American SAP Retail Forum, participants took a journey towards the future. They heard about SAP’s retail strategy, learned how to create brand distinction and a unified brand experience, and found out about SAP’s latest retail innovations and roadmap.
In the early morning, the ASUG Retail SIG leadership team hosted a breakfast to discuss SAP enhancement requests and propose ideas for continuous improvement. A separate session called Coffee and CAR also took place, where attendees learned about SAP’s new Customer Activity Repository solution – a common foundation and location for collecting and storing customer related transaction data from all applications and channels.
Simon Paris,Global Head of Strategic Industries, SAP
After breakfast, Chris Ball, Managing Director at SAP, took the main stage to introduce Simon Paris,Global Head of Strategic Industries at SAP. Paris laid out SAP’s global retail strategy and explained how SAP is both a strategic business software and IT platform partner to the industry. “This is not your grandfathers SAP,” said Paris. Retailers can count on SAP to enable new customer experiences, support Omni-commerce, drive operational excellence, and provide intelligent data across the enterprise.
SAP’s Retail Strategy:
- Improve people’s lives and well-being anywhere, anytime
- Raise living standards for all of society
- Delight customers and inspire associates
- Promote sustainable trade and trusted business practices
- Reduce waste and spoilage
Paris then invited Michael Braine, SVP, CIO Retail and Optical Services at Luxottica to the stage. Braine said he was excited to introduce Luxottica and share his company’s SAP success story with his friends and peers in the audience. He said Luxottica is a multi-billion dollar global eyewear retailer with a long history of growth. In the last four years alone it has added 9 retail brands to its extensive portfolio. Using SAP, Luxottica has improved inventory visibility, increased operational productivity, and gained global sustainability and scalability around the world.
Scott McKain
Next to take the stage was the dynamic and comical, Hall of Fame speaker, Scott McKain. McKain is an internationally recognized expert on distinction and challenged the audience to recognize that Great isn't Good Enough to Grow your Business anymore. He said brands must “create distinction” in order to capture the hearts and minds of the consumer. To gain distinction, he said to focus on customers and employees. He also advises companies to be crystal clear about their competitive advantages first and then focus on creativity and innovation.
Ariel Lüedi, Chief Executive Officer, hybris
Ariel Lüedi, Chief Executive Officer of hybris followed next with a discussion about Creating a Single View of your Brand in an Omni-Channel World. He said customers want to be treated the same across all touch points. That means retailers need to switch from an inside-out view of customers to an outside-in view. They need to create a single view of the brand, and a single source of truth to drive a compelling and consistent customer experience. hybris, an SAP company, provides retailers an Omni-commerce solution that unifies and connects the shopping experience across all customer touch points, including mobile devices.
After the break, executives from leading retail companies, trade associations and organizations led informative breakout sessions on adapting retail supply chains, staying on top of regulations, vertically integrated retailing, and boosting customer loyalty through personalization.
Lori Mitchell-Keller, Senior Vice President and Global Head Retail IBU, SAP
lori.mitchell-keller, Senior Vice President and Global Head Retail Industry Business Unit at SAP concluded the SAP Retail Forum by outlining the SAP for Retail Road Map. Mitchell-Keller delivered an overview of recently released retail solution enhancements and innovations such as the SAP Customer Activity Repository and SAP HANA, and provided insight into what SAP has planned for the future.
SAP would like to thank its attendees, sponsers, partners, and employees for participating and supporting the event.
Check out the recap of Day 1 and Day 2
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