There is no question that one of the hottest topics at SAPPHIRE this year will be the Cloud. If you’re a consumer products executive looking for sessions at SAPPHIRE that relate specifically to cloud-based solutions from SAP for the consumer products industry, look no further. Here are some highlights:
First, SAP will showcase best practices for Integrated Business Planning which enables supply chain teams to build on a Sales & Operations Planning framework and methodology to enable much closer collaboration with finance, sales, marketing and other enterprise teams to plan and evaluate options to forecast demand consistently across plan dimensions, optimize the supply chain, minimize inventory costs, avoid capacity and material shortages, and react quickly to volatile demand with SAP Sales and Operations Planning powered by SAP HANA which is available both as a cloud-based and on premise solution.
In another session, SAP will showcase its solutions for retail execution which helps dramatically increase consumer products sales teams’ effectiveness by providing tools to help enable salespeople to optimize routes for store visits, facilitate visit planning with checklists and other planning aids, help ensure pricing and merchandising compliance, complete store audits, and manage reorders, returns and claims. SAP offers solutions for execution both via the SAP Retail Execution mobile application as well as SAP Cloud for Sales Retail Execution.
Speaking of SAP Cloud for Sales Retail Execution, Nespresso will share how it is leveraging the SAP cloud solutions to improve brand experience, and understand and engage with its customers and consumers directly by supporting a holistic view of its customer base across all channels with SAP Cloud for Sales, including SAP Cloud for Sales Retail Execution, SAP Cloud for Marketing, SAP Cloud for Service, and SAP Cloud for Social Engagement solutions.
And, if you’re interested in more information on SAP Cloud for Sales in general, including potential applications for consumer products companies as well as integration the SAP ERP application, SAP will host another session describing how you can help your sales teams work more efficiently in the cloud and on premise by harnessing the power of prepackaged integration flows.
Another hot topic and key innovation area for SAP for Consumer Products is omni-channel management. Here, SAP will host a session to help consumer products companies understand how to move beyond traditional physical channels via an omni-channel strategy to reach, engage and serve the new always on consumer directly with hybris.
And, while the session will cover consumer products in addition to retail and wholesale distribution, SAP will also lead a discussion on creating a competitive advantage with a cloud-centric talent management business case with solutions from SuccessFactors, an SAP company. This discussion showcases a proven methodology for building a talent management case within consumer products, retail and wholesale distribution, including quantitative, qualitative, and strategic value levers.
Finally, if you also happen to be attending ASUG, Scotts Miracle Gro will share how it implemented SAP NetWeaver BW on SAP HANA in the cloud to simplify its current landscape, reduce costs, expand and accelerate available reporting, and deliver better insights on metrics and KPIs from daily POS data.
So, if you're looking for more information on cloud-based solutions for Consumer Products, look no further than SAPPHIRE June 3-5, 2014 in Orlando! For more information on these and other sessions at SAPPHIRE, please visit the SAPPHIRE agenda builer. We look forward to seeing you in Orlando!
