Transform your visits to Win at the shelf with Retail Execution in SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer
Originally coined by the CPG industry, retail execution processes help perform field activities in a structured manner. SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer introduced retail execution capabilities in August 2013 with continuous innovations thereafter with every release. From the initial launch we have observed the adoption of this functionality across multiple industries especially for execution oriented sales teams, who visit customers on a regular basis to gather information, perform a guided set of activities and are on the lookout for opportunities to sell more. The core objectives of a retail execution solution are to maximize sales and enhance brand value, with insights and visibility starting from a key account level, all the way to a point of sale, and further to the shelf or any other point of contact with the end consumer. The insights help understand the overall effectiveness of the store including inventory situation or out-of-stock data, the positioning of the brand at the point of sale and effectiveness of marketing initiatives, while continuing to optimize the productivity of the merchandiser or pre-seller. This enables further actions such as better forecasting, negotiating the right contract with the retailers and planning the right promotions and in-store activities. Let us look at how SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer enables each of the elements of the retail execution process, while keeping the overall TCO at check.
Plan and Perform your Visits Efficiently
In Cloud for Customer, the entire retail execution process is centered on a visit, which the sales user performs at the customer site or any other location. These visits can be planned in advance using route planning or created ad-hoc as needed. Route planning includes a proposal of the accounts that should be visited and provides various views such as the map, with driving route, and calendar to help with improved planning. During execution, each visit is time stamped and geo-location stamped during its start and finish via the check-in / check-out actions, enabling sales managers to drive process optimization and adherence. The users can access the Account 360 as well, as part of the preparation for the visit. The visibility into marketing initiatives is provided via a campaign view and a promotion calendar. The promotions can either be downloaded from SAP CRM or defined within the solution. Users can also view pending invoices and create a payment during the visit against one or many open invoices. Additionally, users can report any service relevant issues by creating a follow-up service ticket from the visit itself. Overall, the visit feature provides a single point of access to all merchandizing and pre-selling activities enabling efficient execution.
Improve Merchandizing Effectiveness
Merchandizing primarily involves the execution of in-store activities, such as store checks, planogram check, competitor audits, etc. In Cloud for Customer, for each visit, there are tasks and surveys proposed via a sophisticated activity planning and routing engine, which provides a high level of flexibility in determining which tasks and surveys need to be performed during the visit and how often, based on the attributes of the store and of the visit itself. Surveys can either be simple checklists or complex product surveys for in-store audits, where products are dynamically determined, or competitor product surveys to help capture intelligence around competitor sales. With its dynamic behavior, optimized usability, weighted scoring, quick image capture and real-time reporting, surveys make a great tool for collecting field data and deriving actionable insights. In the recent POI retail execution vendor panorama, SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer has been given the distinction of being a best-in-class solution in merchandizing.
Sell Better
Selling, in the context of retail execution, primarily refers to the ordering process, which is expected to be quick and efficient as the pre-seller is typically expected to spend more time negotiating the order rather than entering it. In Cloud for Customer, to enable the selling process, sales orders, quotes and opportunities can be created as part of the visit. This makes the process applicable for a variety of industries including typical B2B engagements. In order to help improve the user productivity, the order/quote entry process is supplemented with a quick add view to help add multiple products into an order with relative ease. With automatic proposals of order items based on listings, access to promoted products, past orders and an in-built barcode scanner, the order process offers numerous options and immense flexibility. The tight integration into SAP ERP enables users to get exact prices, ATP information, product substitutions and near real time order confirmation.
Mobilize your merchandizers and pre-sellers
Moving from functional to a technical perspective, retail execution is primarily afield activity which automatically implies that it needs to be mobile, available offline and easy-to-use. Cloud for Customer has invested heavily, and is continuing the same in each of these areas. The solution provides a standard responsive mobile application which is generally available for tablets – iOS, Android and Windows – and will be soon available on the smartphones on the same platforms. The functionality is available offline to be able to complete merchandizing and pre-selling activities (including basic offline pricing) in a disconnected environment, with more granular capabilities being added in every release. It is also important to note that most key processes are provided in a configurable manner reducing the need for custom development. The offline mobile application is metadata driven eliminating the need for any customer specific client development. This helps relatively faster implementation and easier app upgrades, thereby enabling users to quickly leverage the continuous innovations being released.
Derive Actionable Insights
Retail execution in Cloud for Customer leverages the embedded real-time analytical framework and provides standard content to derive insights. Managers can assess the effectiveness of their sales force using visit completion reports and the average duration of each visit, along with the details of tasks and surveys performed in each visit. Survey reporting helps derive insights into the data collected in the store, such as out-of-stock information, promotion compliance, price compliance, store scores, etc. Order reporting provides insights into revenue trends, top selling products and promotion effectiveness. Refer to previous blogs on the analytics in Cloud for Customer to get more insights on working with analytical content.
Retail execution continues to be a key focus area for Cloud for Customer with a strong roadmap and investment. We are entering an exciting phase in the lifecycle of the solution with many innovations lined up such as an image recognition based planogram check, a holistic visual assessment and scoring of store, an improved ordering experience with suggested orders, enhanced offline functionality including pricing, and superior productivity using geo-location, image intelligence and voice based interactions.
Hope this blog helped provide a high level view into retail execution in SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer. Look out in the coming weeks for more detailed blogs on most of the listed areas and let us know your thoughts.
Next blogs in this series
Gain more insights into planning your visits in the blog on how to Plan and Drive Targeted Activities for Consistent, Optimized Retail Execution by Arthur Chen
Learn about our feature rich survey functionality in the blog on Answering pertinent business questions – SAP Hybris C4C surveys by Ashwini Kumar Dalai
Experience our ordering features in the blog on how to Enable the end game in retail execution with a simple and expeditious order process by Preeti Padiyar
Take a look at our recent solution video! SAP Hybris Cloud for Sales | Transform Retail Execution to Create the Perfect Store – YouTube
Few Useful Links:
Refer to the extended edition guide at https://help.sap.com/cloud4customer to get an overview of the mobile and offline features
Refer to the blog on analytics at http://scn.sap.com/community/cloud-for-customer/blog/2016/05/20/derive-business-insights-using-c4c-analytics
Click here to view the solution launch video: http://www.sap.com/asset/detail.2013-10-oct.sap-cloud-for-sales-retail-execution-product-overview-mp4.html
Check out a video by one of our partners, Baseliner, on retail execution in Cloud for Customer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxiE98fRQLA
Well Done Sebastine !!! The best overview on CçC Rex capabilities I had seen so far. this is everything I need when I want to present C4C REx to a customer. 🙂 !
Thank you Sebastine for this article!
It provides a clear picture of the C4C ReX capabilities and value of the features!
I will share this link with our C4C community! 🙂
Silvia
Thank you Silvia. Every week we are releasing a blog covering some key functionality in C4C. For this month, you will see blogs around REX.
Thanks Sebastine.
Great article which showcases the evolution of C4C Rex to what is now undoubtedly a first choice product for many industries looking to maximise the ROI from their visits orientated sales teams. Stand out features are its ease of use, greater accountability and insight plus the upcoming enhanced functionalities mentioned.
Would be another plus, if not just here in the Rex arena but also in C4C Sales, if the ATP could be enhanced to include a confirmed delivery date, in additon to the ATP delivery date, based on forward scheduling for products unavailable on the customers required delivery date. This would be useful in B2B scenarios where a guaranteed delivery date could be provided to end customers for products currently unavailable or only partially available on the customers required date.
Thanks again for a great article!
Majid
Thanks Majid!
Regarding your query, I would request Guenter Wilmer to provide more inputs.
Thanks,
Sebastine
Hi Sebastine
Thanks for these details.
I have added this suggestion to the SAP Ideas Place.
Regards
Majid
Hi Sebastine,
This is a very good article. My company is on the CPG industry and from this article I can see that you have everything covered to optimize the usage of the app. from surveys, analytics etc. I am wondering if you have some documentation that I can use to ensure that I am using the App in the best way for my industry. I have some inquiries in surveys creation and some other questions for the dashboards, KPIs, Scorecards and reports portion. Maybe there are some standard functions or reports that I don't know they are available.
Please advise.
Regards,
Joaquín Jiménez
hi Joaquin,
Good to know that this article was useful. From a best practice standpoint, the recommendation always is to stick to standard as far as possible. Regarding your questions around configuring surveys, there is a good amount of documentation in the Administrator Guide on http://help.sap.com/cloud4customer
You could search for the term "retail execution" to get all details on configuring visits and designing surveys. Specific to Survey design, you could direct your questions to Ashwini Kumar Dalai
Regarding dashboards/KPIs/Reports, we have a few pre-delivered reports on Planned vd Complete Visit, Visit Survey reports for completion rate, price and discount information, etc. However, the pre-delivered reports are few since most companies have their own reporting needs. Hence, a comprehensive set of data sources are provided which cover visits, activities, surveys, orders, promotions, etc. You could leverage these data sources to easily create the reports that you need. For more information on creating reports refer to the blog link mentioned in the section "Few Helpful Links".
Thanks,
Sebastine
Hi Sebastine, Thanks for the suggestions. I have looked into the Administrator Guide but I will put special attention to the Retail Execution term in the document and will contact Ashwini if necessary. Regarding the dashboards, KPIs, and Reports I am looking into the “SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer Business Analytics Guide” that is posted in the following link: https://cp.hana.ondemand.com/dps/d/preview/cab8d3fba22647dea4f6f162f38bd519/1608/en-US/frameset.html?3fa6791c037044a2b8f820c7a3582cc1.html In regards the pre-delivered reports, do I need to merge/combine the two separate reports (Planned and Completed Visits) or there is a standard pre-delivered report that compares plan vs. actual? Finally, I am refereeing to the “Few Helpful Links” as you suggested. Thanks, Joaquín Jiménez
Thank you Sebastine for the blog!
May i ask if the scanner feature already available in smartphone? I cannot find the scanner in my iPhone C4C app.
Thanks.
Regina
Thanks for your Blog.
Do you Know if is it is posible to see the picture on the product list selection  used in extended edition? There are limitations in platforms ?
If its not can I achive it? is there any roadmap previsión for this?
Thank you very much
Marga Ribes