Accurate and Reliable Retail Data​: SAP Omnichannel Sales Transfer and Audit

Retail sales audits, as painful as they can be, are important to ensure right practices are followed in order to maximize retail operations efficiencies. Simply said, a POS sales audit looks at every facet of the transaction from start to finish. In retail operations, streamlining sales posts into finance backend systems and other consuming apps is critical. Point-of-sale (POS) systems are still the first point of contact for customers and the backbone of retail. Millions of transactions are conducted every day, offering a wealth of information about customer shopping habits, promotions, and payment methods, among other things. When dealing with POS data, there are four critical aspects to keep in mind:

• For instance, when dealing with such a large and diversified set of data, processing errors are inescapable, and they might result in inaccurate updates and ineffective decision-making. Mislabeling or cashier errors might result in incorrect inventory levels. Inaccurate inventory levels result in classic “out of stock” problems when sales are not recorded.
• Second, and this may sound antique, but sales transaction duplication is a big source of erroneous records. It is common for POS systems to simply resend data that has been dropped in the middle of the transfer process, resulting in the described dilemma.
• The third key difficulty is that the amount of data acquired is typically not stored consistently in one spot and hence is ineffective. Many retailers aggregate their data, resulting in the loss of useful information. Granular data is frequently available for only a few months at a time.
• Fourth: Traditional POS terminals with POS sales auditing are still in use today, but new business models that demand similar functionality are emerging. The data created by Scan & Go programs, as well as cashierless checkout apps, must be communicated to backend systems such as SAP S/4HANA, in order for the transactions to be completed. To guarantee that the correct inventory and financial records for a location are updated, these transactions should not be treated as “conventional” orders but rather as POS transactions.

SAP has a lot of experience with POS sales auditing. We have a long history of success, extending back to the release of SAP POS Data Management, SAP Customer Activity Repository, and now SAP Omnichannel Sales Transfer and Audit. SAP Omnichannel Sales Transfer and Audit, a public cloud solution that tackles the above-mentioned difficulties, focuses primarily on the sales audit component. SAP Omnichannel Sales Transfer and Audit consists of the following components:

• Sales data transfer and auditing across all channels
• Based on past mistake modeling, an automated corrective process is implemented
• A centralized store for validated transactional data, both current and historical
• Workflows for resolving inconsistencies in collaboration
• Support for near-real-time inventory tracking in retail locations
• Dashboards and analytics that are built into the application

SAP Omnichannel Sales Transfer and Audit assists you in increasing customer satisfaction by providing the data essential for laser-focused assortment development. Additional benefits include:

• Errors and regulatory disparities were decreased by making error-resolution recommendations based on historical data.
• Automation and guided exception management have enhanced labor productivity.
• Improved inventory accuracy with real-time visibility into product sales across all channels
• More secure data and privacy-compliant sales audit processes

Overall, SAP Omnichannel Sales Transfer and Audit converts raw sales transactions into valuable validated data through an automatic self-correction approach that is completely connected into the SAP S/4HANA backend. Given that businesses are growing more omnichannel, it is critical that sales data be reliable and that data errors be kept to a bare minimum. Sales auditing should be viewed as a tool for improving a retail company’s overall performance.

Check out the SAP Omnichannel Sales Transfer and Audit Overview Demo.

For additional details, please visit our Help Portal for SAP Omnichannel Sales Transfer and Audit.