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InaGlaes
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
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Successfully deploy in as little as 11 weeks!


My name is Ina Glaes and this is the second blog about our newest, retail specific package SAP HANA Customer Activity Repository rapid-deployment solution. The first part gave you some more general information about the package and the covered components. This blog now goes one level deeper and gives you some more insights about some of the pre-defined analytics we deliver with the package. You can expect a third blog covering the remaining pre-defined analytics in a few weeks.


You may ask why we deliver pre-built analytics, given the fact that companies usually have their own concept and their very specific requirements regarding reporting if it’s about company logo or preferred colors and styles, used tools, displayed KPI’s and so on. So it’s not really possible to deliver a pre-built report, that will be accepted and used as it is. When talking about CAR, we are talking about a data foundation that collects sales data from different channels enriched with master data and inventory data. We are talking about a huge set of data with hidden nuggets inside. To find these nuggets, you have to understand the available data, the data structure and you need an idea where to dig.


Therefore we deliver additional HANA content and a visualization that allows a first look into the data pool. We are using several SAP BusinessObjects tools to allow a quick ROI and to have a starting point for further customer specific enhancements. Even if you want to use a different tool for visualization in your company, it could be a fast way to build a proof of concept system without creating a whole set of analytics from scratch – just using what’s pre-built and learn from there. Or you can reuse the additional virtual data models we built for the package for your own visualization.


Inventory Visibility:

Let’s take a closer look to the role of a store manager or district manager in a retail company. They generally have way too much to do in a day with key responsibilities being on the sales floor servicing customers and training staff. They also have to manage all aspects of store operations. Inventory is always a critical topic here – not enough inventory leads to out-of-stock situations that results in lost sales in the best case, in loss of customers in the worst case. On the other side, having too high reserve is also not the answer, because this also ties up more capital. And even today, with all the technology in place, it’s difficult to understand the real inventory level in the store, especially during a day. When encountering an issue they need to be able to quickly navigate to detailed information to determine specific drivers of issues. This means that they might need to see all the way down to by product, by store, by day data. But wouldn’t it be even better if you would know the issue or at least a potential issue in advance?

Real-time mobile access of current inventories by store will greatly improve in-stock position by better anticipating potential issues. Let’s see what the „real-time stock snapshot“ can provide here.


The store manager/district manager logs on to the system, either on a PC or a mobile device and opens the webi report. From the initial parameter screen the user sets the filter criteria to their needs (e.g. expected days coverage value, store and safety stock status). The report shows the Top 20 articles in critical situation based upon very low or no days of coverage (note the report can also be viewed for 20 articles based upon highest days coverage). The report has an imbedded image of all the items for quick reference (only available for the web version). In addition to the current stock, there are several more inventory KPIs like unprocessed sales and in-transit stock providing a clear picture of the unit inventory situation. To get more information about a particular item of the 20 the store manager can click the article number and it will hyperlink to another Webi view called the Article Details Report.



This report shows the selected item’s stock quantity along with the stock value and several additional KPIs. There are two links from this report (Inventory Explorer Report, POS Sales Report) to provide a guided analysis to more detail, down to the actual transactional level.


In order to enable drill-down into the lowest level of detail and to support mobile ad hoc analysis, the CAR RDS includes an Explorer Info Space and a pre-built exploration view. Inventory Explorer view is a composite view filtered for a particular article exposing several KPIs. Hitting the Explore button exposes all of the power of Explorer web and mobile against the SAP Customer Activity Repository HANA repository.


Let me summarize. This rapid-deployment solution delivers not only pre-configuration, but also pre-built analytics, and I showed you here some examples for Inventory Visibility. Stay tuned for the next blog to learn more about the golden nuggets in the ocean of customer data.


Please also take a few minutes to check the following video featuring Lori Mitchell-Keller, Head of Global Retail Industry Business Unit, talking about SAP Customer Activity Repository and the related package.

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