SAP to Help Retailers Improve Operations with new application

To help retailers better understand and act on consumer behavior in the fast changing retail market place, SAP AG has introduced a new retail data repository application, SAP Customer Activity Repository at its Retail Forum event. SAP Customer Activity Repository is intended to support retailers in becoming more customer-centric by bringing together customer, sales and inventory information from siloed applications.  A unified view of the customer shall help retailers drive consistent experiences across all channels and improve business efficiencies, profitability and brand perception.

SAP Customer Activity Repository aims to empower retailers with consumer insights by consolidating customer interactions from stores, online and mobile channels with insight from social media feedback.

Lori Mitchell-Keller, Global Head, Industry Business Unit Retail, SAP said, As consumers expand their shopping experiences across multiple purchase channels, retailers have an opportunity to engage more fully and provide more personal interactions. This is a daunting task, requiring access to multiple databases and tools. With SAP Customer Activity Repository, retailers will have access to powerful consumer insights, be able to centralize critical business data and run reports instantly, and make better business decisions that support both sales and the customer experience.

As the backbone of SAP Customer Activity Repository, it is intended to deliver lightning-fast insight at a user-determined level of detail, helping eliminate the time needed to handle multiple data transactions in the point-of-sale (POS) transaction log, other sales channels and reporting systems.

SAP Customer Activity Repository is intended to help retailers establish the foundational data that can be used to better understand customer demand and predict future buying behavior. Further, SAP plans to design better access to inventory levels, predictive models and analytics in the application for improved operational management.

General availability of SAP Customer Activity Repository is planned for the first quarter of 2014.