Retail and eCommerce

Retail industry encompasses small businesses and chain stores of all sizes. These businesses sell consumer products directly to individual consumers. Within retail, there is extensive classification, depending on the specialty or type of retailer. Segmentation may be by product being retailed (ex: apparel, furniture, electronics, grocery etc.) or channel of distribution (ex: supermarkets, convenience stores, specialty stores etc.).

In U.S, retail jobs are the most common occupation, as per Census.gov, with approximately 7% of U.S population employed in retail frontline operation. Conventional brick and mortar format of retail has been disrupted in the 21st century by the rise of electronic commerce, popularly known as ecommerce.

Ecommerce takes buying and selling of products and services online, thereby significantly disrupting the traditional retail model. Due to the increasing adoption of ecommerce in end consumers, which exploded exponentially during the pandemic, traditional retailers are increasingly adopting the ecommerce model and hence creating an omnichannel strategy.

Technology in Retail and Ecommerce

Retail industry encompasses small businesses and chain stores of all sizes. These businesses sell consumer products directly to individual consumers. Within retail, there is extensive classification, depending on the specialty or type of retailer. Segmentation may be by product being retailed (ex: apparel, furniture, electronics, grocery etc.) or channel of distribution (ex: supermarkets, convenience stores, specialty stores etc.).

In U.S, retail jobs are the most common occupation, as per Census.gov, with approximately 7% of U.S population employed in retail frontline operation. Conventional brick and mortar format of retail has been disrupted in the 21st century by the rise of electronic commerce, popularly known as ecommerce.

Ecommerce takes buying and selling of products and services online, thereby significantly disrupting the traditional retail model. Due to the increasing adoption of ecommerce in end consumers, which exploded exponentially during the pandemic, traditional retailers are increasingly adopting the ecommerce model and hence creating an omnichannel strategy.

Technology in Retail and Ecommerce

While ecommerce is entirely a product of technology, retail industry has not been a stranger to technology either. Likes of Walmart leveraged technology decades ago to build business models that destroyed competitors like K-mart. Technology plays a key role in retail value chain, from core supply chain activities ranging from inbound logistics to last mile delivery, to support activities like procurement, marketing, financial planning, people and resource management, merchandizing, assortment planning etc. On the ecommerce side, in addition to the platforms that support ecommerce and the supply chain components, technology adds value in areas like web analytics, assortment planning, personalization, recommendations etc.

SAP has a rich portfolio of solutions that support retail and ecommerce, branded as omnichannel retail. While its SAP S/4HANA product has customized retail industry features, like merchandize management, a plethora of other technologies like SAP intelligent returns management, SAP commerce cloud, SAP Ariba, SAP CX etc. support key omnichannel retail operations like marketing and customer experience, merchandizing, sourcing, and procurement, financial planning, omnichannel retail and store operations. SAP partner ecosystem also has a rich portfolio of partners like DataXstream, which helps retailers and wholesalers develop robust omnichannel capabilities. 

Key Considerations for SAPinsiders

This article shares how Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) launched a transformation initiative designed to modernize the company’s core business processes to give employees better access to data in real-time at all levels of the organization. The initiative began as a program to replace its custom legacy ERP system with SAP S/4HANA at its 9,000 stores worldwide but soon turned into a full-scale transformation of WBA’s business.

This article discusses how breakthrough beverages expedited the transformation of its distribution operations leveraging ecommerce and SAP technology. Breakthrough was able to move fast and adapt to changing demand patterns because of end-to-end SAP Commerce Cloud and SAP Customer Data Cloud solutions, as well as SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) for ERP, which has helped them tremendously in meeting customer demand.