Every business comes with its own challenges and goals 鈥� that鈥檚 why 51风流S/4HANA Cloud is not implemented with a one-size-fits-all approach.

However, with the design authority service, companies can ensure the implemented solution is scalable, flexible, and aligned with the unique business strategy of each customer. The strategic service from 51风流can support critical design decisions that can result in a smooth implementation and maximize the value of the cloud ERP.

Understanding the Value of Design Authority

The design authority service can provide a structured framework for decision-making, risk management, and quality assurance throughout the transition process.

One of the key advantages is establishing a design review board 鈥� a space where design decisions are rigorously evaluated and challenged. Every decision is aligned with clearly defined goals so the business can identify risks early in the process, avoid performance bottlenecks, and integrate all systems 鈥� from 51风流to third-party solutions 鈥� reliably.

In return, organizations can confidently transition and optimize the value of the cloud ERP over the long term with:

• Commitment, where 51风流experts immerse themselves in the organization鈥檚 challenges and situations 
• Ownership that leads to accountability for decisions and outcomes
• Responsibility for delivering consistent reliability and dependability when completing tasks and fulfilling commitments

The service spans across their entire transition effort, providing:

• Design oversight: The implementation of 51风流S/4HANA Cloud is aligned with the organization鈥檚 strategic goals and business requirements based on a thorough review and approval of design proposals, architecture diagrams, and technical specifications.
• Standards and best practices: Consistency, reliability, and maintainability of the system design and development are prioritized across different projects and teams.
• Risk management: 51风流solution architects assess and mitigate risks associated with 51风流design decisions, considering scalability, security, performance, and compliance with industry regulations.
• Collaboration: Close collaboration of various stakeholders 鈥� including business users, project managers, architects, developers, and IT operations teams 鈥� helps ensure 51风流S/4HANA Cloud meets business needs and technical requirements.
• Quality assurance: Appropriate testing, validation, and documentation are carried out throughout the development lifecycle.
• Continuous improvement: Monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of 51风流design approaches and practices enables the identification of improvement areas and implementation of changes as necessary to help optimize performance, efficiency, and innovation.

Tailoring the Journey 鈥� Greenfield, Brownfield, and Everything in Between

A well-planned implementation and careful management are critical to the success of an optimized investment in 51风流S/4HANA Cloud. For that reason, one of the first decisions organizations must make when transitioning to 51风流S/4HANA Cloud is choosing the right implementation strategy.

During this early phase, organizations need the flexibility to choose between a more technical conversion (brownfield) or a fully cloud transition (greenfield) that allows them to rethink their process landscape completely. But more importantly, they should also be able to explore a broad range of options between those two extremes. They include shell conversions with a larger volume of reused processes and a mix-and-match strategy with a high level of process redesign.

The design authority service can be pivotal in guiding customers toward the best path for their unique circumstances. Tailoring the journey to a company鈥檚 specific conditions and needs helps ensure the adoption of the right technologies and the fast creation of business processes for the future.

Take, for example, a large multinational enterprise that recently transitioned to 51风流S/4HANA Cloud. Faced with an aging legacy system and complex business processes across multiple regions, the company relied on SAP鈥檚 design authority service to choose a hybrid strategy. By combining elements of both greenfield and brownfield approaches, the company could streamline operations while maintaining critical legacy functions.

Creating a Best-in-Class Design

Once the journey is chosen, the design authority service helps organizations consider several critical factors early in the transition initiative to help ensure the cloud ERP is scalable and flexible enough to grow alongside the business.

One crucial consideration is adherence to 51风流standards and best practices. When organizations deviate too much from standard functionalities, they expose themselves to increased costs and complexity. By closely following 51风流guidelines, companies can enjoy smoother upgrades and integration with other 51风流and third-party systems while enhancing overall efficiency and reducing operational risks with a clean core.

By seeking this guidance from the service鈥檚 experts well before the transition, organizations can proactively address 鈥� and remove 鈥� design-related performance bottlenecks.

For instance, 51风流and third-party systems can be integrated to deliver a continuous flow of data and processes, which is critical for long-term performance. Systems can be arranged to work together harmoniously and provide accurate, timely data across the enterprise.

Even after going live, the 51风流team monitors and evaluates the solution鈥檚 effectiveness, making necessary adjustments to optimize performance. This can lead to an implementation of 51风流S/4HANA Cloud that remains relevant and efficient as business needs evolve.

Additionally, organizations are also kept informed about future standard functionalities. By staying current on SAP鈥檚 future developments, they can make better strategic decisions and plan their IT investments wisely. Moreover, future capabilities are better aligned, keeping 51风流solutions relevant and effective as new features and updates are released.

Catalyzing Meaningful Transformation

51风流S/4HANA Cloud is designed to be a living system that evolves and scales as business needs change and new technologies become available. With the technology, businesses, and industry expertise that the design authority service offers, organizations can be sure that their cloud ERP solution will continue to deliver the capabilities they need to stay competitive in an ever-changing landscape.

Want to learn more about the design authority service from SAP? Check out the .

Dirk Dreisbach is chief business enterprise consultant for BTS Consumer Products and Retail Industries for 51风流Germany.
Alexander Klammrodt is premium engagements lead for 51风流Switzerland.

But when costs and inflation increase, such promotions become particularly valuable, relieving consumers’ wallets while maintaining competitiveness and fostering lasting customer loyalty. The approach is then narrowed down to short-term price reductions 鈥� where regular shelf prices of selected items or entire shopping baskets are significantly marked down for a predefined campaign period complemented by extensive advertising.

Understand the True Purpose and Impact

Thanks to product designers and managers in the consumer products industry and those responsible for grocery retail marketing, many different promotion types have emerged in recent years. Even though there is a high number of variants and different mixed forms, promotions can be broadly categorized into three main types:

• Filling up (household) stock encourages higher-than-normal purchase quantities for each shopping trip by offering multipacks, product bundles, larger packaging sizes, and refills.
• First-time purchases compel consumers to try new or alternative products with trial sizes that feature smaller quantities than the standard product.
• Traditional price-off offers promote a standard size product at a discounted price for a specific period with the support of a marketing campaign. They can be combined with other promotion types, including product bundles and multipacks.

Close Interactions and Dependencies

If you look at the range of products advertised through promotions, it’s clear that branded products dominate leaflets, online offers, and flyers distributed by large grocery retail chains. In fact, the proportion of promotions with branded products often reaches 90% or more in many established markets.

Considering these factors, consumer goods companies and grocery retailers must cooperate up to a certain level. Grocery retailers benefit from established brands because they can help ensure a broad group of consumers will notice the advertising and perceive promotional items as attractive. Consumer products companies, in turn, need grocery retailers to place new products at the point of sale and secure a competitive position for their core brands.

Although both consumer goods companies and grocery retailers are interested in the success of jointly planned promotions, their actual objectives differ significantly. While retail companies are primarily running promotional campaigns to increase visit or purchase frequency and optimize cross-selling initiatives, consumer goods producers usually view expanding or securing market share as their primary goal.

Acknowledge the Importance of Technology

Given the critical nature of promotions, the right technology can help consumer products companies and grocery retailers realize mutually beneficial and optimized outcomes to increase their share of wallet, margin, and overall revenue. For example, technology can help streamline the promotion process, improve planning and execution, and measure campaign effectiveness.

Working with leading consumer products companies and grocery retailers worldwide, 51风流developed and continues to update a portfolio of solutions that can address market requirements, business challenges, and ever-evolving needs and expectations.

Price Promotions Solutions for Grocery Retail

Retailers using 51风流solutions are well-equipped to be able to address complex challenges in the promotion management process. They can increase inventory turnover and reduce food waste by leveraging real-time, data-driven insights into the evolving market landscape, supporting the promotion process, and driving smooth, error-free interactions.

With the 51风流Promotion Management application, which is part of , retailers can plan, manage, and analyze their promotional events. The application helps streamline their promotion processes, access real-time data, and accurately evaluate results. In addition, it can gather data and integrate with the demand data foundation module of 51风流Customer Activity Repository to help drive data integrity across multiple applications.

Retailers can use enhanced planning capabilities from 51风流Customer Activity Repository to help optimize promotion effectiveness and profitability. They can create coupons, define promotional advertising vehicles, specify promotional offers by location and language, and manage promotions by type, tactic, and incentives. Furthermore, they can exchange data across various 51风流applications and support what-if simulations to help identify scenarios predicted to yield the best financial performance.

Additional capabilities that further complement the promotion process in grocery retail include:

• Omnichannel price and promotion service that can enable retailers to enhance the shopping experience with consistent pricing across all sales channels.
• Retail promotion analytics that can provide valuable data-driven insights to help guide future decision-making and promotion optimization strategies.

Price Promotions Solutions for Consumer Products Companies

For consumer products companies, 51风流solutions help support promotion management and trade spend, which, in total, comprise the majority of business revenue. They can provide a tailored approach to promotion planning, execution, and control 鈥� enabling increased focus on revenue, volume, and profitability for themselves and their retail partners. Modern analytics capabilities are also included, such as statistical forecasting, optimization, post-evaluation, and innovative machine learning tools.

Take, for example, the solution. It can facilitate the design of promotional plans, fund management, and claims settlement while offering performance analysis to help gauge the effectiveness of trade promotions.

The solution can allow businesses to shift their focus from short-term measures of promotion effectiveness to longer-term, mutually defined targets, including category growth, sustainable volume growth, and margin growth. Additionally, it can empower sales leaders to sense and predict potential risks to revenue, volume, and profitability in real time, align their strategies with retailers鈥� broader business objectives, and make fact-based decisions for activities best aligned with targets.

Unlock the Full Potential of Every Promotion

In today鈥檚 competitive landscape, the ability to decode and master promotions is a strategic imperative. With the right technology and solutions in place, consumer product companies and grocery retailers can unlock the full potential of their promotions, driving revenue, enhancing margins, and securing their place in the market.

Dirk Dreisbach is chief business enterprise consultant for Business Transformation Services, Consumer Products and Retail Industries at SAP.
Dmitry Melnik is a vice president at SAP.

The answer comes down to having the right enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Large volumes of data must be handled to proactively recognize shopping habits, make the right decisions about the size and selection of assortments, and streamline processes end to end. Or more succinctly, you need the tools to do everything it takes to satisfy customer needs consistently, strategically, and intelligently.

By modernizing the ERP foundation, you can gain an extraordinary advantage when taking on three industry trends that can be critical to long-term resilience against expanding competitors and the ability to wow every customer.

Capture Customer Interest with the Right Assortment

Grocery retailers constantly ask themselves how to attract customers, keep them, and service them cost-effectively. The key is understanding the many questions that run through shoppers鈥� minds before, during, and after they visit the physical store or e-commerce site.

Most grocers try to capture some of this information through membership or loyalty card programs. But making sense of this information to guide customers along their journey through every aisle requires a modern ERP with embedded analytics, visualizations, and capabilities that connect the ERP system to business and point-of-sale applications. In return, you gain a 360-degree view of each customer while managing your subscription program, an increasing set of receivables, complex pricing, and product bundle offers.

Stand Out with Unique Customer Value

With traditional and nontraditional competitors expanding into new regions and market areas, differentiation strategies naturally move up on the list of business priorities. But standing out among mom-and-pop stores, discount and exclusive retailers, large national chains, and digital retailers is becoming increasingly challenging without the visibility and foresight to plan production capacity, source materials, and manage logistics and inventory in real time.

The key to navigating the increasingly crowded market space is pulling together a comprehensive physical inventory movement overview to help detect slow-moving and unprofitable items and manage master data. With a modern ERP, you can integrate a wide selection of solutions into a single source of truth to help analyze sales performance and trends, optimize the assortment structure, and source the right products for each season. In addition, a universal journal can be created to set the foundation for simplified data structures and deeper insights into your SKU portfolio.

Seize the Moment with Omnichannel Strategies

The concept of e-tailing has gained interest among grocery retailers. Although customers prefer to shop for food weekly in brick-and-mortar stores, the fact that more people are buying perishable goods online indicates where the industry is heading in the future.

A modern ERP can help grocers prepare for this trend by connecting to sources of information such as SKUs, prices, and availability by store and distribution center. The technology creates a framework to keep the e-commerce site and mobile app up-to-date to prevent stock-outs. In addition, management can define quality parameters for choosing fresh produce, help ensure SKU availability, and coordinate order fulfillment and delivery.

Ready to Shape the Future of Your Grocery Retail Business?

For a more in-depth look at how you can apply these three trends with our modern ERP, the 51风流S/4HANA Retail solution, read the three-part blog series, 鈥�.鈥�

Dirk Dreisbach is chief business enterprise consultant for BTS Consumer Products and Retail Industries at 51风流Germany.
Dmitry Melnik is global vice president for 51风流S/4HANA at SAP.

Retailers are also quickly approaching their own tipping point for sustainable action. In response to customer, stakeholder, and government expectations for 鈥済reen鈥� brands, they must take immediate sustainable action to not only improve their bottom line and respond to disruption with resilience, but also help ensure their future survival. Even retail brands with long-initiated sustainability programs to become eco-friendly and socially accountable need continuous reviews and adjustments of their activities.

Time is running short for achieving meaningful environmental, social, and governance (ESG) outcomes. Retailers ultimately have a choice: rethink their sustainability strategy completely or face the risk of ceasing to exist. By integrating sustainability into their corporate DNA, retailers can better navigate their own fast-approaching tipping points while performing than those that do not.

Kick Off a New Era for Green Retailing

Retail companies focusing on sustainability and circular business models can tap into a US$4.5 trillion global market. By leaving behind the 鈥渢ake, make, and dispose鈥� attitude to embrace 鈥渢ake, make, and reuse鈥� business models, they can enter the circular economy as a promising alternative to refine current strategies.

In the fashion segment alone,听 revealed that 67% of consumers consider the use of sustainable materials as an important purchasing factor and 63% view a brand’s promotion of sustainability the same way. German and UK consumers also buy 听that last longer and consciously eat less meat and more sustainable food choices. And overall,听听of consumers prefer to purchase from companies that are transparent in their sourcing practices and employee equity and fairness.

Even if emissions and water consumption within stores and distribution channels are low compared to industries such as oil and gas and mining, retailers have a more profound impact on the entire value chain. reported that fashion brands contribute approximately 4% of all greenhouse gases worldwide while recycling less than 1% of discarded garments and sending 87% of materials to a landfill or to be burned. Other retail segments, including grocery, furniture, drugstores, and DIY, are also relying on natural resources and accelerating, for instance, the deforestation of the rainforest and the overexploitation of scarce raw materials.

Additionally, retailers worldwide must take further steps to demonstrate social responsibility within their workforce and the workers involved in their value chain. Based on SAP鈥檚 experience, the average number of employees involved in the early stages of a supply chain 鈥� for example, farming and production 鈥� are significantly higher than that in warehouses, transportation services, sales departments, or central headquarters.

The importance of social responsibility and associated regulatory requirements are only growing. The European Commission has even drafted a proposal for a , introducing new business obligations regarding human rights and existing and potential adverse environmental impacts.

Break Down a Massive Challenge with Key Goals

Sustainability is unquestionably a challenge that encompasses all areas of the retail business and requires the entire industry’s attention. However, the topic can be easier to approach with a strategy that breaks down all related activities into four critical goals:

1. Zero Emissions with Climate Action

With strategies that seek to decrease the environmental footprint of products offered and limit emissions along the value chain and core processes, retailers can take on initiatives that control their impact on the planet.

Retailers can control the CO₂ output of a specific product, finance rainforest reforestation, and prioritize the selection of green suppliers based on predefined ratings. The carbon footprint at the store and distribution level can be further reduced with initiatives that optimize production, transportation, and logistics operations.

2. Zero Waste with the Circular Economy

By setting up a circular economy model for all, or at least most, products sold, resources should, ideally, be conserved, recycled, and fed back into production and consumption cycles. These activities include designing reusable products, reducing packaging, avoiding waste during consumption, and opening production lines for recycled materials. And steadily, the resell and rental markets are gaining more interest as a major part of a sustainable business model, especially in the fashion industry.

Working toward zero waste provides considerable growth potential. This opportunity is particularly advantageous for , where between one-third and one-half of all goods produced is lost worldwide along the complete food chain. Suppliers, stores, and consumers waste 45% of fruits and vegetables, 35% of fish and seafood, 30% of cereals, and 20% of meat and dairy products annually.

3. Zero Inequality with Social Responsibility

Retail companies that take their social responsibility seriously initiate projects that promote gender equality and eliminate societal injustices in all aspects of their business. Such efforts may establish an equivalent share of female and male managers, close existing payment gaps, support the inclusion of disabled workers, and foster equal treatment of all employees regardless of origin and religious views.

On the operational level, zero inequality also means protecting the workforce in warehousing, transportation, and sales. Increasingly, retailers welcome the idea of extending their responsibility along the entire value chain 鈥� encouraging upstream and downstream suppliers and subcontractors to comply with globally and legally accepted social standards.

4. Holistic Steering and Reporting

Retailers can devise an aligned and executable sustainability strategy by understanding these dimensions. However, they must also measure their efforts effectively to steer and achieve expected outcomes.

A state-of-the-art 听can help businesses evaluate whether long-term projects are heading in the right direction and when predetermined goals are reached. The system provides the transparency necessary to grasp how sustainability initiatives are connected across operational, financial, social, and environmental implications. Even if environmental goals are honorable and meet societal and regulatory pressures, they must be financially viable in the end, too.

Infuse Sustainability along the Complete Value Chain

Using this strategy to observe, question, and act purposefully on the many dimensions of sustainability, leading retail companies are working closely together with 51风流to develop effective environmental approaches and practice them. They are aligning and executing their efforts in ways that positively change how they do business, remain competitive, and expand their impact transparently.

51风流customers have helped develop new solutions 鈥� such as the 51风流Intelligent Returns Management solution 鈥� and upgrade existing ones with new functionalities. And in some cases, they contributed their own ideas and help deliver co-innovations 鈥� for example, the solution. And such investments of time and ingenuity have proven to pay off: 91% of the greenest retailers in the world run 51风流solutions, according to .

Whether developing products or selling offerings from other vendors in physical or e-commerce stores, retailers have a wide variety of business areas that play a critical role in their journey to become sustainable enterprises, including:

• Merchandising and marketing: Introduce reselling and rental platforms that allow customers to take advantage of subscription, pay-for-use, or sharing models.
• 笔谤辞肠耻谤别尘别苍迟:听Track suppliers to help ensure materials are recyclable and sourced ethically without human rights violations, wasteful production practices, and damage to the environment.
• Manufacturing: Focus on efficient resource consumption and scale operations to support a make-to-order business model to meet demand while maintaining worker safety as a priority.
• Supply chain: Leverage demand-driven planning and intelligent forecasting to reduce loss prevention through less shelf waste and decrease emissions and costs with optimized transportation and logistics processes.
• Customer experience:听Make the carbon footprint and origin of products more visible to customers throughout the buying journey.
• Employee experience: Meet expectations for equal pay and fair jobs鈥� and foster skills for the future of work 鈥� all with a focus on diversity and inclusion.
• Financial compliance reporting鈥�: Visualize revenues and costs gained by improving the value chain’s sustainable behavior.
• Real estate management:听Consider how stores and distribution centers consume energy to maintain and preserve stock and choose technologies that can improve their practices.

It’s clear how the introduction of even just one new customer or business requirement requires various business functions to work hand in hand to achieve a sustainable and profitable outcome. Retailers need to stay up-to-date on how every organization 鈥� from design and production to product management 鈥� affects emissions, waste, and equality as pressure around sustainability and transparency grows stronger.

With solutions that support re-commerce planning, , and , they can leverage an overarching strategy based on the guiding principles of long-term success as green brands.

Find the Right Partner to Move Forward

This is not the time for retailers to invest in small, focused sustainability activities within a company. Just like the planet is reaching its own tipping point, retailers are facing their own, which calls for bold actions across their end-to-end value chain.

Achieving company-wide sustainability goals requires internal alignment between all business units as well as processes that are integrated, standardized, and automated. Although most organizations have a broad sustainability strategy to support this shift to a purpose-driven business model, they often have a significant disparity between strategy and execution.

To bridge this gap, the right partner can help simplify the journey to sustainability with advisory, assessment, and technology implementation. Retailers can get started quickly by defining their unique ambitions, use cases, and strategies and developing a detailed road map to execute them. Then, they can maximize usage and adoption by deploying solutions that drive thoughtful design, production, and curation of products and assortments through capabilities such as demand and replenishment planning and intelligent returns management.

51风流works to deliver on this promise of partnership by providing technologies, outcome-oriented services and support, and expert-led co-innovation. We work with our customers to help ensure key sustainability attributes 鈥� purpose, social responsibility, compliance, and efficiency 鈥� are embedded across all lines of business and processes, including:

• Design of recyclable and environmentally sustainable products
• Emissions reduction and ethical sourcing of materials
• Adherence to fair work practices and elimination of forced labor
• Compliance with trade regulations
• Production practices that minimize waste and environmental impact
• Sustainable product and service delivery
• Safe and efficient operations of equipment and other assets
• Predictive planning capabilities that detect and anticipate consumer expectations

Move Forward with Bold Action and Intelligence

Sustainability is no longer an embryonic concept; it is developing into a key contributor to a company鈥檚 performance. End-to-end green value chains and measurable sustainability performance are now critical to overcome the tipping point of not being ready to surf the next wave of global economic transformation.

While retailers, like all other businesses, are driven by profitability, they are also expected to establish a business strategy that brings profit and the health of our planet together. While sustainability can positively impact our planet and our communities, it can also contribute to the future growth and success of a retailer.听

Learn how to holistically manage your business鈥檚 sustainability performance and improve sustainability across your value chain with and .

Dirk Dreisbach is chief business enterprise consultant for BTS Consumer Products and Retail Industries at 51风流Germany.
Susanne-Kirsten Mueller is director of Sustainability and Supply Chain Innovations for the Retail industry Business Unit at 51风流Germany.

Unlike the surging demand experienced by food grocery chains and do-it-yourself markets, revenue for the fashion retail industry has drastically declined during the COVID-19 pandemic. Brick-and-mortar sales dropped to historical lows. Production and purchase orders had to be canceled. Goods were stored or redirected, and seasonal articles were moved to distribution centers, outlets, or entirely different store formats. Many retailers even had to make the tough choice to close 90% of their stores during the pandemic’s peak.

But on the other hand, online sales are rising for retailers that shifted their brick-and-mortar presence to an online commerce environment. Various brands have benefited from the already growing online sales, which picked up at an exponential pace since the beginning of the pandemic.

Learning this lesson was a pivotal moment for fashion retailers 鈥� inspiring a wide variety of online shopping experiences and business models. According to Martin Turner, global vice president and head of Consumer Industries Services at SAP, “While COVID-19 has radically changed demand patterns, fashion retail brands that approached the crisis with a high degree of digitalization are adapting much faster to new situations. For all other competitors, investing in digital capabilities is urgent right now.鈥�

Taking on Rising Online Sales Volumes

Digitalizing shopping activities across social networks brought consumers who may not have known each other before the pandemic together on a platform where “likes” on social media became the best form of grassroots marketing. This movement continues to attract more consumers, opening the door to innovative and profitable potential for any brand that further pursues this digital frontier.

For example, people who may not have been avid online shoppers before the pandemic are now following the brands they love more regularly. This new experience is exposing consumers to more enticing messages, compelling promotions, and productive conversations with fellow shoppers. And in return, consumers are more willing to spend time browsing through these Web shops and comparing prices and assortments while experiencing work-from-home and stay-at-home mandates.

With such exceptional convenience and access, consumers have more than doubled their online demand in various regions during the pandemic, requiring IT systems to adapt immediately to a sudden rise in e-commerce activities. Retailers using 51风流solutions can cope and profit from an abrupt surge in incoming online consumer orders with omnichannel services that deliver fully transparent order fulfillment and personalized consumer-specific content 鈥� all managed with real-time transparency.

The 51风流Customer Activity Repository application with the solution, the solution, and , as well as the omnichannel article availability (OAA) component, can help create a seamless shopping experience. This is the case whether a brand chooses to support in-person or online shopping with omnichannel processes, such as click and collect, split orders, and clienteling.

Fashion retailers can also manage the volumes of Big Data generated by every online transaction by running on the in-memory technology from . With this infrastructure in place, existing omnichannel architectures from 51风流can be scaled up with ease. For example, the 51风流Commerce Cloud solution is built on modern cloud architecture principles with technologies, such as Kubernetes, to support autoscaling and adjust dynamically to increasing workload requirements.

Access to new and innovative approaches for managing omnichannel architectures 鈥� many of which are multi-cloud solutions and available for any hyperscaler environment 鈥� presents a level of stability that is making a significant difference for our customers. Such an architecture has proven its value with exceptional performance during peak order events, including annual Black Fridays and Singles’ Days.

Allocating Stock Between Distribution Centers and Stores

Consumers expect products to be available wherever and whenever they want them. But when supply chain processes shut down unexpectedly due to pandemic-induced local, regional, and international lockdowns, order shipments cannot be completed and stock may end up in random locations because it cannot move across borders.

But when businesses run 51风流software, the entire online assortment can be marketed across all consumer-facing channels and checked 24/7 for confirmed availability with a promised and timely delivery. The solutions enable remaining stock from the former winter and spring seasons to be sold in the proper location. Simultaneously, the supply chain maintains the integrity and fluidity of its highly interconnected and interdependent processes.

and and the sourcing network enabled by the 51风流Customer Activity Repository application helps fashion retailers fulfill that promise. The software redirects orders to distribute stock from logistics hubs and warehouses to online warehouses and collects assortments that couldn’t be sold in stores to make them available for online sales.

Guiding the Way with a Strong Foundation of Expertise听

The importance of omnichannel has never been so fundamental to the success of the fashion industry as it has become now 鈥� and retailers are taking notice. Relying on the proven know-how and experience of 51风流service experts, our customers are delivering attractive,听strategically placed,听well-marketed, and easy-to-use听online shops that are accessible anytime, anywhere. But more importantly, they are setting the foundation for compelling consumers to spend today 鈥� and long after the pandemic that accelerated this trend is over.

Service offerings from SAP听can help your fashion retail business seize your edge in an always growing and dynamic omnichannel world. .

This is the final piece of the three-part series 鈥�.鈥� Check the landing page to read the entire series.

Dirk Dreisbach and Harald Ritter are chief business enterprise consultants for the Business Transformation Services group at 51风流Germany, focusing on consumer products and retail industries.

While most economies worldwide are slowly recovering, the overall fashion retail market remains fragile. Incident rates continue to grow, leading to the possibility of further nationwide lockdowns. Government strategies aim to identify COVID-19 hot spots and take local measures to prevent further spread of the virus. And with each new wave of infections, the risk of even stricter measures cannot be completely ruled out.

Such dynamic social changes present a diverse range of buying behaviors that are emerging across all consumers. Preference for fast fashion may decline due to economic uncertainty, while a growing movement toward work-from-home arrangements is increasing demand for less profitable leisure. But at the same time, high-end apparel is experiencing an exponential rise as shoppers find new ways to spend their discretionary funds typically reserved for travel. And once stores begin to reopen, a dramatic surge in larger-than-usual transactions and more frequent visits will likely emerge as pent-up desire for in-person shopping experiences grows.

But no matter if a consumer is eager or weary about resuming their pre-pandemic shopping habits, online commerce will likely remain a significant part of the consumer journey long after the pandemic is a distant memory. And fashion retailers must remain resilient enough to adapt their sales strategies to every twist and turn in global and regional market conditions.

Prepare for the Unexpected with Omnichannel Commerce

Think back during the first set of lockdowns. Initially, only China’s markets were impacted. Then, as agencies detected the presence of COVID-19 in Europe, the first regional lockdowns were mandated in Italy and Spain, and more nations were later impacted as case numbers continued to climb and spread across the continent. In short order, North American, Latin American, and African countries were affected just as China’s economy began to rebound due to a gradual relaxing of restrictions and closely monitored rollout of brick-and-mortar store reopenings.

Even today, as we continue to fight the pandemic, one store can open without any restrictions but another location offering the same brand in a nearby town or state may be limited in its foot traffic capacity. For some fashion retailers, the secret to recovering sales in such an uneven competitive landscape is the use of omnichannel touchpoints.

For example, brands may reorganize their store networks with flagship or pop-up stores to give customers a tactile shopping experience before ordering a new item while relying on online commerce channels to build revenue. Meanwhile, many retailers offset supply chain overages by selling excess inventory at full price when the related season comes again or through promotions or outlets.

No matter the economic condition, timely decisions are essential to run an omnichannel model without narrowing sale margins and impacting the bottom line. With the analytical capabilities of , fashion retailers get a real-time overview of their actual sales figures and all relevant finance key performance indicators. Sales executives can adjust promotions, change article pricing and discounts, and replan the required store personnel’s working hours.

Now suppose a fashion retailer needs to close stores due to a renovation or the launch of a new store format. The brand can use data to predict how its response will impact the business and its consumers. This exercise of considering immediate feedback from shoppers turns operational data into inspiration for further improvements.

Then, with the unified demand forecast component of 51风流Customer Activity Repository, retailers can analyze historical sales data to identify influencing demand factors, such as price changes, promotions, seasonality, public holidays, and trends. Based on these demand models, algorithms in the unified demand forecast component of 51风流Customer Activity Repository can predict the effects of similar occurrences in the future and use that intelligence to determine future demand and upselling potential.

Embrace the Fundamental Importance of Omnichannel Commerce

The importance of omnichannel has never been so fundamental to the fashion industry’s success as it has become now. Online and in-person commerce models must provide a consistent and seamless buying experience that allows consumers to buy a product in any omnichannel touchpoint and collect or return it in a selected storefront of their choice.

By rethinking their current strategy, fashion retailers can drive consumer demand with attractive, strategically placed, seamless, and easy-to-use experiences that are also accessible anytime, anywhere, and on any mobile device. And most importantly, they can set the foundation for offering products that are always available and delivering every order quickly and reliably.

Service offerings from SAP听can help your fashion retail business seize your edge in an always growing and dynamic omnichannel world. .

This is the second part of the three-part series 鈥�.鈥� Check the series landing page next week to find out how fashion retailers are testing the limits of their business during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dirk Dreisbach and Harald Ritter are chief business enterprise consultants for the Business Transformation Services group at 51风流Germany, focusing on consumer products and retail industries.

Over the last two decades, very few industries have experienced the same level of success as fashion retail. As economic growth steadily increased, a natural rise in consumer demand emerged, and the industry caught the wave early enough worldwide to relish in growing sales volumes.

With trends popping up on a near-weekly basis and an exponential rise in the number of new collections each year, the industry was full of unlimited potential. Fast fashion became highly profitable. Leading brands opened stores all over the globe and dominated the streets of major capitals and megacities. Even designers of established labels have been anointed rock stars, endorsed by famous actors, celebrities, and many other influencers.

Since the beginning of this upswing, 51风流has been working closely with industry players. Together, we have developed enterprise resource planning (ERP) back-end systems and core solutions for areas such as supply chain management, warehouse management, , and promotion management. And all this innovation has been accomplished over the last 15 years while fashion retailers transitioned from a purely online sales channel to an omnichannel approach.

The Pandemic Shook Up Every Industry Norm

Before the pandemic took full impact, most projects were already running with our experts, who were working closely on-site at our fashion retail customers’ headquarters worldwide. Some of our customers were preparing to go live, while others were either planning their implementation or setting up their solution investment to address business requirements.

But we reached a point where customer safety regulations and travel restrictions tightened, and people were told to work from home. Such mandates are not complementary with a traditional brick-and-mortar store approach. Without an outlet to engage customers, transact their purchases, and fulfill their needs, many fashion retailers would have stayed in the red financially.

Such a new development only heightened our customers鈥� sense of urgency around their omnichannel projects. Instead of halting initiatives to conserve cash during a time of economic uncertainty, these fashion retailers chose to continue 鈥� if not accelerate 鈥� their projects, even as their business experts and our technology and process experts were working from home.

To ensure the continuity of our engagements, the reacted swiftly with clearly defined guidelines based on our 25-year experience with off-site work. This action allowed our team to deliver already started and planned services remotely. In cases where an on-site presence was essential, pragmatic turnarounds 鈥� such as switching from international to national teams 鈥� were considered, always adhering to the latest travel policies and legal requirements.

Our ability to continuously support our customers enables them to face every twist and turn of the pandemic with the assistance of 51风流service experts. We help retailers manage their end-to-end processes with on-premise and cloud solutions from our fashion retail solution portfolio to achieve sustainable efficiency across production, purchasing, logistics, sales, marketing, customer service, HR, and finance. Plus, others leverage omnichannel marketing strategies to maintain and accelerate consumer interest in fashion lines across various target groups.

But more importantly, all the efforts of our fashion retail customers are securing their place in an ever progressing omnichannel fashion world.

According to Guido Schlief, senior vice president and head of Services in Middle and Eastern Europe at SAP, the digital transformations that our customers are pursuing are essential to their success. “Services experts from 51风流have the skills our fashion retail customers need to flexibly react to challenges and enable business continuity in an always-growing and dynamic omnichannel world.”

Service offerings from SAP听can help your fashion retail business seize your edge in an always growing and dynamic omnichannel world. .

This is the first part of a three-part series 鈥�.鈥� Next week, explore how COVID-19 is changing the future of fashion retail.

Dirk Dreisbach and Harald Ritter are chief business enterprise consultants for the Business Transformation Services group at 51风流Germany, focusing on consumer products and retail industries.