Dear Retail community,
In my previous blog I have outlined how important an omni-channel strategy for retailers is. See also the publication by McKinsey about the need to go Omni-Channel.
Now I would like to dive into the SAP components required to build Retail Omni-Channel scenarios, and describe their functions in more detail.
SAP Retail Omni-Channel Commerce scenarios are based on four main SAP components:
- Core Merchandising (IS-Retail)
- hybris Commerce Suite
- SAP Customer Activity Repository (CAR)
- SAP hybris Marketing
Each component has its key role in the omni-channel orchestration, which stretches well beyond pure commerce scenarios.
Instead of creating something all-new from scratch on top of the existing SAP Retail solution landscape, we rather leverage the proven capabilities and power of available Retail solutions, and invest in new innovations and comprehensive integration on top of these existing solutions, for an even better omni-channel commerce experience:
In the following chapters I would like to describe the scenarios and data flow between the main components. This should be a high level reference recommendation for your orientation, but you may want to deviate from this schema in some cases.
hybris Commerce Suite (yCommerce) as "Digital Commerce Hub"
The hybris Commerce Suite is THE central platform that drives and manages digital commerce channels within an SAP omni-channel scenario landscape. The data and processes required are hereby retrieved, connected resp. aggregated from backend system(s), e.g.
- SAP Retail Core Merchandising (IS Retail)
- SAP Customer Activity Repository (CAR)
- SAP hybris Marketing
- Loyalty Management
- 3rd party systems
- …
This makes the hybris Commerce Suite THE digital hub in an omni-channel landscape, providing backend data and processes to the digital shop-front in a transparent, flexible and highly adaptable way.
In an ideal SAP Omni-Channel Commerce landscape, all digital channels are managed by the hybris Commerce Suite, which provides data (products, prices, promotions, stock level) and application logic (order creation and status, account data, ...) to the individual digital channels.
The hybris Commerce Suite is well integrated with SAP ECC and SAP IS Retail for master data, order documents, etc., and SAP continues to invest in an even deeper integration, e.g. with the SAP hybris Commerce, integration package for SAP for Retail 1.0 based on hybris Commerce 5.6.
SAP Retail as Central Core Merchandising system
SAP Retail is the central merchandising system (ERP) as we know it.
In the given SAP omni-channel scenario SAP Retail is the leading system for product master data and prices.
As such it provides the following data to the hybris Commerce Suite:
- Article master data, characteristics, classes
- Stock inventory data
- List prices, promotion prices and bonus buy conditions
This master data is transferred from SAP Retail via the hybris DataHub interface (as XML based iDocs) to the hybris Commerce Suite database.
Within the hybris Commerce Suite this SAP master data is used to
- Build product catalog(s), which are tree-like hierarchy structures of sales categories and promotion areas. This allows a user to browse and navigate in shop categories
- Build a search index(es), allowing users to perform searches within a digital channel
- Display product/price/stock inventory at the shop-front of the digital channel(s)
- ...
In the recommended SAP omni-channel scenario the hybris Commerce Suite is responsible for
- B2C user registration, user management and consumer master data creation
- Order creation
Consumer data records are created in the hybris commerce suite and managed therein. So a consumer can register and login with user/password completely within hybris Commerce Suite.
The consumer data record can optionally be transferred to the SAP IS Retail system via iDocs. Otherwise a CPD customer is used for the sold-to party in order documents.
In addition, consumer data records can also be replicated to SAP Cloud for Customer, to allow a C4C based service management. This feature was introduced with hybris Commerce Suite 5.7.
Consumer orders are created by and in the hybris Commerce Suite (based on the Asynchronous Order Management scenario) and are stored in the hybris database. Then hybris order documents are replicated to a connected SAP ERP or IS Retail system.
As outlined above, the hybris Commerce Suite is well integrated with SAP ECC and SAP IS Retail for master data, order documents . In Sept 2015, a first SAP Retail Industry Integration AddOn for hybris Commerce 5.6 was released.
SAP hybris Marketing (yMKT)
SAP hybris Marketing is SAP’s Marketing Platform, based on the formerly known SAP CEI, enriched with SeeWhy capabilities as well as marketing planning and execution applications, just to name a few.
The key is the central repository within SAP hybris Marketing, which is designed to collect customer-relevant data from all possible systems, applications and angles:
- ERP('s)
- digital channels
- CAR
- PRM
- CRM systems
- loyalty management solution(s)
- 3rd party systems
- social media networks
- market research data (e.g. AC Nielsen, IRI)
- geospatial data
- etc.
For example, SAP Retail feeds SAP hybris Marketing with transactional and master data like product data, customer data, orders, sales organization, merchandise category assignments etc.
The following hybris Marketing applications are key for SAP Omni-Channel Commerce:
- yMKT Segmentation defines and determines target groups and so-called "campaigns" (= target groups with a validity period, e.g. senior with dog, valid from Dec 1 to Dec 31, YYYY)
- yMKT Recommendation uses advanced predictive analytics capabilities to determine product recommendations at runtime, based on target groups/campaigns, but also personalized on individual customer data, transactions, social interactions stored in yMKT Marketing Data Mgmt, , …
In an SAP Omni-Channel scenario SAP hybris Marketing is co-deployed on deployed on SAP HANA in co-deployment with the HANA based CAR, to maximize application, hardware and infrastructure performance by shared database tables, e.g. for orders.
Integration of the hybris Commerce Suite with SAP hybris Marketing
The hybris Marketing applications Segmentation and Recommendation are already integrated with the hybris Commerce Suite from release 5.3 resp. 5.4, and have been further improved and extended ever since.
The yCommerce's WCMS can access hybris Marketing Segmentationat runtime to have it identify the target group/campaign(s) of a hybris consumer/customer.
Also, the hybris Marketing Recommendation application, which predicts product id’s of recommended products based on the customer marketing profile data in real-time, is integrated with hybris Commerce 5.4+
WCMS uses the information provided by SAP hybris Marketing to maximize the personalized customer experience at the digital shop-front.
SAP Customer Activity Repository (CAR)
SAP CAR is the central Retail planning platform genuinely designed for and built on SAP HANA.
CAR has many tasks for Retail businesses, but let’s focus a bit here on the omni-channel point of view:
CAR collects and analyzes customer activities (e.g. orders) from all channels incl. the POS channels. While POS receipts are processed within the CAR application “Sales Audit” (= POS Inbound), non-POS based orders are provided by IS Retail, which also includes orders originally created in hybris Commerce and replicated to IS Retail.
So CAR holds
- the complete customer transaction history
- precise stock inventory level of the physical stores (depending how quickly the POS systems send data to CAR)
While
- 1) CAR based customer transactions are integrated in the hybris Commerce from 5.4+, to show the complete order history across channels in hybris Commerce based shops (in the hybris > My Account section),
- 2) store inventory information from CAR can be used e.g. to marry the physical channels with digital commerce, allowing to check inventory in store from webshops, click&collect (=buy online, pick up in store), etc.
This makes CAR the central in-store data hub for true omni-channel scenarios.
For performance reasons CAR is to be co-deployed with SAP hybris Marketing, allowing POS data to be included in hybris Marketing based product recommendations based on order history, and for a more precise target group/campaign assignment.
The SAP Retail Omni-Channel product team plans to provide both new innovations, enhancements to existing features as well as streamlined integration between the components. We intent to ship content within the component's standard releases. Innovations will likely be seens on a quarterly basis.
In addition we are working on simplifications to implement these components and integrations between them.
More information, figures, screenshots and links will be added to this blog as it becomes available.
Stay tuned for updates here in the SCN space SAP for Retail.
Enjoy,
Ingo
Dr. Ingo Woesner
Global Director, Outbound Product Management Retail Omni-Channel
SAP SE
www.sap.com