SAP Services for the Retail Industry

Accenture's ongoing research into High Performance Business has identified a number of characteristics that help businesses achieve high performance. These are obsessive customer focus, innovation and commercialization, dedication to operational excellence and a facility for undertaking strategic alliances and collaborations.

Based on this understanding, Accenture has evolved High Performance Retailing, a comprehensive strategy designed to advance our clients' journey to high performance. It focuses on five endeavors, which include customer centricity and talent management, demand generation, demand fulfillment, innovation and collaboration, and efficient enterprise. Accenture focuses on developing highly responsive and efficient systems and the innovations to improve vastly the sourcing, moving and selling of the product.

For many retailers, SAP Retail can be a powerful enabler of High Performance Retailing. Accenture Retail Solution was developed to meet their needs. This preconfigured solution jump-starts a SAP Retail-based initiative, substantially compressing standard implementation time frames and reducing costs while lowering risks and enhancing quality and value.

The Accenture Retail Solution reflects deep retail industry skills and our commitment to high performance in retailing.

One of the main advantages of the Accenture Retail Solution is that it is a component-based methodology that combines the main SAP Retail portions of my SAP with concepts developed by Accenture from its years of experience with some of the world's leading retailers.

The Accenture Retail Solution provides clients with predefined retail-specific templates and documentation for most scenarios. They not only dramatically improve the accuracy and effectiveness of the design stage, but the reference solution can be the foundation for configuration and tailored end-user training.

Accenture has technology capabilities and a strong alliance with SAP. The Accenture Retail Solution is aligned with Accenture Delivery Methods for SAP, an SAP-specific methodology that blends Accenture's comprehensive business transformation methodology with SAP's ASAP approach.

Retailers in particular are early adopters of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. The Accenture Retail Solution takes full advantage of Accenture's pioneering work on the application of this technology in retail, most of it coordinated through Accenture Technology Labs.

The Accenture Global Delivery Network makes it possible for retailers to experience the benefits of global sourcing and scalability for their SAP solutions.

Contact us for more information about how Accenture can help you use SAP in Retail to achieve high performance.

The Accenture Retail Solution closely aligns with the Accenture High Performance Retailing strategy and offerings, and includes a range of business scenarios within SAP Retail's core groups, as listed below:

• Category Management: Uses planning activities and tools to drive differentiated assortments, pricing and promotions and more profitable inventory management.
  
  
• Supply Chain Planning: Addresses planning activities including the subcomponents of supply network planning and replenishment and allocation.
  
  
• Purchasing: Includes purchasing strategies, policies and execution along with analytics, including subcomponents of vendor relationship management.
  
  
• Supply Chain Execution: Applies supply chain planning to conduct inventory management, warehouse management and supply chain visibility and tracking.
  
  
• Multichannel Retailing: Defines a variety of sales channels that operate in the retail business, including store operations and back-office management.
  
  
• Enterprise Management: Provides the core functionality to support a retail business including general ledger and treasury and cash management.