Providing the Solution and Process Overview

The previous figure, SAP Solutions for Retail, provides a high-level overview of the SAP for Retail Solution Architecture and Portfolio. The SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) with its APIs, Process and Data Models, Business Services, and so on, is at the basis of the comprehensive application layer.

As core ERP, the Intelligent Suite covers the core processes of a Retail organization. It contains SAP S/4HANA Retail for merchandise management as On Premise or Private Cloud edition, or SAP S/4HANA Cloud for retail, fashion, and vertical business as the public cloud solution. From an application point of view, we are going to focus on the SAP S/4HANA Retail for merchandise management (on premise) solution capabilities in this course. For simplification reasons, this solution is referred to as SAP Retail in our S4IRT course. SAP Retail core features and functions for example include master data management, buying, logistics, sales, and store operations.

Further solutions, which are part of the Intelligent Suite, are for example SAP Customer Activity Repository Applications Bundle (CARAB), and SAP Forecasting and Replenishment (on the Supply Chain Management platform). Both solutions were/are developed specifically for the Retail Industry. These applications are briefly introduced at various stages in this course, as their functionality is closely connected to many SAP Retail processes.

The Intelligent Enterprise, with the Intelligent Suite at its center, aims at providing industry-specific end-to-end processes across different products as part of a so-called composable suite. The composable suite allows to combine modular cloud and on premise solutions in a hybrid model. With that, Retailers will be able to quickly adopt innovations and react to market changes.

New native Industry Cloud solutions extend current business processes with industry best practices.

The native industry cloud solutions for Retail belong to three strategic development areas:

• Predictive Planning & Inventory Orchestration:

  This is a cloud native suite of supply chain planning applications. An example is SAP Predictive Replenishment (PRP).

• Order Management:

  These applications offer retailers a viable end-to-end order management solution. An example is SAP Omnichannel Promotion Pricing Service (OPPS), which is used by customers cross-industry.

• Retail Store / Sales Audit:

  This provides an intelligent and well-integrated store solution with compelling user interfaces. An example is SAP Omnichannel Sales Transfer and Audit (OSTA).

The development approach for the industry cloud solutions is to deliver so-called minimal marketable products (MMP) as soon as minimum customer requirements and desired user experience are fulfilled.

The training system is fully implemented, which means all processes are configured, and master data are available for the participants to perform the exercises. The fictitious model company is located in the US, and called IDES Retail Inc. US. The company runs own distribution centers (DC) and stores, and external business partners, that is vendor and (wholesale) customer master records, are created. The processes focus on typical retail scenarios, where sales transactions to (anonymous) consumers are processed using point-of-sale (POS) systems, and stores will be supplied with merchandise by either distribution centers or external vendors. Of course, also the DC stocks have to be filled up regularly. IDES Retail Inc. US also has a small wholesale branch, and therefore the SD sales order processes are also going to be covered in this course.

Requirements Planning from Vendor to Distribution Center:

You execute merchandise requirements planning for your distribution center at regular intervals. For the requirement quantities determined in the planning run, the system creates purchase requisitions, which can then be converted to vendor purchase orders.

The vendors deliver the merchandise that you have ordered. You update the system by posting a goods receipt, and you store the merchandise in your warehouse. Then you perform invoice verification for the invoices you receive from your vendors.

After you have posted the incoming invoices, you check the updated vendor condition contracts.

Replenishment Planning for Stores:

Sales transactions in the stores are captured using POS systems. In order to make sure the stores do not run out of stock, the replenishment run is scheduled every night in the central system. In order to calculate the required quantities correctly, the day's sales data of the stores have to be sent to the central system beforehand, so that inventory management is up-to-date. Various follow-on documents can be created from the replenishment run. In our example, a stock transport order and an vendor order will be created. In order to start the shipping process in the DC for the stock transport order, an outbound delivery will be created, the merchandise will be picked and packed, and goods issue posted. The final step is posting the goods receipt in the store using the SAP Fiori Store Operations application Receive Products.

Store Operations:

This unit covers typical store operation functions and processes, using the dedicated SAP Fiori Store Operations apps. A number of them are displayed in the figure above, Course Overview of Unit 6. The Receive Products app was already introduced in the previous unit.

Further SAP Fiori Store Operations apps are for example Count Stock, Manage Stock Counting, and Adjust Mass Stock - TODAY, which will be covered in the last lesson of this unit: Performing Physical Inventory (also see further below).

Additionally, the sales order processes will be covered in this unit, again using SAP Fiori apps throughout. The next figure, General Sales Order process with DC fulfillment, shows the standard scenario for a sales order which is processed in a DC. This is for example relevant in a classic e-commerce scenario: the customer places a sales order using the retailer's online shop, and an outbound delivery is created and processed in the DC to ship the goods to the customer. Then, the customer invoice is created.

However, in our course, the focus is on sales order processing in stores. Both scenarios, that is shipping the ordered merchandise from a site, as well as the third-party delivery process, are explained.

The following two figures show the actual SD sales order processes covered in this course.

Here, a customer orders a bulky item in the store, for pickup from the issue counter, like for example in DIY or furniture retailing. This means the sales order is delivered/goods issue posted when the customer picks up the item. The customer will then be billed. Optionally, you can complete the process by entering the customer's payment data, which clears the invoice.

The second sales order process is about a direct delivery from the vendor to the customer: again, a sales order is created, but the article is a non-stock item. This means, it is only ordered upon customer request, and then directly shipped from the vendor to the customer. For this purpose, the system creates a purchase requisition for the sales order item. Then a vendor PO is created from this purchase requisition. Next, we receive and verify the vendor invoice, then we bill the customer.

The third sales order process is actually a click & reserve scenario: The customer/consumer orders online for pick-up in store. For example, in a fashion environment, it means the customer receives the pre-picked fashion items in the store upon arrival, in order to try them on, and to then decide which ones to buy. This means, the sales order will be rejected, and the purchase will be posted as a POS sale. For this process, three retail-specific store operations apps are available: Process Picking Requests, Hand Over Orders, and (for optional use) Maintain Picking Sequence.

The last lesson of unit 5 covers the physical inventory process in a store, using the relevant SAP Fiori applications to perform the individual steps. These start with creating a physical inventory document, and end with posting the differences to update the book quantities and accounting. This process involves both store associates, who for example perform the stock counting, and store managers - for example, to review the count results using the Manage Stock Counting app, and to post differences. This lesson also includes an example for an ad hoc stock adjustment using the Adjust Mass Stock - TODAY app.

Retail Promotion with Merchandise Distribution:

This unit starts with a short overview of the SAP Promotion Management solution. Then, our actual promotion business process covers the promotion process flow in the SAP Retail system.

The business scenario is that you are about to introduce a new product range, and you want to use a retail promotion to push sales of the new articles in your stores. You start with promotion planning: Your team already created a promotion, which you will review, and add missing data which is relevant for the subsequent allocation table generation. As soon as you finished promotion planning, you can move on to promotion subsequent processing. This involves supply source determination, price activation, article listing, and generating an allocation table.

An allocation table is used to procure and distribute the planned merchandise quantities to the stores according to certain rules and to generate the necessary documents. Follow-on processing for the allocation table involves generating purchase orders for the vendor and purchase orders between the distribution center and store (stock transport orders).

In our example, the promotion items should pass through the warehouse quickly, therefore you want to use the cross-docking process in merchandise distribution, which means the vendor provides the pre-picking/-packing service. This bypasses the usual warehouse putaway and picking process, and thus represents an efficient just-in-time scenario. This means the goods issue follows soon after the goods receipt of the merchandise.

Finally, the goods arrive at the store, where goods receipt is posted. The sales of the new items can now begin.

SAP Fiori is SAP's central, role-specific and intuitive user experience (UX), which runs on any device. You can use various UI technologies such as the SAPUI5 framework, UI5 Web Components, or the mobile iOS and Android SDKs to build SAP Fiori apps. As the SAP Fiori UX focuses on the individual user roles, new SAP Fiori apps are specifically created for individual roles. For example in Retail, there are apps for store associates, and for store managers.

The SAP Fiori launchpad (FLP) is a shell that hosts SAP Fiori apps, and it is the single point of entry for a user to access the assigned applications. After the log-in, the starting point for the user is the SAP Fiori Home view.

The SAP Fiori launchpad provides services such as navigation, personalization, embedded support, and application configuration.

Each user can individually configure their My Home area, to make it their personal start page. You can choose Open Help (? icon) to access the help topics as shown in the figure above, SAP Fiori Launchpad. By choosing your Profile (user initials icon), you can access the user actions menu.

For an easy, intuitive navigation in the SAP Fiori launchpad, a specific layout is used to arrange the SAP Fiori apps on the Home page. This role-based layout is defined centrally via the SAP Fiori Launchpad Designer (FLPD). Here, the relevant business catalogs are created, and their apps are assigned to spaces, pages, and sections accordingly, or arranged in groups (classic Home view). Via Settings, the user can switch between both layouts, and in case the layout with spaces is used, the user can decide if the My Home area should be shown or not. The personalization options under Settings are shown in figure, Maintain User Default Values, further down.

An entry in the top-level navigation indicates a Space. In the figure above, Spaces and Pages in SAP Fiori, for example Unit 2 is a space, as well as Unit 3, and so on.

Each space has one or multiple pages. A Page contains apps necessary for a self-contained work-context. For example, the Unit 5 space has 3 pages for the various store processes: Store Operations, Sales, and Physical Inventory.

A page may be further subdivided into sections. A Section structures the content of a page semantically. For example, the Store Operations page has the sections Analytics, and Extras, with reporting and supplementary apps.

A Tile allows users to quickly access a business application (app) to complete a specific task. In some cases, tiles can display live status indicators, such as the number of open tasks. Also, links can be embedded as tiles.

SAP provides space and page templates per business role for SAP S/4HANA, making it easy for customers to structure the layout of the SAP Fiori launchpad for their end users. This layout remains stable, even if a user is assigned to more roles later. Note: Users can easily personalize their pages, by adding or removing tiles, or adding or removing sections.

A space comes with a predefined set of apps related to the user’s business role. The idea is to show only the most important and most used apps per space that users need to complete their daily tasks. Users still can access all apps in the app finder which they might use to add apps to their pages or to directly launch apps that they rarely use.

Basically there are three different types of native SAP Fiori applications. The following figure, SAP Fiori Apps Overview, shows the transactional app, Order Products, the Retail Promotion object page, and the analytical Store Manager Overview app.

Transactional apps offer access to tasks such as change, create, display (documents, master records), or to entire processes with guided navigation. These apps use ABAP to provide the classic approach for functions of a business system. They are available for SAP S/4HANA and SAP Business Suite on any DB. The native, retail-specific transactional store operations apps are mobile optimized, and a number of them are also radio-frequency identification (RFID) enabled. Additionally, many classic SAP Retail functions can be embedded as (non-native) transactional apps using the WebUI, for example the Create -, Maintain -, and Display Article apps (SAPGui transactions MM41, MM42, MM43).

Object pages give you the opportunity to search and explore your data. They provide a 360 degree view on essential information about an object, and contextual navigation between related objects. Object pages use the Enterprise Search capabilities of SAP HANA to provide search results. They are available for SAP S/4HANA and SAP Business Suite on HANA. In Retail, object pages are provided for product, site, allocation table, and promotion.

Analytical apps provide insight to action. They give you a visual overview of complex topics for monitoring or tracking purposes. Analytical apps use the analytical capabilities of SAP HANA to provide insights into business data. They are available for SAP S/4HANA and SAP Business Suite on HANA. Examples are the Goods Movement Analysis, and the Material Documents Overview apps.

The above figure, Transactional Apps - Example, shows the native Manage Product Master Data app, and the WebGUI based Maintain Article app. Both apps can be used to edit Retail Article master data.

In many non-native transactional apps, you can use the F1 key to display explanations for fields, menus, functions, and messages. The F1 Help also displays technical information on the current field.

Using the F1 key in a native SAP Fiori app opens the Help Topics area. For example in the Manage Product Master Data app, it contains a link to the Application Help for this app.

There are input fields for free text entry, for example, to enter a name or description, and input fields with predetermined values. For example, in the article display function, the article number field has predetermined values. For these fields, the F4 Help displays information on the possible values. You can call the F4 Help using the F4 keyboard key, or, after positioning the cursor on the input field, choose the button which appears right next to the selected field. If there is a small red asterisk at the field description, it is a required or mandatory field, and you can only continue working in this application if you enter a permitted value in this field. By using different transaction and screen layouts, or in Customizing, the user can define many fields as required or optional, hide fields, or enter default values and make the fields invisible (suppress the field).

The F4 Help displays a list of possible entries for a field. If there is a large number of possible entries, an additional selection screen is displayed first. If the results list is very large, the F4 Help only displays the maximum number of entries specified by the user on the F4 Help tab under Help → Settings. The default value is 500. The F4 Help is available both in native and non-native apps.

The Navigation Buttons are as follows:

• Back (arrow pointing to the left in the SAP Fiori Header): With this button you return to the previous screen (one step back). The corresponding keyboard key is F3.

• Exit (pushbutton in the Header Toolbar): With this button you can exit the function/screen. Pushing this button may also mean closing the session, or even exiting the system (if you press it in the SAP Easy Access menu of the only open window). The corresponding keyboard keys are Shift+F3.

• Save (pushbutton in Footer bar): Saves the transaction, for example this creates or changes a purchase order (transactions ME21N, ME22N). In some applications, the button is called Post instead of Save. The corresponding keyboard keys are Ctrl+S. Note: Some native Fiori apps for example use Submit or Create instead of Save, and some don't require saving at all, as in this case, the entries are saved automatically.

Additional screen elements:

• Tab pages: These group several subscreens to provide a clear layout.

• Checkboxes: With checkboxes within a field group, you can select several options at the same time.

Other screen elements include Input fields and pushbuttons. If there is a little red asterisk at the description of an input field, it means that this is a required/mandatory field.

Personalization

The User Actions menu as shown further above in figure, SAP Fiori Launchpad, not only allows the user to edit the pages to adjust the arrangement of tiles, but also offers the Settings menu. Here, for example, the user can choose the layout. Other settings include selecting the background color, or setting the preferred date and time formats, and so on.

In many cases, setting user default values makes the daily work easier. The system defaults these values in the relevant applications, so the user doesn't have to key in those values every time. This is for example particularly useful for certain organizational elements in various business areas, such as purchasing, sales, finance, and so on. More details on organizational elements will be provided at the beginning of the next unit, Basic Concepts.

Note

If a user has personalized the Home page, and a central change is applied to the apps - for example, a new app has been centrally added to the user’s role - then the affected tile group has to be refreshed. Otherwise, the changes are not available for this user.