All parties are involved in this unit. For every brick-and-mortar Retailer, Store Operations is at the heart of the enterprise. A wide range of processes ensures that merchandise is available for sales during opening hours, with excellent customer service. Specific apps are available to support the store manager, and the store associate roles. Note: The Store Operations apps require the user assignment to a specific store. Activities in the store include merchandising functions such as ordering and receiving goods, inventory management including physical inventory, and consumer/customer sales via point-of-sale systems (POS) and sales orders. Store connectivity comprises outbound and inbound message transfer between the retailer's central system(s) and the store's POS system. For example, the POS systems are regularly updated with article and price information so they are ready to handle sales transactions, and in turn, for example sales and goods receipt/movement data is transferred from the store to the central systems.
The 4 solution processes shown in the figure, Overview: Store Operations, are the starting point to cover the wide range of available applications for store operations. The solution process 5FY, covered in this lesson, explains how the ordering and receiving apps are used. Solution process, 5FW, mainly looks at the store manager role. The manager assigns the store associates to the store, determines the picking sequence for click-and-collect or click-and-reserve customer orders, and uses the My Store Overview app for the real-time monitoring of current store processes. The Look Up Retail Products and Print Labels apps, covered in solution process 3HQ, are essential in the daily work of store associates. To connect store sales and online commerce, solution process 5FZ for example introduces the click-and-collect scenario.
Each solution process represents a lesson in this unit, and can be completed individually.
This lesson covers the solution process In-Store Merchandise Management (3HQ).
In the retail industry, specific terms differ from the standard terms used in other lines of business. The following terms are used synonymously in this document:
| Standard Terms in Lines of Business | SAP S/4HANA Cloud for Retail, Fashion, and Vertical Business |
|---|---|
| Material, Product | Article |
| Material group, Product group | Merchandise category |
| Plant, Location | Site |
Look Up Retail Products
For the retail store associates, the Look Up Retail Products (F0431) app makes all necessary article information available at their fingertips. This is the foundation for both customer-facing activities and efficient store operations. The Look Up Retail Products app offers the most important, decisive data for the articles from a variety of sources.
Several options are available to select an article in the app:
- Through bar code scanning of the Global Trade Item Number (GTIN)
- By using the search function - by product number or description
- Through cross-navigation from another application
For the selected article, at first sight, the app displays the article description, units of measurement, weight information, sales prices, stock information, internal (= from DC) and external (= from external supplier) procurement lead times, and upcoming planned goods receipts. Additional information is available, such as past/current/future promotions on the Promotions tab, and incoming shipments on document level on the Deliveries tab.
The Nearby Stores tab lists all sites (stores and distribution centers), which have stock on-hand for that article, and which are located in the same country as the store assigned to the user. Note: The BAdI (Business Add-In) RETAIL_ST_PL_GET_NB_STORE_ENH method GET_NEARBY_STORES_ARTICLES could be implemented to determine a customer-specific rule for the site determination in that tab.
For generic articles, the Variants view shows the other existing variants (besides the one you selected) and their stock on hand in your store, and you can also check stocks in nearby stores directly from that view. It is possible to filter the displayed variants by their characteristic values.
The figure above, Look Up Retail Products, shows that the store has a stock quantity of 150 PC of the selected article. However, only 148 PC are available due to a customer order, for which 2 PC are reserved. The current stock in the distribution center is 25 PC, and it takes 5 days until the store receives merchandise, if the article was ordered from the DC. In case the store needs to procure the article from an external supplier, the planned delivery time is also 5 days. The weight of the article in the selected unit of measure PC is 1 kilogram. Note: The quantity and weight data is shown with 3 decimal places.
In the customer-specific configuration for the Look Up Retail Products app, you can determine, how many products (maximum) the system should return when you execute a product search in the app. The default value set by SAP is 50. Additionally, you can determine the search horizon - in number of days - for past / future shipments and promotions. However, you can also select to not display this information at all. Furthermore, you can decide if the system should also display the available-to-promise (ATP) stocks of the store and the DC. As per the standard setting, the system only displays the articles listed for (assigned to) your store, but you can deactivate the listing check in the app configuration.
Print Labels
With the Print Labels app (F1563), a store associate can print different label types for individual products, or for a list of different products, and product variants. For example price tickets, or shelf-edge labels can be printed. Correct labels support on-shelf availability and proper labeling of prices, which is a key requirement for brick-and-mortar stores.
In the app, you can select the products manually, or use barcode scanning (scanning depends on the capabilities of the mobile device). The app is integrated into other store operations apps, for example Transfer Products.
The app prints a list of labels of the same or different label types, in the same sequence in which the articles were scanned.
The app supports:
Out-of-the-box usage of printers connected to the back-end
Out-of-the-box usage of Adobe Designer via the back-end
and determines the default settings (store, printer, and label type) for the user.
As an administrator, you can then check for the labels in the Print Queue, using the Maintain Print Queues app (F1260).
Summary
