What is SAP CAR?

The retail business is one of the dynamic and vibrant business sectors. Every day, it generates massive amounts of data because of sales operations and customer behavior. So there is a strong need for companies to manage the data and retrieve insights from it. It will help the companies to move forward their business in the correct direction.

That’s why the tool that companies leverage to handle their retail business data should be agile and robust. It must be highly reactive to real-time customer and sales data and analyze it to retrieve valuable insights.

Thanks to SAP CAR! It is one of the critical SAP products that offers lovely business solutions to retailers. It collects Point of Sales (POS), customer, and sales data and stores them in a data repository. 

The data repository acts as a robust data platform where you can store, clean, and manipulate the data to build analytics, retrieve insights, and draw valuable conclusions. You can also make demand forecasting with the help of SAP CAR. In this way, SAP CAR plays a significant role in driving retail businesses to greater heights. 

Curious to learn more about what is SAP CAR? No worries! This blog delves deep into what SAP CAR is, its importance, its features, benefits, use cases, and many other things.

Let’s talk through it!

What is SAP CAR - Table of Contents

What is SAP CAR Why SAP CAR Features of SAP CAR Modules of SAP CAR Use Cases of SAP CAR Benefits of SAP CAR FAQs Conclusion

What is SAP CAR?

SAP CAR refers to SAP Customer Activity Repository. Typically, SAP CAR is a data platform where you can gather, process, and store data. The data can be customer, transactional, product, or inventory data. It doesn’t matter whether it is on-premise or cloud resources; you can seamlessly deploy SAP CAR anywhere.

Know that SAP CAR is a tool powered by SAP HANA in-memory technology. It collects data from POS and through other channels and stores it in the data repository. From the stored data, you can generate analytics, track inventory status, make demand forecasting, and many more. 

The main thing about SAP CAR is that you can collect data and analyze them in real time.

With SAP CAR, you can streamline retail planning and order management based on customer activities. SAP CAR also provides enhanced visibility across many elements such as customer purchase and payment history, customer interests, product assortment, sales and promotions, etc.

Okay! Right now, you might have imbibed the basics about what is SAP CAR.

Next, we will uncover why it is necessary for retail business.

If you want to enrich your career and become a professional in SAP CAR, then enroll in "SAP CAR Training" This course will help you to achieve excellence in this domain.

Why SAP CAR?

Here are the reasons why SAP CAR is necessary for retailers to improve customer experience and boost productivity.

• SAP CAR is a unified as well as reliable data platform that serves as the single source of truth for customer and sales data.
• It allows retailers to gather POS data transfer, make real-time analytics, as well as demand forecasting.
• It provides real-time visibility across customer behaviors and sales operations.
• Retailers can make personalized promotions as well as product assortments based on analytics.
• Retailers can confidently make quick and accurate business decisions with the analytics of data garnered from multichannel.
• SAP CAR tightens up the gap between product selling off and replenishment. It means that it ensures the availability of products on shelves without delays, even at seasonal times.
• Above all, it enhances customer experience to greater heights.

Features of SAP CAR

SAP CAR comes with excellent and outstanding features that help retailers to improve business performance and customer experience.

Let’s look over them right now!

1. Centralized Repository

SAP CAR acts as a central hub for storing customer data as well as transactional history. This repository also stores sales data, inventory status, promotions and offers, and more.

All the data is collected through various channels and stored in the repository. The repository also stores master data, where information such as product data, price information, etc., are neatly stored.

2. Demand Forecasting

SAP CAR offers another prominent feature to retailers – demand forecasting. It helps retailers to manage product availability and replenishment activities effectively.

Know that the embedded forecasting engine of SAP CAR makes predictions by analyzing data stored in the repository. The engine helps to make sales predictions on critical areas such as merchandise and assortment planning, product allocation planning, promotions, replenishment, etc.

Moreover, demand forecasting done by this engine drives retailers to make product replenishments efficiently. Companies employing SAP CAR don't need third-party services or data scientists to analyze data and make predictions. Hence, it elevates data security significantly.

3. Real-time Analytics with low-level granularity

SAP CAR generates real-time analytics by digging out all the collected data in the repository. No matter how massive the data volume is, SAP CAR analyses all the data to the lowest granular level. Note that SAP CAR employs SAP HANA in-memory technology for making these root-level analytics.

With this granular-level analytics, retailers can gain real-time visibility across the inventory status, customer behavior, product availability on shelves, etc. Besides, retailers can track the sales performance and effectiveness of marketing operations.

4. Omni-channel Processes

As you know, SAP CAR comes with an omnichannel sales repository. It instantly stores all the customer, POS, and transactional data in the repository. 

SAP CAR acts as the price and promotions hub. This is because you can find the prices of products, promotions, offers,  and customer incentives in one place. This feature eliminates the need for siloed systems altogether.

In the same way, SAP CAR acts as an omnichannel inventory and product availability hub. It aids in tracking the stock information across various stores in real-time.

5. Consuming Apps

No wonder retailers can run some applications on top of the SAP CAR platform. These apps are known as consuming apps. The good thing is that retailers can build consuming apps quickly. They can also integrate consuming apps with business data, demand forecasting, and other retail processes.

Further, retailers can simplify merchandise and assortment planning, allocation planning, promotion management, etc., with the help of consuming apps.

Modules of SAP CAR

SAP CAR has many modules with which it gathers, processes, stores, and manages data efficiently.

Let’s discuss the various modules now!

1. POS Data Transfer and Audit (POSDTA)

POSTDTA is one of the critical modules of SAP CAR. This module collects POS transaction data from retail points. The transactional data is received in the form of TLOGs. Here, TLOG stands for transactional logs.

The transactional data is then processed by the engine known as PIPE. PIPE refers to POS Inbound Processing Engine. PIPE audits sales processes verifies master data, summarises transaction data, and many more.

2. Unified Demand Forecast (UDF)

UDF is a vital module of SAP CAR. This module performs demand modeling as well as forecasting based on customer behavior and market conditions. The predictions generated by the forecasting tend retailers to make accurate decisions on inventory, product ordering, and distribution and streamline business processes based on the predictions.

3. Multichannel Transactional Data

As you know, SAP CAR garners transactional data from various retail points through many channels. The data is stored in the centralized data repository and manipulated for multiple uses. Similarly, sales documents generated by SAP ERP are also stored in the same repository. That's why SAP CAR is referred to as a unified data platform.     

4. Demand Data Foundation (DDF)

DDF is another SAP CAR module with a reusable data layer. DDF has many essential elements, such as data models, mass maintenance tools, reusable frameworks, etc.

Further, the data layer of DDF helps to plan sales and marketing strategies, analyze sales and customer data, and forecast product demands in the future. DDF supports storing and maintaining huge volumes of data, including master data. It smoothens out importing and exporting data from and to SAP ERP and SAP HANA.

5. Omnichannel Article Availability (OAA)

OAA provides retail-specific information to customers. This information is usually the same across all communication channels - computer or mobile. Thus it helps to provide improved customer experiences.

6. Omnichannel Promotion Pricing (OPP)

OPP is nothing but a unified price and promotion repository. This repository is located inside the SAP CAR. This is where you can collect all the information required to calculate sales prices. The sales prices can be calculated effectively with the help of the promotion pricing service offered by SAP CAR.

7. On-Shelf Availability (OSA)

OSA is yet another module of SAP CAR. This module helps to gain insights about the on-shelves availability of products. It enables real-time alerts to customers based on the availability of products on-shelf. Note that you can use OSA in two scenarios such as analytical scenarios and operative scenarios.

Use Cases of SAP CAR

Undoubtedly, SAP CAR has a lot of use cases in the retail business.

Let’s address them in this section in brief.

• Promotion Management

SAP CAR supports providing suitable offers to customers based on their shopping history. It speeds up promotion planning, execution, and sales as well. Also, it encourages collaboration with advertising, marketing, and other internal teams. Besides, it controls costs in marketing and advertising drastically.

• Merchandise Planning

You can track the progress of merchandise planning with the help of SAP CAR. It means you can tightly monitor the KPIs such as sales targets, shrinkage, budgets, etc. SAP CAR allows retailers to create a comprehensive merchandise plan based on forecasting data.

• Store Replenishment

With SAP CAR, you can automate replenishing products on shelves. You can configure and plan replenishment based on requirements. Real-time inventory data is examined closely to execute in-store replenishment. Hence, you can improve sales orders with adequate product availability on shelves.

• Allocation Management

With SAP CAR, retailers can optimize their production allocation operations. It doesn’t matter whether it is a regular or in-season allocation; SAP CAR executes them accurately.

• Assortment Planning

With assortment planning, you can identify the best-performing products and make product allocations accordingly. As a result, you can reap maximum profits. Predictive algorithms play a pivotal role in Assortment planning.

Benefits of SAP CAR

SAP CAR provides a plethora of benefits to customers and businesses.

Let’s take a look at them now.

• Increased Income - By leveraging SAP CAR, retailers can increase their retail sales and revenue. This is done with analytics and insights provided by SAP CAR. SAP CAR generates analytics on inventory, customer sales and transaction history, product availability on shelves, etc.
• Enhanced productivity- With SAP CAR, retailers can do accurate planning on inventory. They can also make intelligent product allocation and replenishment as well. Overall, productivity is improved to higher levels.
• Real-time Visibility on Inventory - SAP CAR tracks inventory positions closely and enables alerts retailers to order products when there is a shortage. It helps retailers retain product availability on shelves at any time.
• Improved Customer Experience - SAP CAR allows customers to experience a frictionless shopping experience by keeping products on shelves constantly. It also provides them with accurate price information, personalized offers, etc.
• Sales and Merchandise Analytics - With the in-depth analytics generated by SAP CAR, retailers can fine-tune their business decisions and enhance business outcomes. The forecasting figures derived by the SAP CAR allow driving the business in the right direction.

SAP CAR FAQs

1. What is one-step processing in SAP CAR?

In SAP CAR, Once the aggregation is done, the aggregated data is moved to the follow-on system in the same task processing. Aggregation and forwarding are done in one step.

2. What do you mean by SAP Customer Activity Repository?

SAP CAR is a data platform where customer activity data is collected from various POS and stored. You can use this data to generate analytics and insights to help businesses to enhance productivity.

3. What is the complete form of SAP CAR?

SAP CAR stands for SAP Customer Activity Repository.

4. How is customer data collected in SAP CAR?

In SAP CAR, customer data is collected from the various POS of a retail business. The customer's transactional history and interests are collected and stored in the data repository.

5. What are the main features of SAP CAR?

• Multichannel data collection
• Centralized repository
• Demand forecasting
• Real-time analytics
• Consuming apps

6. What do you mean by SAP retail system?

SAP retail system is nothing but SAP CAR or SAP Customer Activity Repository. It is an SAP product that helps to optimize retail business operations remarkably.

7. What are the key benefits of SAP CAR?

• Real-time analytics and forecasting
• Demand forecasting
• Personalized sales and marketing
• Frictionless shopping experience
• Automated product replenishment
• Improved visibility across business operations

Conclusion

To wrap this up, SAP CAR optimizes retail business operations with a robust data repository, analytics, and insights. This tool offers a frictionless shopping experience to customers by ensuring the availability of products on shelves always. The improved visibility provided by SAP CAR enhances sales and product management in stores and thus driving up business productivity to new heights.

Well! This blog might have given you enough information on what SAP CAR is. If you wish to top up your knowledge and gain good exposure to SAP CAR, then enroll in SAP CAR Training to Upskill yourself.