Johannesburg, 11 Mar 2013
In today's fast-paced fashion environment, style inspired by the latest runway shows is seen on clothing retailer's racks within weeks. As quickly as the new fashion arrives, it is replaced by the next collection. Retailers have to adapt to the fast-paced environment to ensure they maintain a flow of trendy, fashionable products while carefully maintaining quality, price and stock levels, both in-store and in online shop fronts. Fashion and trends change as soon as the next fashion week comes around, and retailers need to adapt to remain relevant to customers that demand the latest fashion.
The analytical and executional power provided by the suite of SAP retail modules enables leading national and global retail brands to meet the needs of multi-channel shopping, while responding to and embracing an increasingly consumer-led demand for competitively priced products.
As technology and Fast Fashion trends evolve, interacting with customers in an innovative manner becomes even more critical. In order to thrive, retailers are required to understand the customer's preferences in real-time to instantly adapt the customer experience and product offering.
David Shaw, author and fashion expert based in the United Kingdom, comments: "Retailers can no longer afford to create barriers between their shoppers and their business. Newer technologies have made access to information easier and more interesting in real-time. With these changes, the process of tracking customer demand to promotions must also evolve. Retailers must be able to financially manage and track their promotional spend across all channels, not just their traditional channels. It is all about the details and SAP gets the detail."
Retailers are now looking to the skills of their buyers and planners to lead the response and drive demand for the 'next generation' of planning and reporting software applications that bring customer-centricity to the heart of the business. SAP enables retailers to create and simulate their product planning on local shopper preferences and emerging micro-trends with speed and agility. SAP Planning for Retail is the only fully integrated planning solution to bring together comprehensive, real-time performance metrics with in-memory planning and simulation functions, based on the SAP HANA in-memory platform. As a result, retail planners are able to more accurately plan for and deploy inventory in response to localised micro trends as well as broader regional patterns.
Having access to real-time customer interactions and consumer insight improves business operations at the lightning-fast 'speed of retail'. SAP believes those retailers who embrace the opportunities to transform their businesses will remain competitive with the global retail brands, maintain customer loyalty and open opportunities for expansion.
"SAP for Retail and SAP Planning for Retail, combined with our in-memory platform, SAP HANA, present an integrated platform that incorporates all business processes from planning, reporting, logistics, sales to financial information stemming from more than one store location into a seamless activity. As a result, managers have the opportunity to plan ranges and assortments and analyse sales in real-time, enabling retailers to respond to micro-trends and customer demand faster and more profitably than ever before," said Stephen Henly, Retail Industry Director, EMEA Chief Customer Office.
This is an exciting development in the history of Fast Fashion and SAP is providing the retailers with new ways of reaching their target audiences using technology solutions and systems that have the ability to transform sophistication into simplicity.
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