Retail - Accessing Real-time Store Inventory via SRS / POSDW

[Former Member]

We are a Retail business with approximately 105 stores in our retail network.  Each store currently manages their store inventory via the SRS (SAP Retail Store) component.  We have upgraded to ECC 6.0 and noticed that there are two enhancement packs available to help individual stores manage their inventory at near real-time.

The first enhancement pack (EHP 2) is associated with business function ISR_RETAIL_STORE.  We are primarily interested in the in-store inventory management and the ability to consolidate the sales transactions from the POS DM (with stock information from ERP) to have real-time stock information.  We are also interested in the ability to perform physical inventory and cycle counting during store hours.  More details available at the following URL... http://help.sap.com/ERP2005_EHP_02/helpdata/EN/46/4980CA78095E3FE10000000A11466F/frameset.htm

The second enhancement pack (EHP 3) is associated with business function ISR_RETAIL_STORE_2.  It provides additional functionality in the sales order of SAP Retail Store to display current inventory for the store (or other stores in the retail network).  Like the EHP above, we are particularly interested in being able to access the POS data management transactions that haven't been posted in SAP ERP so that we can see the real-time inventory.  More details available at the following URL... 

http://help.sap.com/ERP2005_EHP_03/helpdata/EN/BD/295A1424BC4AB0B552789B741FD89A/frameset.htm.

The documentation indicates that the solutions can access transactions in POSDW for real-time inventory.  We are curious if there are any other SAP retail customers using one (or both) of these enhancements.  If yes, do you see any performance degredation on the SAP BW environment as a result of accessing real-time inventory via SRS (or mobile device)?

Thanks,

Pete Settle

[Former Member]

Hi Pete,

I also face same problem. How you solve the issue?

thanks

JC

[amit_tunara]

Hi JC,

I have explain the processing of POS DM in your other question. If you configure your POS DM to process the transactional data immediately and push it SAP Retail, you can see real-time inventories with Sales impact.

Please note that, processing Sales data during day time (when other users are also doing their task) may cause concurrency issues and affect other's day-to-day activity, that is the reason, SAP also recommends to do Sales posting in night when the system is free.

Regards,

Amit

[Former Member]

Hi JC,

We have not solved the issue.  We did not want to push the transactional data immediately into SAP Retail because of the number of billing documents that would be created.  We were able to find an SAP contact to investigate further. Essentially, to obtain the realtime inventory in POSDW, it will take some development: 1) to make some inventory transactions specific to SRS visible in POSDW (i.e. store receipts are not in POSDW); 2) to make sure that SRS inventory processes (i.e. physical counts) draw the inventory balance from POSDW (and not SAP).

We decided that the effort was not worth the gain.  Now that ECC runs on HANA, SAP customers are able to gain access to the realtime inventory through the CAR solution.  We may hold on for that option.

If you have any other questions, let me know.

Regards,

Pete

[Former Member]

Hi Pete,

Using HAHA to speed up the transaction time? Also what is CAR solution? Thanks

JC

[amit_tunara]

Hi,

Yes, it is not good and even recommended by SAP to post all transactional data to SAP Retail. Instead of that, collect all transactional data in POS DM and generate only 1 aggregated IDoc for a transaction day and store with summary on article number. The same approach is to be followed for collection where the aggregation will happen on tender types for a business day and store combination.

Regards,

Amit

[Former Member]

Hi JC,

HANA is the in memory appliance that SAP is using to run it's business intelligence and business applications.  It was first announced in 2010 and essentially allows for near real-time response from a user perspective.  Advances in processing time are enabling SAP to advance with some very good products.

CAR is short for Customer Activity Repository.  Go to this URL for more info... there is some discussion on the Multichannel Sales Repository (MCSR) which is where the realtime inventory would be visible.

Regards,

Pete