Indian retailers partner with SAP to fuel growth

BANGALORE, INDIA: Highlighting its continued commitment to deliver innovative solutions to retailers in India, SAP has announced sustained adoption of its SAP for Retail solutions with significant customer endorsements.

Over 72 leading retailers, such as DLF Retail, Khadim Jewellers, Fresh and Honest Cafe, Super Religare Laboratories and Religare Wellness Limited, Dimexon Diamonds and C Mahendra have adopted and expanded their SAP footprint to simplify business processes, reduce cost and adapt to the changing industry landscape.

“Today, retailers are faced with an uncertain economic environment and by customers who are smarter and more demanding than ever before. The need of the hour is to sustain business growth through innovation and differentiation,” said Ranjan Das, Managing Director, SAP Indian Subcontinent.

"Technology has provided a new dimension to the India retail sector. As Indian and international retail chains continue to plan for growth, they face a pressing challenge for a single, enterprise-wide IT platform to manage increasingly operations. In the organised retail business technology is needed not only in accounting and human resource management, but also in core functions like buying, merchandising and store management. Thus IT applications are witnessing adoption from the very beginning till the ‘last mile’ of the business operation for most retail functions. The key solutions being looked upon by retailers in India today are ERP/ERM solutions, supply chain management (SCM), inventory management and security solutions", said Arpan Gupta, Manager, Services, BPO & Industry Verticals Research, IDC India.

"With government policies becoming favourable and emerging technologies facilitating business operations, India has emerged as an attractive organised retail destination. Till a few years back, custom applications were more common among organised retail businesses. This has changed in recent times with vendors offering packaged applications for the retail segment. As per IDC estimates the spending on enterprise-wide applications (SCM, ERM/ERP and CRM) by the India retail segment was estimated to be around US$ 48 M in 2008. This is expected to increase at 17 percent year-on-year (2009 over 2008). SAP led the India enterprise-wide retail applications (SCM, ERM/ERP and CRM) market with more than 50 percent share in revenue terms in 2008 ", added Nandavarapu Kiran, Asst. Manager, Software and Services Research, IDC India.

Indian Retailers

Maintaining customer loyalty, a priority for Indian retailers in ordinary circumstances, is now of prime importance in the current market situation. As a result, retailers across the board are using SAP technology for greater visibility into consumer spending trends, enabling them to create shopping experiences that motivate their customers to return again and again. Alongside the phenomenal growth of the franchise business, domains such as food, pharmacy and jewellery continue to flourish. SAP’s comprehensive retail suite, designed with flexible deployment blocks, provides customers agility to adapt the changing market conditions and leverage newer opportunities.

DLF’s foray into Retail- adopts SAP for Retail Solutions including SAP POS

DLF Brands, a subsidiary company of DLF Ltd, India’s biggest real estate company, has joined hands with a number of leading European and American brands, including Boggi Italian Menswear, Alcott High Fashion, Luxottica which trades as Sunglass Hut, SIA fashions for the home and a number of other brands. It is quite an undertaking to manage such a variety of brands and SAP seemed to be one of the few companies to offer end to end solutions. According to Kelvin Coyle, CEO, DLF, “The business of premium and luxury retailing is dynamic. We needed an IT solution that empowers us to make decisions swiftly based on consolidated data and manage profitably.” He further added, “Technology is a high-priority investment area for us.”

Retailers Leverage SAP to Gain Transparency and Automate

A growing number of retailers in India are adopting SAP solutions to streamline and gain transparency across business processes and operations.

Khadim Group, a fast growing national footwear brand with presence across various business verticals has selected SAP as the channel of growth. “Khadim’s, as a brand, is well known nationally, and our steady growth can be attributed to our focus on innovation and best practices,” said Suman Barman Roy, President Khadim Group. “With SAP, we have solutions that are industry-proven, help us to take better decision faster and enabling us to reach our strategic goals ahead of time.”

C Mahendra, a leading diamond and jewelry company with worldwide presence, chose SAP solutions to automate processes to achieve end-to-end process efficiency and transparency across its organization, to fuel growth. “As our operations grow, we need a scalable enterprise application with world-class functionality which will support our transformation into a global business. Our journey with SAP will help us accomplish our growth plans within the framework of corporate governance,” said  Asif I. Mansuri, IT Head, C Mahendra.

SAP solutions enable retailers to streamline their merchandise lifecycle, integrate and manage customer information, gain a better understanding of operations, deliver shareholder value and mitigate risk, as well as manage their human resource and financial business processes. SAP for Retail portfolio has enabled Indian retailers of all sizes to improve the overall customer experience. More than 6,280 retailers worldwide rely on SAP for Retail to remain competitive, including 33 of the top 50 global retailers.

Ranjan Das, Managing Director, SAP Indian Subcontinent concludes “SAP as a market leader is committed to spearhead innovation in this space. We will continue to assist clients maximize profitability by offering solutions that streamline operations, increase operational flexibility and synchronize business processes to help them become best-run retailers."