In today’s retail landscape, customer expectations have never been higher. Shoppers want to move effortlessly between in-store visits, mobile browsing, social commerce, and digital marketplaces, expecting every interaction to be seamless and personalized.

Behind the scenes, retailers struggle to deliver these experiences due to fragmented, outdated, and incomplete data that makes real-time decision-making nearly impossible and hampers engagement, operational efficiency, and, ultimately, profitability.

The hidden costs of disconnected data

When retailers’ data exists in silos, the problem is compounded from all angles. With sales, inventory, marketing, and customer engagement data living in separate systems, retailers lack the clear view of customer behavior and business insights they need to respond with critical actions in real time. Lack of context within the data means businesses struggle to extract meaningful insights.

Consider the impact:

• Limited inventory visibility leads to stockouts and overstocks, frustrating customers and eroding profits.
• Lack of real-time insights hinders personalized customer engagement, diminishing loyalty.
• Disconnected operations make omnichannel fulfillment—such as buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) or hassle-free returns—difficult to execute smoothly.

At a moment when retailers must optimize every facet of their business to remain competitive, a unified data strategy isn’t optional—it’s essential.

A data-driven future: Turning insights into action

To break these silos, retailers need a unified data foundation—one that consolidates insights across all customer touchpoints, enabling real-time intelligence and business agility. SAP Business Data Cloud (SAP BDC), as recently announced, is an integrated solution that can bring data together from all sources, owned and external, to help create a single, trusted source of truth.

With SAP Business Data Cloud, retailers can have the total picture of data from sales, inventory, marketing, loyalty, service, and near-real-time statuses of third-party logistics.

With this holistic view, retailers can:

• Enable seamless cross-channel fulfillment, such as buy online, pick up in-store or return anywhere.
• Optimize operational efficiency for everything from intelligent sourcing and promotional planning to inventory visibility and availability across sales channels.
• Personalize customer engagement by leveraging data-driven insights to boost loyalty and increase revenue.

By shifting to a data-first approach, retailers can move beyond managing transactions to driving intelligent, customer-centric experiences for long-term loyalty and growth.

Why physical stores still matter—more than ever

Despite the rise of e-commerce, more than 80% of retail interactions still take place in physical stores. Brick-and-mortar locations remain central to the retail journey, yet, as retailers’ largest cost center, they also encompass the biggest operational challenges—from inventory carrying costs to labor and store operations.

Although today’s consumers are fluid in how they shop—researching products across multiple platforms or buying online and picking up in-store, for example—they still expect accurate, real-time visibility into inventory wherever they engage. In this landscape, data is the lifeblood that allows retailers to orchestrate orders, manage workflows, and ensure that customers can trust the information they see. Yet, according to a new report released today from SAP Emarsys, 51% of U.S. brands say their organization suffers from “dark data,” which is data that is collected but not effectively used.

To remain competitive, retailers must harness real-time transactional insights to optimize store efficiency, maximize revenue, and provide seamless customer interactions.

Bringing it all together: Intelligent order management

Retailers don’t just need data—they also need actionable, real-time intelligence that helps them drive smarter decision-making. That’s why SAP is integrating advanced order management capabilities as part of our broader data-driven customer experience strategy. SAP has a long history of helping thousands of retail and B2C customers manage vast amounts of data. Today we’re tailoring this expertise, trusted by market leaders worldwide, to help meet the scale, flexibility, and time-to-value required by fast-growing organizations.

As part of the SAP Order Management Services bundle, we are launching the SAP Omnichannel Sales Transfer and Audit solution today at Shoptalk in Las Vegas, Nevada. This modular, cloud-native solution can empower retailers with real-time visibility into transactions and inventory, helping to reduce friction and improve customer satisfaction. SAP Omnichannel Sales Transfer and Audit can unify POS data from multiple systems, process high-volume transactions in real time, and help ensure inventory accuracy across all channels to improve stock availability, financial reporting, and customer engagement—without the burden of complex, custom-built integrations.

Apart from omnichannel sales and audit capabilities, the SAP Order Management Services bundle also includes additional modular, cloud-native capabilities including SAP Order Management foundation and the SAP Order Management solution for sourcing and availability. The SAP Order Management Services bundle is natively connected with SAP S/4HANA, which can enable retail and consumer products organizations and other consumer brands to unlock real-time inventory visibility, streamline fulfillment, and reduce operational costs without complex and costly custom integrations. And, integrated with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, retail, fashion, and vertical business, announced at NRF earlier this year, the cloud-native capabilities of the SAP Order Management Services bundle can be even more scalable, secure, compliant, and affordable, enabling retailers to realize value more quickly than ever before.

Other benefits of SAP Omnichannel Sales Transfer and Audit include:

• Seamless POS integration can connect multiple POS systems with different data structures, working to eliminate silos and ensure data accuracy.
• Real-time inventory updates help keep omnichannel inventory accurate so customers can trust what they see online matches what’s available in-store.
• Smarter data processing and configurable data transfer and aggregation help update inventory, financials, and even loyalty programs effortlessly.
• Optimized sales data validation process can automate checks that are executed through configurable workflows.

By embracing a unified data strategy, retailers can eliminate complexity, reduce costs, and unlock new opportunities for growth—all while delivering the frictionless experiences today’s consumers expect.

Hornbach: The future of omnichannel retail in action

For Hornbach, one of the largest DIY stores in Germany, the idea of interconnected retail is more than just omnichannel. It needs to be able to add new channels quickly—and to maintain a seamless customer experience over all channels. Hornbach adopted SAP Order Management Services as a foundation for this vision, enabling the flexibility to address new markets quickly, connect new systems, process orders rapidly and efficiently, and adopt new innovations. With the addition of SAP Omnichannel Sales and Transfer Audit, the Hornbach team expects to get more visibility in day-to-day operations, like checking fraud detection and the completeness of transactions.

“The most exciting thing will be the combination of all these new technologies we’re seeing: artificial intelligence, event-driven architecture, as well as native cloud solutions,” said Carsten Mueller, head of Enterprise Architecture and Security, Hornbach. “The combination will give Hornbach great power in the next year.”

The future of retail is data-driven

The retail industry is evolving at an unprecedented pace, with AI redefining how businesses operate and interact with customers. According to the same SAP Emarsys report, 89% of U.S. consumer product marketers believe AI will be essential for engaging new customers. However, the effectiveness of AI hinges on the reliability and accuracy of the data it processes.

Retailers that embrace AI-powered data intelligence will lead the next era of omnichannel excellence. The future isn’t just about connecting data—it’s about activating it in real time to drive seamless customer interactions.

To stay ahead, retailers must:

• Invest in AI-driven analytics to predict demand, optimize pricing, and personalize engagement at scale.
• Implement intelligent order and transaction management to automate fulfillment, reduce friction, and improve supply chain agility.
• Leverage AI-powered customer insights to create hyper-personalized experiences that drive loyalty and lifetime value.
• Enable real-time inventory intelligence to ensure products are available where and when customers need them.

As omnichannel complexity grows, brands that fail to unify their data risk falling behind. SAP Business Data Cloud and intelligent order management solutions can provide the foundation for a future-proof transformation. As AI continues to evolve, retailers must shift from reactive decision-making to proactive, predictive commerce, where every transaction is optimized for efficiency and profitability.

The future of retail is here. Those who harness AI to unify, analyze, and act on their data will define the next generation of customer experience and retail success. I’m excited to partner with companies navigating this transformation and empower them to seize new opportunities for success.

Want to learn more? Stay tuned to see how leading retailers are leveraging SAP’s data-driven approach to optimize their operations and stay ahead of the competition and learn more about SAP’s solutions for retail.

Balaji Balasubramanian is president and chief product officer for SAP Customer Experience and Consumer Industries.

Strategic decision-making practices in HR rely on accurate and accessible people data for talent acquisition, performance management, employee engagement, compliance, and more. Plus, having a “clean” data foundation is an imperative to take advantage of AI-driven tools. To set itself up for future success and better service and manage its over 7,000 employees around the world, U.S.-based Edgewell Personal Care embarked an 18-month-long project to improve its HR data quality within its SAP SuccessFactors solutions.

Edgewell’s portfolio of more than 25 well-known personal care brands, including Schick, Banana Boat, Wilkinson Sword, and Wet Ones, drove $2.25 billion in net sales in 2024. The company relies on a people-first culture that enables the right environment for employees to be efficient and the company at large to “win the shelf,” as Colin Emery, director of Global HR Systems at Edgewell, puts it. 

In 2022, Emery was tasked with establishing a People Analytics function at Edgewell, but he quickly realized that the underlying data he needed was inaccurate. “Our system of record was no longer the system of record. We didn’t actually have one,” Emery explains. At that time, the company’s HR data accuracy was just 37% for key data fields within the Position and People Profile. 

Since Edgewell was formed in 2015, Emery says, it has relied on the “infinite configurability” of SAP SuccessFactors solutions to scale, systemize, and standardize the company’s HR systems across the world. While the solutions were working as designed, the data housed in them wasn’t being maintained properly, causing a backlog of inaccuracies to flow downstream. “It was clear that the quality of our data within SAP SuccessFactors was less than perfect in some parts of the world, particularly in countries where we don’t have SAP SuccessFactors Payroll integrated,” he says.

Knowing that high data quality is crucial for effective decision-making, reporting accuracy, a painless user experience, and future innovation—but not having the budget or time to engage external resources—Emery decided to develop Edgewell’s methodology in-house to tackle the issue.

Upskilling to establish HR data champions

After identifying the priority data fields that needed to be cleaned and maintained to have the most impact on data quality, Emery turned to the people who owned and best understood the data: the HR business partners (HRBPs). To ensure the success of the data quality project, the HRBPs needed to buy in. This required a mindset shift and significant change management, he says, since not all HRBPs felt responsible for maintaining the data in the SAP SuccessFactors solutions and some needed training to understand systemized HR processes. 

To help with the transition, Emery established an HR data steward program to upskill Edgewell’s HRBP community. Designated data stewards receive weekly reports and are tasked with personally resolving the data errors or informing an appropriate colleague. They are trained on the causes and consequences of the inaccuracies and how to remedy them, empowering the data stewards to become experts and educate other HRBPs. Upskilling the HRBPs helped them shift from a reactive to a more proactive mindset, which was a critical factor in the data quality project’s success, Emery says. 

Case in point: the number of data inaccuracies has decreased from 2,700 to just a handful. “It’s a tiny, tiny fraction of what it was,” Emery says. “That’s based on the fact that the HRBPs are getting it right the first time, instead of making errors that need to be fixed.”

The project began in the U.S. and eventually flowed to Europe, LATAM, and APAC. Now, Edgewell’s data accuracy consistently holds at 96%–97%, Emery says.

Quality data drives quality decision-making

The success of its data quality and data steward project is clear, and now Edgewell can reap the rewards of a clean HR data foundation. This has had profound effects on the reliability of the company’s HR reporting, for which Edgewell uses stories in SAP SuccessFactors solutions. “There’s a massive advantage to using stories when we’re using live, in-the-moment SAP SuccessFactors data,” Emery says, adding that the ability to send a link that is accessible based on existing role-based permissions makes sharing the data simple and fast. Edgewell uses stories to look at data around inclusion and belonging, leadership, tenure, talent acquisition, and more, sharing the insights with company leadership, HR leaders, and HRBPs.

This data-driven culture has helped Edgewell identify areas of improvement and make strategic HR decisions. For example, in looking at the data, the People Analytics team uncovered a short-term turnover issue for specific roles and locations. Based on this insight, Edgewell’s HR function created a new candidate experience to help improve and systemize recruiting and onboarding processes. Called “Joyful Journey,” the program also doubles as a way for the company to share about itself and attract talent to the organization. “We never would have known that was the right thing to do without the data,” Emery says. “That then led us to invest time, effort, and dollars in those processes, which immediately made a positive impact on short-term turnover.”

“Over the last three years, we have been providing data and explaining its importance by cleaning up the data within the system to make it more meaningful to us,” Emery adds. “For us, it’s never going to be data for data’s sake. It has to be about what the actions that this data suggests.”

Ready for the future

Not only does Edgewell’s impressive data quality equip its leaders with actionable insights, but it creates a strong foundation for the personal care company to take advantage of HR innovations, especially considering that many, like AI, require clean data to work properly. AI copilots and agents, like Joule, are only as good as the data they run on, which is why data quality and data governance initiatives are becoming business imperatives. 

In that case, Edgewell is ahead of the curve. “When I started working on People Analytics three years ago, I knew that we had to focus on [cleaning up the data] first to prepare for super automation and the AI tools that were coming,” Emery says. “It will set us up in good stead for the next iteration of tools.”

Discover how SAP SuccessFactors solutions enable companies to maintain quality HR data, which is crucial for efficient HR management, future innovations like AI, and overall business success.

Gillian Hixson is an integrated communications specialist at SAP.

At SAP Concur Fusion 2025, SAP showcased AI-driven innovations and a strategic partnership, enhancing travel and expense management with improved visibility, automation, compliance, and spend insights while driving efficiencies and enriching employee experiences.

As our world demands organizational adaptability at warp speed, business travel also is transforming in a fast-paced and complex environment. At our annual flagship event for SAP Concur users and experts, we delved into the power of AI, sharing insights and experiences. Whether customers and partners attended in person in Seattle, Washington, or virtually, they all gained new perspectives on how to navigate the complexities of tomorrow’s business landscape with confidence. 

Global participation and experts on-site

Customers and partners joined SAP Concur Fusion from all over the world, representing 75 countries. At the Seattle Convention Center, attendees could explore the new Fusion Pavilion in the exhibition hall and talk to SAP Concur experts and 43 exhibiting partners. We offered over 180 unique learning opportunities including Ask the Expert and breakout sessions, micro forums, and product trainings to explore how SAP Concur solutions can deliver innovation in travel and expense while unlocking efficiencies.

Debut: Integrating Joule with SAP Concur to enhance user experience

During the event’s day one keynote, we announced new generative AI innovations and an expanded partnership with American Express.

SAP is embedding its generative AI copilot Joule into SAP Concur solutions, bringing the portfolio one step closer toward a fully automated travel and expense management process.

In the Concur Expense solution, Joule will help answer employees’ questions and work to ensure that expense reports are ready for submission with minimal effort. For example, Joule can assemble a timeline view of expenses, review for mistakes or missing expenses, and make recommendations for how best to complete the expense report. General availability is expected in the second quarter of 2025.

In the Concur Travel solution, Joule will be embedded to help plan locations for off-site meetings, providing meeting location recommendations and high-level flight and hotel cost estimates based on meeting attendees’ origination points. Once the meeting site and hotel options are selected, Joule will create an e-mail template to send to team members with a link to book directly in Concur Travel. Joule with Concur Travel is now in the SAP Early Adopter Care program with general availability expected later this year.

Automating expense management in Concur Expense

On stage, we also announced an expanded partnership with American Express to help simplify expense management for shared customers. SAP Concur and American Express are launching a real-time authorization data capability whereby American Express Corporate Card purchases automatically generate and categorize expenses in Concur Expense at the time of spend. This feature will first be available for meal expenses. It also will include mobile notifications that send the employee expense policy reminders in the moment.

We also are working to expand access to our integration with Mastercard, which automates expense entry at the time of purchase, so more Mastercard customers can benefit from a simpler and more efficient experience.

Additionally, American Express Global Business Travel has integrated its hotel marketplace, featuring over 2 million properties across 180 countries with competitive rates, into the new Concur Travel solution, providing customers with access to comprehensive hotel content, including negotiated programs and preferred partner rates.

Announcing SAP Concur Innovation Award winners

On day two of the event, we celebrated the remarkable achievements of our SAP Concur Innovation Award winners. These companies have leveraged SAP Concur solutions to revolutionize their travel and expense processes, enhancing efficiency and visibility. The 2025 winners include L’Oréal Groupe, which streamlined user provisioning between HR and expense systems, and Weatherford, which automated its global travel and expense program, significantly improving data integrity and compliance.

UST, Coca-Cola, E.ON, and Mayekawa also have demonstrated exceptional innovation. UST consolidated its T&E processes; Coca-Cola unified its travel booking and expense systems; E.ON automated data collection for GDPR compliance; and Mayekawa reduced its finance team’s workload by more than 12,000 hours. These successes highlight the transformative power of SAP Concur solutions in driving business efficiency and growth. We are very proud to recognize these exceptional organizations as 2025 SAP Concur Innovation Award winners.

Move to future T&E: Spotlight on generative AI

SAP Concur is creating a world where travel and expenses practically manage themselves. At SAP Concur Fusion, we shared with customers and partners how we continue to deliver on that journey—with touchless, intuitive experiences enabled by industry-leading SAP Business AI and close partnerships with top payment providers. The Concur Travel and Concur Expense solutions are part of SAP Business Suite, SAP’s comprehensive portfolio of integrated solutions that combines our core cloud ERP and line-of-business applications, fueled by unmatched business data and actionable AI.

Chris Juneau is SVP and head of SAP Concur Product Marketing.

SAP, the world’s largest ERP software provider and leading supply chain solution provider, has again been named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Supply Chain Planning Overall 2024 Vendor Assessment. In addition, in four of the five vendor assessments, SAP was named a Leader.

According to the IDC MarketScape, “The company’s ability to cover end-to-end operations and integrate planning within a core system comes ready to implement.” The report also noted that “SAP’s size and scope is globally expansive, and the company’s client base in supply chain planning is extensive.”

Other key strengths recognized include:

• Analytics and dashboarding with both web-based and Excel-based interfaces
• Ready-to-implement and business-tested sets of algorithms across planning
  functions
• Synchronized planning integrating finance, supply chain planning, and execution
• AI and machine learning demand planning enabling what-if scenario modeling, demand sensing, analytics, new product introduction, and more
• Inventory optimization integrated with SIOP and S&OP processes

SAP was also positioned in the remaining supply chain planning vendor assessments:

• A Leader in the IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Supply Chain Planning for Process Industries 2024 Vendor Assessment
• A Leader in the IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Supply Chain Planning for Life Sciences Industries 2024 Vendor Assessment (doc #US51047123, November 2024)
• A Leader in the IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Supply Chain Planning for Distribution Industries 2024 Vendor Assessment
• A Leader in the IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Supply Chain Planning for Discrete Industries 2024 Vendor Assessment
• A Major Player in the IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Supply Chain Planning in Spare Parts/MRO 2024 Vendor Assessment (doc #US51541424, December 2024)

SAP’s composable approach to providing planning solutions for its customers coupled with native integration between those composable elements and ERP systems allows companies to orchestrate their supply chain to help meet their specific needs. That same composability can allow companies to extend and expand their solutions at their own rate with minimal disruption to existing processes.

Native connectivity with SAP’s ERP and additional extended function applications can provide the data foundation for multiple artificial intelligence use cases. AI use spans advanced algorithmic machine learning, generative AI for analysis of complex structured and unstructured data, and, soon, agentic AI to analyze data, initiate actions, and ultimately recommend and execute planning decisions. Since supply chain orchestration requires multi-enterprise collaboration, SAP helps provide trading partner connectivity through its best-in-class business network, which can not only connect trading partners for business transactions but also for end-to-end, collaborative, and continuously interactive planning processes.

Supply chain business needs to go far beyond distant promises of what could be and requires solutions that solve real problems today, leveraging the right technology in the right place for the right purpose. SAP’s strategy is to provide data, applications, and AI that help keep the business running while continually evaluating evolving technologies that can be practically applied.

SAP is delighted to be recognized by the IDC MarketScape in supply chain planning. We remain committed to being a trusted partner, providing reliable software solutions that help meet the evolving needs of our customers. We will continue to incorporate new and cutting-edge technologies where they offer clear business value, helping our customers to excel and be their very best.

Sources: IDC Marketscape: Worldwide Supply Chain Planning Overall 2024 Vendor Assessment, November 2024, IDC #US52694624e; IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Supply Chain Planning for Process Industries 2024 Vendor Assessment, October 2024, IDC #US51273023e; IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Supply Chain Planning for Distribution Industries 2024 Vendor Assessment, October 2024, IDC #US51272924e; IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Supply Chain Planning in Discrete Manufacturing 2024 Vendor Assessment, October 2024, IDC #US51272724e

Jay Foster is global product marketing director for Supply Chain Planning at SAP.