Co-authored by Meenakshi Shukla

Retailers today need timely, reliable insights that connect SAP data with information from across the business. Yet SAP data often sits apart from order and customer information, making it harder to use for enterprise reporting or AI. 

For many retailers, SAP remains the system of record for finance and merchandising. It also supports inventory and supply chain operations. Making that data available in modern analytics platforms can require significant integration and preparation, particularly when teams need to preserve common business definitions. 

That challenge becomes more urgent when demand shifts or fulfillment needs change. Without a consistent view across systems, retailers can spend more time preparing data than using it to make more informed inventory and fulfillment decisions. 

A Modern Approach: Leveraging SAP Business Data Cloud 

SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) provides a governed foundation for SAP business data. It standardizes SAP business semantics and provides business-ready datasets for reporting, analytics, planning, and AI. Organizations can then connect SAP data with information from other systems while preserving its underlying business context. 

A key advantage of BDC is its flexibility – there’s no single BDC pattern that fits every retailer. Organizations can use different data access and sharing patterns depending on their business and technical requirements: 

• Data Products and Intelligent Applications: Provide curated SAP data with predefined semantics, reducing the work required to prepare or model it for specific analytics and AI use cases. 
• BDC Connect and Delta Sharing: Enable organizations to share SAP data products with analytics platforms such as Databricks without creating another copy of the underlying data.
• SAP BW Modernization and Reuse: Make established models available to modern analytics and AI platforms. This allows organizations to modernize while preserving existing business logic and reporting assets. 
• Query-based Data Access: Supports role-based, real-time access to operational SAP data for use cases that require current information. 
• Premium Outbound Integration: Offers a managed approach for replicating SAP data to supported non-SAP targets, such as cloud storage or data lake platforms, when physical data movement is required. 

A retailer’s existing landscape and selected use cases should guide the approach. Rather than treating every capability as a replacement for existing integrations, retailers should evaluate where BDC can simplify SAP data access and governance. They should also identify where it can reduce unnecessary replication or support a priority analytics or AI use case. 

Retail Use Cases Enabled by SAP Business Data Cloud 

By making SAP business data readily available to enterprise data platforms, SAP Business Data Cloud helps retailers create a more connected view of the business. Its value comes when teams use that view to answer questions that one system alone cannot address. 

For example, a retailer may exceed its online sales targets while overall profitability continues to decline. Sales reports show strong revenue, but they don’t explain why margins are shrinking. To understand the decline, teams need to look at the costs associated with fulfilling those orders. SAP BDC can make procurement and financial data available alongside order management and logistics data. Adding returns information can help retailers identify the operational drivers behind margin decreases and determine where action may be needed. 

Additional use cases include: 

• Improve replenishment decisions by connecting inventory positions with demand forecasts or supplier performance. This broader view can help retailers identify potential shortages earlier, then adjust replenishment accordingly. 
• Measure promotional effectiveness by connecting financial results with merchandising data and relevant customer or channel information. Retailers can then assess whether increased sales translated into profitable growth. 
• Support omnichannel fulfillment by connecting inventory availability with order or logistics information. Retailers can use this view to evaluate fulfillment options while accounting for operational constraints. 
• Support AI-driven demand forecasting by making governed SAP business data available alongside the enterprise data required by forecasting models. 
• Improve returns management by connecting returns information with inventory and financial data. This can provide a clearer view of return patterns and their operational impact. 

BDC can also make SAP data available to AI applications without requiring teams to rebuild its business meaning for every use case. Preserving that business meaning gives AI applications the context needed to interpret SAP data correctly and connect it with related enterprise information – this can then support more relevant forecasts or recommendations. 

What Retailers Should Consider 

Before selecting a BDC approach, retailers should map how their most important data is shared across the business. From there, they should then identify where disconnected systems or manual processes create reporting delays or inconsistent results. 

It’s important for retailers to start with a small set of business priorities and then identify the information and processes required to support them. This helps companies focus their BDC and data investments on specific business needs rather than modernization for its own sake. 

Looking Ahead 

For retailers evaluating BDC, the first question is how SAP data needs to support the broader enterprise data environment. Which data needs to move? Where should existing business logic be preserved? Retailers should also prioritize the use cases that justify the investment. 

Building the right capabilities to connect and govern this data can make it easier to expand analytics and AI use cases over time.