Question retail SAP Retail and SAP CAR

[Former Member]

Hi All,

I am new to concept of SAP IS retail and SAP CAR.
I would like to know how do these products integrate with any of SAP Business Suite Modules. How is the integration between Retail and CAR and how are related to SD, FI or MM?

I would appreciate any help on this (or) please direct me to suitable documentation.

Thanks,

Akshara

[former_member232581 · Accepted solution]

Hi Akshara

As suggested by Frank Schuler SAP IS retail is SAP ECC activated with Retail business function sets with added retail master data and business process along with traditional MM and SD business process. In SAP new product line SAP S/4 HANA it has few more simplification and retail has moved as part of S/4 HANA digital core. You will need to refer documents on SAP help for detailed understanding on them.

SAP Customer activity repository, as name suggest is the repository which can hold all the customer activity data. This data then can be used to produce an insight on very useful customer information required for business. SAP has provided some of the inbuilt algorithms and calculation views to process this customer data and produce useful information line OSA (on Shelf Availability), IV (Real time inventory visibility) , MCSR etc.

SAP CAR can be integrated with SAP ERP (IS Retail, FMS, S/4 HANA), CRM (Hybris), ARIBA etc. It can also integrate with third party ERP solution as well. CAR comes as part of CARAB (CAR application bundle) which also includes application like Assortment Planning, PMR etc. CAR can only run on HANA.

Concept is you can hold data in HANA calculation views which can take data from both ERP and CAR at same time. Therefore you will have most up to date data available. This data can be used then in any application to produce useful information.

Thanks

Vibhor.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the response.

I have further query on this.

1. Can CAR be implemented without CARAB? What is the advantage of having CARAB along with CAR?

2. How to we implement analytics on CAR? How can BW or HANA consume the data in CAR?

Thanks,

Akshara

[former_member232581 · Accepted solution]

Hi Akshara

As of now CAR is only available as part of CARAB bundle. I think the advantage is, you will get integrated solution for retail with separate licensing. You can switch on other application as and when you need.

CAR itself don't have any analytic but it can easily be integrated to any analytic application like SAP Lumira. We have used this in our landscape and it is as simple as referring HANA views as a data modal in Lumira.

CAR is itself on HANA and therefore whatever data you are expecting on CAR application is already present in HANA. Unless your ERP is on separate HANA database for which you will need SLT.

In my scenario I haven't used BW therefore not sure how integration would be but I expect it would be using SAP enterprise services.

Thanks

Vibhor.

[wei_luo]

SAP IS Retail (IS-R) is the industry solution tailored for the retail business. Comparing with the standard ECC, there're some fundamental changes / industry specific enhancements on the data model and functionalities, some production related functions are restricted after you switch on the retail indicator in the system.

Previously there's a component called 'POSDM', which is a add-on on the BW, this component is used to collect the sale data (receipts) coming from the Point of Sales(POS) system, aggregate the sales by product and store, and post them in the ECC. This part is now incorporated in the SAP CAR and is still an essential piece to handle the integration with POS. However, there are also some additional functions being introduced to the CAR to support the near real time inventory analysis, promotion management etc..

Basically speaking, you need both SAP IS-R and CAR (at least its 'POS data transfer & audit' function) in a retail project implementation, otherwise you have to perform a point-to-point integration with the POS system, which is not a best practise from the SAP architecture point of view.

[architectSAP]

Hello Akshara,

SAP IS-Retail is a so called industry solution based on SAP ERP and therefore includes modules like SD, FI or MM.

SAP CAR adds quite some functionality, especially also Multichannel Sales Repository (MCSR) for which it needs an integration into SAP ERP Inventory Management and Physical Inventory (MM-IM).

Best regards

Frank