Use

The requirements that retail companies place on software solutions, in particular in the areas of planning and distribution, are different from the requirements of industrial companies, with their production-oriented objectives. For this reason, SAP developed a special retail solution, which you can use by setting up SAP ERP as SAP Retail .

Integration

Activating the SAP Retail business function set enables you to use functions developed specifically for the retail sector. These functions are described in this documentation. A significant difference between the retail system and a manufacturing system is the use of the article master as opposed to the material master. The majority of the retail-specific functions can only be used with articles and not with materials. In all other functions that are also relevant for retail, it is possible to use articles. However, it is often not possible to use articles in production-oriented functions. Note that most of these functions have not yet been tested with articles. There are no restrictions for using materials in an ERP system set up as SAP Retail , however, apart from in the Material Ledger and MRP Area functions.

In the case of the terms material and article , we differentiate between the master data and their designation on the system user interface. Whereas either material or article is used consistently for both master data records in the system (see Retail Terminology ), this part of the documentation uses material for master data records that were created using the maintenance transactions in the standard system (manufacturing system), and article for master data records created using the maintenance transactions in SAP Retail .

Prerequisites

You should only configure SAP ERP as SAP Retail if you are in possession of a valid license for SAP Retail .

Activities

If you activate the business function set SAP Retail , the core functions Material Ledger and MRP Area are no longer available. If you already use these functions and want to configure your system as an SAP Retail system, you must first deactivate these functions. The applications contain functions for reorganizing the data associated with this.

Vendor master processing represents another anomaly. If you make the relevant setting in Customizing in SAP Retail , changes made to master data can be automatically passed on to associated material master data and purchasing info records. While the standard system ignores these settings in Customizing in the account groups for vendors, any settings that have been made will become active when the SAP Retail business function set is activated, therefore potentially changing the system behavior. Before you switch on the business function set, you should therefore check the settings for transferring changes to master data in Customizing for Logistics - General under  Business Partner Vendors Control Define Account Groups and Field Selection (Vendor)and, if necessary, adjust these settings.

Finally, activate the SAP Retail business function set. For further information, see the Customizing under Activate Business Functions, and under SAP Retail .