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Use

Product Information

Product

SAP Customer Activity Repository

Release

SAP Customer Activity Repository 1.0 SP08

Based On

SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP 7.40

SAP HANA Live for SAP Business Suite Release

SAP HANA Live for SAP Business Suite 1.0 SP02 or higher

Use

SAP Customer Activity Repository (also referred to throughout this documentation as “the repository”) is a foundation that collects transactional data that was previously spread over multiple independent applications in diverse formats. The repository provides a common foundation and a harmonized multichannel transaction data model for all consuming applications.

SAP Customer Activity Repository is composed of the following main components:

  • Multichannel Sales Repository (MCSR)

    MCSR is the basis for multichannel transaction and inventory visibility analysis. It captures the following types of data:

    • Transactional data, including point-of-sale (POS) transactions and several types of sales documents

    • Inventory data, such as current stock levels at a store, to enable near real-time inventory visibility analysis

    • Master data, such as store and article numbers

    You also use MCSR to define order channels, such as, the retail store, call center, or Web shop. This allows you to associate transactional data (POS transactions and sales documents) to the channel from which it originated.

  • Analytics Content

    The SAP HANA® database, responds in near real-time to analytical requests on huge amounts of data providing insight into sales performance and consumer behavior across all channels.

    The data stored by the SAP Customer Activity Repository is made available for analysis through virtual data models (VDMs). For more information, see SAP HANA Content for SAP Customer Activity Repository.

  • Demand Data Foundation

    Demand Data Foundation (DDF) is a re-usable software layer included in SAP Customer Activity Repository. The DDF module provides the consuming applications of SAP Customer Activity Repository with planning and analysis capabilities based on a proprietary data model, data import infrastructure, and mass maintenance tools.

  • Unified Demand Forecast

    Unified Demand Forecast (UDF) is the module in SAP Customer Activity Repository that provides the modeling and forecasting services to the consuming applications. By analyzing and modeling historical demand data and forecasting future demand, it allows retailers to gain insight into shopper behaviour and consumer demand.

Integration

POS Data Management

The Point of Sale Data Management software component (version RTLPOSDM 200) is included in the repository for acquiring POS transaction data. The POS Inbound Processing Engine (PIPE), included in Point of Sale Data Management, receives transactions from connected stores in the form of transaction logs (TLOGs). PIPE processes and stores the transactions in the repository.

Accessing Data from Connected Source Systems

SAP Customer Activity Repository requires the presence of a source SAP ERP system in your landscape. The following SAP ERP data is used by SAP Customer Repository:

  • Sales documents, including sales orders and billing documents.

  • Inventory data, maintained in the Inventory Management and Physical Inventory (MM-IM) module of your source SAP ERP system.

  • Master Data, such as store and article numbers.

SAP ERP data can be replicated to SAP Customer Activity Repository or, if SAP ERP and the repository are installed on the same SAP HANA database, accessed directly from the SAP ERP tables. For more information, see Usage of External Data by SAP Customer Activity Repository.

To fully utilize the functionality of SAP Customer Activity Repository, a source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system should also be present in your landscape. You replicate all required master data, such as customer information, from this CRM system into the repository. If the CRM system in your landscape is SAP CRM, you can replicate business partner information into the SAP Customer Activity Repository and use the default implementation of the functionality that assigns customers to POS transactions.

Loss Prevention Analytics

SAP Customer Activity Repository can be used to support the existing Loss Prevention Analytics (LPA) business process of the Store Analytics business scenario. The POS transactions received by the repository are verified against the LPA identification patterns, and all critical transactions are sent to a dedicated LPA DataSource. Once the critical transactions are identified, you can proceed to analyze these transactions further in a separate SAP NetWeaver BW system using the standard LPA BI Content.

For more information, see SAP Note 2010774 Information published on SAP site.

Integration with Other Applications

SAP Customer Activity Repository is designed to function with both receiving and consuming applications.

A receiving application is one that receives data sent from the repository using outbound tasks. SAP Customer Activity Repository integrates with the following receiving applications:

  • SAP Business Warehouse (BW)

  • SAP ERP for Retail

  • SAP Demand Management Foundation (DMF)

  • SAP Forecasting and Replenishment (F&R)

  • SAP Workforce Management (WFM)

A consuming application is one that makes use of, or consumes, data stored in the repository using SAP HANA views included in SAP HANA Content for SAP Customer Activity Repository. SAP Customer Activity Repository integrates with the following consuming applications:

  • SAP Promotion Management for Retail (PMR)

  • SAP Customer Engagement Intelligence, in particular, the Audience Discovery and Targeting workset

Similarly, you can use SAP BusinessObjects to build custom analytical reports on the VDMs included in SAP HANA content for SAP Customer Activity Repository.

Overview of SAP Customer Activity Repository

The following diagram provides an overview of SAP Customer Activity Repository, illustrating the different components of the repository, data acquisition, as well as the integration with consuming and receiving applications.



Figure 1: SAP Customer Activity Repository