The right data
at the right time
Retail is an increasingly data-rich industry. The opportunity to capture data
and gain a deeper understanding of consumer behavior increases as the industry goes
digital. The data challenge comes from making sure retailers capture the right information
and managing the growing amount of data sources in one central access layer.
The retail industry is also competitive and fast-paced, so data and insights
must be processed quickly to make better business decisions.
SAP Data Warehouse Cloud provides retailers with a clear overview of their data.
The native integration with SAP Analytics Cloud delivers real-time insights.
This way, you can look at performance and take immediate action. To help retailers
achieve a faster time to value, SAP Data Warehouse Cloud offers prebuilt business content
that leverages the expertise from SAP and SAP partners. It currently includes
content that connects the SAP Consumer Sales Intelligence solution to
analyze point-of-sale transactions.
SAP Data Warehouse Cloud offers tight integration with on-premise solutions, enabling a
straightforward extension to the cloud. For SAP BW/4HANA customers,
SAP Data Warehouse Cloud is the perfect complement to their on-premise investment.
SAP BW/4HANA objects work in SAP Data Warehouse Cloud to leverage
your existing investment in the cloud.
How SAP Data Warehouse Cloud Solves Your Biggest Challenges

Retailers face complex data landscapes. Data is typically spread over four key solutions:
- Customer experience data and webshop data in SAP C/4HANA,
- Merchandise management and finance in SAP S/4HANA,
- POS data in SAP CAR/SAP CSI
- and historical data in SAP BW/4 HANA.
All of this is in addition to any non-SAP data sources as well as flat files. SAP Data Warehouse Cloud unites all these data sources into one central access layer that offers simple analysis and reporting with SAP Analytics Cloud. SAP Data Warehouse Cloud’s virtualization also enables data to be accessed remotely without copying or moving the data.
SAP Data Warehouse Cloud’s business layer maps business terminology to the underlying data. This way, you can map data from various sources under one business-friendly name – for example, all data related to merchandise – to provide a consistent view of data. If the underlying data connected to SAP Data Warehouse Cloud changes, you just need to point the business layer to the new data.
POS data is critical in understanding consumer behavior, especially when connected in real-time to KPIs that provide insights into performance. SAP Data Warehouse Cloud and SAP Analytics Cloud analyze POS data in real-time. This helps you understand different regions, store locations, and merchandise categories. Analyze KPIs like sales amount, sales quantity, number of transactions, or average basket value with SAP Analytics Cloud’s incredible data visualizations. Breakdown TOP and FLOP performing stores, and products over any period, even down to the hour, to get a deeper understanding of consumer behavior. Integration between SAP Data Warehouse Cloud and SAP Analytics Cloud means data models can be consumed and visualized without switching interfaces.
A comparative analysis of past performance can provide an edge over your competition. However, if you can’t ensure the quality of your data, comparative analytics suffer. SAP Data Warehouse Cloud extracts, replicates, or virtualizes data from different sources to create one robust high-performing data layer with complex data models that span multiple data sources. With this data layer feeding directly into your analytics tool, modeling no longer has to be done in the backend system with a live connection or in your analytics tool with an import connection. With SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, all your models sit in one unified data layer.
SAP Data Warehouse Cloud enables extensive comparative analysis with different data sources and time frames in the same dashboards. Retailers can compare year-to-date values (YTD) by last-year-to-date values (LYTD) to get a condensed and comparative overview of their business.
Architecture
