Video: personalized customer offers delivered by new technology

– SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced the availability of the SAP® Precision Retailing solution, which empowers companies to influence consumer behavior at the moment of decision. The enterprise solution delivers personalized offers and suggestions in real time to consumers across multiple channels, including mobile devices, in-store kiosks and websites. The company also announced the SAP® Retail Store Ops Manager mobile app to further enhance in-store productivity. The announcement was made at the SAP Retail Forum North America, being held in Dallas October 1-3, 2012.

“Today’s companies want to become more customer-centric, they want to gain insight about each consumer’s behaviors and proclivities based on the volumes of rich data before, during and after each shopping activity,” said Greg Girard, program director, merchandise strategies, IDC. “Businesses that are able to do this and deliver personalized and contextualized offers in real time will delight the consumer with increased value and, at the same time, be able to shape profitable demand.”

Customers are already realizing significant benefits from SAP Precision Retailing. The ability to influence consumer behavior at the point of purchase through personalized offers has enabled companies to experience up to a 20 percent increase in promotional conversion rates, a 15 percent increase in average basket size and a 10 percent increase in the purchase of suggested upsell and cross-sell products. These personalized offers are created in real time by combining the consumer’s shopping context and location with the company’s knowledge of the consumer’s profile, preferences and purchase history along with in-store product availability.

SAP Precision Retailing is built on the SAP NetWeaver® Cloud platform, a world-class cloud infrastructure with high availability, performance and security. Data resides in a high performance, in-memory virtualized SAP HANA® database, transforming the way companies run their businesses and develop applications. SAP HANA is a unified platform for delivering real-time operational, predictive and text analytics on “big data,” as well as for running both transactional and analytical processes on the same foundation. Mobile, in combination with SAP HANA, “big data” and cloud, opens a new opportunity to interact directly with consumers, creating intimacy that helps increase consumer satisfaction and loyalty. At the same time, it captures real-time data about consumer behavior and offer performance to help companies optimize marketing spend.

“SAP Precision Retailing is launching at a time when companies are struggling to create direct relationships with consumers while still having to deal with the pressure of increasing marketing efficiency and promotions spending,” said Herve Pluche, vice president, Retail Consumer Mobile Initiative, SAP Labs. “With this solution, companies can maximize the return on their marketing investment. At the same time, they can create an enhanced shopping experience by collecting and acting on massive amounts of data about consumer behavior in real time and delivering relevant offers while the customer is standing right in the aisle.”

Beyond the retail sector, SAP Precision Retailing is applicable to companies in any industry — such as consumer products, transportation, banking and oil and gas — that want to get closer to customers and engage in personalized marketing. One example is the Societe de Transport de Montreal (STM), the largest public transit corporation in Québec and provider of more than 1.2 million public transit trips per day. STM recently selected SAP Precision Retailing to generate new revenue streams, increase customer satisfaction, and bolster ridership.

“Given SAP’s great credibility as a partner, we are very confident we will be able to meet and exceed our goals with SAP Precision Retailing,” said Denise Vaillancourt, executive director, STM. “STM was named best public transit system in North America in 2010, and by partnering with retailers, other transportation partners such as taxis and entertainment and media providers, we will be able to bring personalized content and offers to our 1 million OPUS Card users who are always on the move and looking to understand what’s nearby, what’s happening and where to find help for daily activities. SAP Precision Retailing is at the heart of this real-time, geo-localized and personalized, brand and consumer experience, driving traffic from the streets to the store or to the next consumer experience. STM will be starting a pilot program this fall initially with 20,000 transit users and once the product is fully tested, we will open it to all Montreal OPUS Card holders.”

For retailers, an educated and empowered store manager is the single most important human asset to have out on the sales floor. Most retailers find that store managers spend too much time in the backroom and staying on top of everything is a massive challenge. The SAP Retail Store Ops Manager mobile app allows access to real-time information on store performance, empowering store managers to implement corrective actions sooner to meet plan.