SAP SE announced a slate of new solutions and capabilities catering to the retail industry at Retail’s Big Show, the flagship industry event hosted by the National Retail Federation.
SAP’s top news is the general availability of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, retail, fashion, and vertical business solution. This enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution is built specifically for retailers and marks a significant milestone in bringing tailored ERP capabilities to retailers of all sizes worldwide.
“SAP’s announcement of an all-in-one platform tailored for retail represents a meaningful differentiator in the market,” said Leslie Hand, Group Vice President for IDC Retail Insights. “Retailers often struggle with fragmented solutions that excel in some areas but cannot deliver the end-to-end integration necessary for seamless retail operations.”
“With SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, retail, fashion, and vertical business, SAP brings the same best-in-class functionality trusted by market leaders and recognized worldwide, now tailored to meet the scale, price and time-to-value required by fast-growing organizations,” said Balaji Balasubramanian, senior vice president and global head, Commerce and Consumer Industries at SAP SE. He added that retailers, in order to deliver personalized experiences, need an ERP system with retail-specific processes and capabilities that are tailored to the complexities of merchandising, store operations, and retail supply chains. Balasubramanian notes that generic ERP systems lack these end-to-end retail processes and aren’t flexible enough for today’s digital consumer.
SAP’s latest offering addresses these challenges through a solution built on the flexibility of public cloud architecture that unifies industry-specific processes, data and AI and offers out-of-the-box integrations. It also provides a comprehensive suite of capabilities designed to streamline processes, enhance customer experiences and drive sustainable growth. The new platform offers integrated management of finance, procurement and merchandising, with unified operational data and ready-to-use AI.
New loyalty solution to feature data-driven personalization
SAP also announced a new loyalty management solution aimed at retailers and consumer packaged goods companies, scheduled for release in the second half of 2025.
According to new research from SAP Emarsys, four in five (83%) U.S. consumers feel undervalued by the brands they remain loyal to, with many questioning their loyalty altogether. This new solution aims to equip organizations with experiential journeys and personalized, real-time offers to help earn customer loyalty through integration with the SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP Service Cloud, SAP Emarsys and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, retail, fashion, and vertical business solutions.
Key features include:
- Loyalty profiles that connect every shopper with a cloud-based loyalty wallet, facilitating targeted and personalized offers, entitlements, and real-time basket analysis.
- Multi-brand loyalty management, as well as shared loyalty programs with partners that centralize loyalty programs across regions and markets, enabling combined brand programs for gaining market share.
- A single place for omnichannel promotion planning with real-time redemption to deliver any type of offer, digital payment and gifting to all customers on any channel.
- Loyalty journey planning that delivers experiential omnichannel journeys tailored to customer needs through personalized commerce, marketing, service and retail interactions.
- Quantifiable metrics that track promotion performance and loyalty-related liabilities, linking to financial systems to measure ROI, and enable settlements with the member and partner brands.
Artificial intelligence to make online shopping easier than ever
SAP also announced the general availability of an AI shopping assistant in the first half of 2025. This intelligent assistant, delivered with the SAP CX AI Toolkit, expands the existing AI capabilities of SAP Commerce Cloud, transforming the online shopping experience through natural language conversations that help customers quickly find exactly what they need.
