How a leading US retailer addressed their sales reconciliation and inventory visibility challenges with SAP CAR | Case Study
Benefits realized and Approach
Applexus was able to address PetSmart’s order fulfillment challenges by implementing SAP CAR’s Inventory Visibility module. With this, PetSmart was able to reduce the delay in inventory visibility status from 4 hours to just 5 min. This has significantly improved their customer experience. In addition to implementing SAP CAR inventory visibility, we also integrated their online transactions directly into SAP CAR since PetSmart was not using SAP Sales and Distribution module.
We also replaced PetSmart’s home-grown legacy sales audit solution that faced issues in sales audit and reconciliation with SAP CAR’s POS Data Transfer and Audit. SAP POSDTA was fully integrated with PetSmart’s business landscape and along with Applexus’ CAR add-on solution – Store & Payment reconciliation, PetSmart was able to automate the reconciliation of 98% of their sales transactions compared to the earlier 60%. This led to a considerable decline in cost and errors associated with their existing manual reconciliation by the IT team.
Client
Pet Retailer
Solution
- SAP CAR POS Data Transfer and Audit
- Inventory Visibility
- Applexus Add-on solutions to CAR –
- Store Reconciliation and
- Payment Reconciliation
At a glance
PetSmart struggled with order fulfillment issues resulting in customer dissatisfaction. We helped PetSmart implement SAP CAR to improve their inventory visibility from a 4-hour delay to just 5 min that increased their order fulfillment and hence customer satisfaction. We also helped PetSmart improve their sales reconciliation automation from 60% to 98% which eliminated the risks, costs and efforts associated with manual reconciliation.
Our add-on solution which can be configured as a fiori tile, provided PetSmart a convenient user interface to reconcile sales transactions for 8 different tender types while automating the reconciliation between the payment processor files and SAP CAR’s omnichannel sales data. It also provides a KPI dashboard and reports that allow PetSmart to understand their store performance, the major errors that require their immediate attention and the type of errors.
Applexus was able to complete the project in just 4 months ensuring an accelerated implementation that provided business value quickly. Having implemented SAP CAR at multiple clients, our deep expertise in CAR, our Industry Focus Solution specifically designed for CAR and leveraging our proprietary RunningStart methodology enabled a faster, low risk and low-cost implementation.
Challenges
PetSmart was facing challenges in its omnichannel order fulfillment that resulted in customer dissatisfaction. Inventory visibility issues hampered their ability to fulfill customer orders on time leading to poor customer experiences that eventually impacted on their profitability. Prior to implementing SAP CAR, there was a 4-hour delay in updating their inventory status that led to these order fulfillment issues.
PetSmart was also having challenges in their sales reconciliation process that was impacting their operations. Their current process automates the reconciliation for only 60% of their sales transactions while the remaining 40% had to be reconciled manually by their IT team leading to high chances of errors, risks and costs. They needed an effective sales audit and reconciliation solution that could address this and improve their operational efficiency.
The Payment and Store reconciliation add-on from Applexus and their RunningStart methodology, have really allowed us to springboard forward quickly to address some of our sales audit and sales reconciliation challenges that we were having. Our sales Recon numbers were probably down around the 60s and mid-60s. We're now sitting at a 98% automated sales reconciliation which is huge. We went from a 4-hour delay on our inventory to what we call real-time inventory, which is now 5 minutes.
Tom Reiter
Vice President -
Information Technology
PetSmart