Henning Sanders
Introduction
In our blog series “Omnichannel challenges and solutions”, we explore common challenges retailers face, discuss their root causes, and show how SAP cloud solutions can help overcome them.
In our third article, we take a closer look at a common challenge in multichannel retail: inconsistent pricing and promotions.
Inconsistent pricing and promotions – why does it happen?
From a customer’s perspective, it only seems natural to expect the same product from the same retailer to be sold at the same price across all channels – whether in-store or online. In practice, however, that’s often not the case, and rarely the result of deliberate intent. Prices or discounts often vary between physical stores and online shops. Even when this happens unintentionally, it can leave customers with a sense of confusion or unfairness.
Why do prices vary across sales channels?
Retailers often rely on a central pricing tool that stores the recommended retail price (RRP). This price is distributed to all sales channels, either directly or through the ERP system. However, in today’s online-driven retail market, prices are often adjusted more frequently and promotions applied more flexibly.
Accordingly, keeping prices synchronised in real time across all sales channels often poses a major challenge. In addition, many ERP systems offer only limited options for efficiently mapping promotions – e.g. through a “happy hour” function. The result is that companies often implement their own custom solutions in individual front-end systems – for example, an online shop may decide to apply a 10% discount to all products between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m.
Prices or discounts often vary between physical stores and online shops. Even when this happens unintentionally, it can leave customers with a sense of confusion or unfairness.
Why SAP OPP is the right solution
SAP Omnichannel Promotion Pricing (OPP) offers a solution to the challenges described above. Architecturally similar to SAP OMSA, it acts as a central source of pricing and promotion data. Requesting systems can access up-to-date prices and promotions at any time via API calls, ensuring that they are always synchronised.
SAP OPP also enables channel-specific pricing, meaning retailers can set different prices for each sales channel. Promotions can be managed easily via the user interface and can even support complex discount scenarios – such as “buy 3, pay for 2”. In addition, promotions can be defined based on conditions like customer group or minimum order value. A major advantage is that once a promotion is activated, it becomes valid immediately, with no need to resend data to the connected sales systems.
What’s more, our experience shows that POS systems – including SAP Customer Checkout – can be seamlessly integrated with SAP OPP through custom configurations.
Summary
With Omnichannel Promotion Pricing (OPP), SAP offers an effective solution to the problem of inconsistent pricing and promotions by distributing such information in real time across all sales channels – ensuring a consistent and fair shopping experience.
Sound interesting? How about a demo?
Want to learn more about SAP OPP? Get in touch with us today – we’d be happy to show you the solution live in our demo system.
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