Customer Activity Repository 2.

0 FP2
Feature Overview
December 2015
Summary

This document provides an overview of the new features that were

added to the Customer Activity Repository as part of the Customer
Activity Repository Application Bundle release SPS03. This
document also includes information related to the Unified Demand
Forecast (UDF) and Demand Data Foundation (DDF).

For detailed information for each of the features in this document,

please refer to the SAP Customer Activity Repository Application help:
http://help.sap.com/car

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Agenda

1. Introduction and Overview

2. POS Data Transfer and Audit
3. Multichannel Foundation
4. Multichannel Sales Analytics
5. Inventory Visibility
6. Demand Data Foundation
7. Unified Demand Forecast

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SAP Customer Activity Repository

SAP Customer Activity Repository is a foundation that collects

granular sales data previously spread over multiple siloed
applications in diverse formats.

… as the basis for multi-channel transactions, SAP Customer

Activity Repository captures information on consumer sales activities
across all interaction channels enriched by master and transactional
data.

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SAP Customer Activity Repository

The Repository stores data at the most granular level of detail,

allowing the embedded science layer to execute advanced statistical
algorithms and pattern predictions.

SAP HANA, the underlying in-memory technology of the Repository,

responds to analytical requests on huge amounts of data in real-
time. The Repository gives insight into sales performance and
consumer behavior across all channels enabling new processes and
interaction with all parties.

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 SAP Customer Activity Repository – High Level View

Provides a harmonized view of Supports high volume

a consumers sales transactions Multichannel POS transactional data transfer and
across different channel Foundation sales audit

Gives real-time
insight into Drives multichannel
inventory quantities
Inventory Multichannel enabled analytics
and valuations for Visibility SAP Sales Analytics on transactional
the store channel
HANA consumer data

• Enables high
Drives ‘new’ real-time
performance demand
business scenarios Enable New Forecasting
forecasts for optimized
using analytics and Processes Capabilities promotions and
forecasting information
inventories

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SAP Customer Activity Repository
Building Blocks and Addressed Roles

Promotion Category Store Supply Chain

Marketing
Management Management Management Management

Store Inventory /
Promotion Category Demand
Manager/ Replenishment
Planner Manager Planner
Employee Planner

POS Analysis MC Sales Analysis Inventory Visibility

Optional
VDM Hybris
POS Sales Multichannel Sales Inventory … Mkt

CRM IC

PIPE
SAP
(POS Inbound Processing Engine) Customer Activity Repository BW

Unified Demand Forecast Sales Frequency

q 0   p  v  Analysis
D4 NT Av1QTK F2CKN e 1Q 2 N 1QTK 2CN (known as OSA Algorithm
US  
)

 4 N (~z4 NT  1)  1
SLT
SAP HANA

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SAP Customer Activity Repository – Modules

SAP SAP SAP * Optional

Partner Co-Deployment
New Features Promotion Assortment Merchandise
Applications
Management Planning Planning (SAP and Partners)

SAP IS Retail
SAP Customer Activity Repository (CAR) SAP Sales
Insights for
Master Data SAP HANA Live - Analytics Retail 3.0

SAP HANA (in-memory computing)

Sales
Documents
SAP Hybris
POS Data Unified Inventory
Transfer and Demand Visibility
Marketing*
Inventory
Audit Forecast

Point of Sale SAP

Business
Sales Multichannel Demand Data On Shelf Warehouse*
Transactions Transaction Foundation Availability
Data
Management
SAP CRM Other
Customer applications
Data *

© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. Early Knowledge Transfer Customer 8
Agenda

1. Introduction and Overview

2. POS Data Transfer and Audit
3. Multichannel Sales Analytics
4. Inventory Visibility
5. Demand Data Foundation
6. Unified Demand Forecast

© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. Early Knowledge Transfer Customer 9
Enhancements in this release

POS Data SAP Customer Activity Repository now provides the

Transfer and ability to:
Audit
 Leverage enhancements to TLOG Storage Optimization in order
to reduce the in-memory footprint of transactional data in the
system
 Leverage alternate storage of POS Transaction data by copying
infrequently used transactional data into alternate storage using
technology platforms such as SAP IQ and Hadoop
 Leverage new enhanced search capabilities in the POS
Workbench
 Extended integration with SAP Fashion Management during task
processing

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 Enhancements POS Data Transfer and Audit

Storage Optimization of Transaction Logs

Use Case New options added

to select the field
Manage the growing size of POS transaction database and its level data that will be
cleared during the
impact on the performance of analytical scenarios deletion phase of the
archiving process

Solutions
New reports to reduce the in-memory footprint of transactional data
in the system by selecting the specific database columns to
archive and clear from the /POSDW/TLOGF and
/POSDW/TLOGF_X tables
• The Archiving POS Transactions: Deletion Program report
(/POSDW/ARCHIVE_DELETE_HDB_F) has been enhanced with
a column selection screen available in both a basic and advanced
mode. New options added to
restore the field level
• The Restore TLOG Entries From Archiving report data that will be
(/POSDW/ARCHIVE_RESTORE_TLOG_F) has been enhanced brought back to the
TLOGF table during
with a column selection screen within which you can select which the restoration
columns you would like to restore into your system. process

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 Enhancements POS Data Transfer and Audit

Alternate Storage of Transaction Logs

Use Case
Manage the growing size of POS transaction database and its impact on
the performance of analytical scenarios and total cost of ownership (TCO)

Solutions
New report (/CAR/TABLE_CONTENT_AGING) to reduce the in-memory
footprint of infrequently used transactional data by copying it into alternate
storage using technology platforms such as SAP IQ or Hadoop. It can then
be archived using the existing SAP tool, to free up your SAP HANA system

Design Considerations
• This new solution has been designed only to age transactional data from
the following tables:
• TLOGF, TLOGF_X, TLOGF_EXT
• No views are provided for the reading of data which has been copied to
the alternate storage location.
• Click here to read the Quick Starter for Smart Data Access which
provides instructions on how to set up a data connection from an existing
SAP IQ or Hadoop system.

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 Enhancements POS Data Transfer and Audit

Alternate Storage of Transaction Logs

Data Aging Report

Use the report (/CAR/TABLE_CONTENT_AGING) to

copy your transaction log (TLOGF) data and its
extensions from your SAP HANA database to an
alternate storage technology such as SAP IQ or
Hadoop. Depending on the target technology you adopt
in your implementation scenario, different parameters
have to be provided.

Click here for a detailed description of each of the

required parameters.

Example SAP IQ Parameter screen

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 Enhancements POS Data Transfer and Audit

Alternate Storage of Transaction Logs

Configuration

Hadoop
The aging data is copied from SAP HANA to Hadoop via the
HDFS (Hadoop Distributed File System) NFS (Network File
System) Gateway. A mount point needs to be created on the
SAP NetWeaver system for the data files to be created directly
in the HDFS.
Click here (Hadoop→Prerequisites) to read detailed
instructions on how to setup the mount point.

SAP IQ
The aging data is copied from SAP HANA to SAP IQ via Smart
Data Access, which exposes data from SAP IQ Remote
Sources as virtual tables.
You must have assigned a remote source SAP IQ host in the
Eclipse framework.
Click here to read the Configure SAP IQ for Use With SAP
Customer Activity Repository section of the installation guide
for detailed implementation instructions.

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 Enhancements POS Data Transfer and Audit

Enhanced Search of POS Workbench

Use Case
Provide a sales auditor with the ability to perform extended transaction
searches directly on the database. This will remove the dependency on
the TREX server thus lowering the total cost of ownership (TCO) for
customers.

Solutions
• Provide SAP HANA enabled transactional (TLOGF) search similar to
the existing TREX searching capabilities.
• This SAP HANA database search will leverage the in-memory searching
capabilities providing much faster response time while reducing the
TCO.

Note: To optimize performance of the extended search, you can restrict the number of transaction search results by
implementing SAP Note 2223285.

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 Enhancements POS Data Transfer and Audit

Enhanced Search of POS Workbench

Customizing
This feature can be activated from General Settings for POS Inbound Processing customizing screen as illustrated below:
SAP Customer Activity Repository → POS Data Management → POS Inbound Processing → General Settings → Define General Settings

Use TREX Search

The extended search functionality is enabled and uses the
TREX server to implement this function. The Attributes
and Item tabs will be displayed in the POS workbench
selection screen, and it will be possible to use the fields
shown in these two tabs as part of the global search
condition. This is the existing functionality. It remains
unchanged.

Use Enhanced Transaction Search

The extended search functionality is enabled and uses the SAP HANA DB search to implement this function. The Attributes
and Item tabs will be displayed in the POS workbench selection screen, and it will be possible to use fields shown in these two
tabs as part of the global search condition. The maximum number of POS transactions to be returned by the search can be
optionally specified.
No Enhanced Transaction Search
The extended search functionality is disabled. The Attributes and Item tabs (to enter the search criteria) will be hidden in the
POS workbench selection screen. This is similar to the old behavior when the TREX based search is disabled.

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Enhancements POS Data Transfer and Audit

Support for Season Determination

Use Case
Support seasonal reporting processes, such as sales performance
analysis for a specific season

Solution
• Extended integration with SAP Fashion Management during task
processing in SAP Customer Activity Repository. Season information*
can now be integrated into sales transactions at the retail line item
level for the SAP ERP Fashion Management Solution (FMS).
• Season information* is enabled by new task parameters in each of
the outbound tasks for WPUBON and WPUUMS.
*Season year, season, fashion collection, and fashion theme

Note: Before you can use this new feature, you must implement SAP Note 2210490.

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Enhancements POS Data Transfer and Audit

Support for Season Determination

Customizing
A new parameter is added to each of the outbound tasks for WPUBON and WPUUMS (parameter profile 0002 and 0009), to
enable or disable season information:

Parameter name Type and length Values

PROCESS_FASHION_PARAM C(1) ‘X’: Fill season fields
‘ ‘: Do not fill season fields

In addition, the season fields are added to the following aggregation levels for two-step processing:
Aggregation Level Table for Aggregation Records Aggregation Record: Aggregation Type
Field Name Aggregation Type
0001 /POSDW/AGGR01 FSH_COLLECTION Overwrite
FSH_SEASON Overwrite
FSH_SEASON_YEAR Overwrite
FSH_THEME Overwrite
0002 /POSDW/AGGR01 FSH_COLLECTION Overwrite
FSH_SEASON Overwrite
FSH_SEASON_YEAR Overwrite
FSH_THEME Overwrite

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Enhancements POS Data Transfer and Audit

Support for Season Determination

Outbound Tasks
The following outbound tasks have now been enhanced with retail fashion-related information, such as the season year,
season, fashion collection, or fashion theme:

Task Type Task Code Task Description

Tasks for Sending Data to Follow-On Applications 0050 Supply DMF-Based Applications

Tasks for Sending Data to Follow-On Applications

0009 Generate WPUBON IDoc (Non-Goods Items)
→ Sending Data to SAP Retail

Tasks for Sending Data to Follow-On Applications

0010 Generate WPUBON IDoc
→ Sending Data to SAP Retail

Tasks for Sending Data to Follow-On Applications

0014 Generate WPUUMS IDoc
→ Sending Data to SAP Retail

Using Outbound Tasks 3001 Sales Data as IDoc WPUUMS

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Agenda

1. Introduction and Overview

2. POS Data Transfer and Audit
3. Multichannel Sales Analytics
4. Inventory Visibility
5. Demand Data Foundation
6. Unified Demand Forecast

© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. Early Knowledge Transfer Customer 20
Enhancements in this release

SAP Customer Activity Repository now provides the

Multichannel
Sales Analytics ability to:
 Extend the SAP Smart Business for SAP Customer Activity
Repository apps* according to your custom business needs

* Delivered as part of the FIORI Wave IX Program

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 Enhancements Multichannel Sales Analytics

Exposing Customer and Target Group Sales

Use Case
Provide users ability to track the progress of your marketing
campaigns and adapt in near real-time by leveraging sales data and
predefined target groups.

Solutions
New analytic data models have be added to HANA for reporting
exposing the following information:

• The customer number associated with multichannel sales

data in SAP ERP
• The customer number associated with target group data in
SAP Hybris Marketing

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 Enhancements Multichannel Sales Analytics

Exposing Customer and Target Group Sales

Reuse Views
The views in this grouping are used for integration of SAP Hybris Marketing with SAP Customer Activity Repository The
customer number and target group information from SAP Hybris Marketing obtained by these views is used in conjunction with
the sales documents from SAP ERP for Retail and with the multichannel sales data captured at the point-of-sale (POS) system
to track the progress of your marketing campaigns.
Name Description Table Dependencies

MultiChannelSalesWithTargetGroup This view obtains a combination of customer data and target group CUAN_D_TG_ROOT
data from sales orders in SAP hybris Marketing and multichannel CUAN_D_TG_MEMBER
sales data from SAP ERP for Retail. Allows users to view target group /POSDW/TLOGF
information by multichannel sales. VBRP
VBRK
SegmentationTargetGroup This view obtains segmentation target groups from SAP hybris CUAN_D_TG_ROOT
Marketing. Members of target groups are restricted to customer CUAN_D_TG_MEMBER
numbers associated with SAP ERP for Retail.

MultichannelSales_V2 This view obtains and combines sales data from the POS transaction
log and sales documents from SAP ERP for Retail.

© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. Early Knowledge Transfer Customer 23
Agenda

1. Introduction and Overview

2. POS Data Transfer and Audit
3. Multichannel Foundation
4. Multichannel Sales Analytics
5. Inventory Visibility
6. Demand Data Foundation
7. Unified Demand Forecast

© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. Early Knowledge Transfer Customer 24
Enhancements in this release

SAP Customer Activity Repository now provides the

Inventory
Visibility
ability to:
 Leverage unprocessed sales transactions to provide retail
applications with information on inventory levels at a specific
moment in time and at specific sites.

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 Enhancements Inventory Visibility

Simplified Integration with Inventory Visibility

Use Case
Provide retail applications such as SAP In-Store Merchandise and Inventory
Management with information on inventory levels at a specific moment in
time and at specific sites.

Solutions
Provide an interface which can support the real-time inventory count for In-
store MIM Fiori applications. The interface provides the base quantity and
base unit of measure based on a store/plant, list of materials and
timestamp. The base quantity of the material is provided from unprocessed
sales and is calculated up to the input value of the timestamp.

Interface
Unprocessed transaction data is exposed through a new RFC integration
interface (/POSDW/UNPROC_SALES_QUERY_RFC).

Data Model Change

A new field (BEGINDATETIMESTAMP of type /POSDW/BEGINDATETIMESTAMP) has been added to the unprocessed
sales table /POSDW/TLOGUS and will be used to persist the transaction BEGINDATETIMESTAMP field.

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 Enhancements Inventory Visibility

Simplified Integration with Inventory Visibility

Interface Details
The /POSDW/UNPROC_SALES_QUERY_RFC will have the following signature:

Import Parameters
Name Type Notes
I_PLANT /POSDW/PLANT Plant

IT_ITEMS Table of: A table of material numbers and timestamps to retrieve.

/POSDW/MATERIALNUMBER
/POSDW/TZNTSTMPS

Export Parameters
ET_UNPROCESSED_SALES Table of:
/POSDW/MATERIALNUMBER
/POSDW/TZNTSTMPS
/POSDW/BASEQUANTITY
/POSDW/BASEUNITOFMEASURE
ET_RETURN /POSDW/TT_RETURN

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 Enhancements Inventory Visibility

Simplified Integration with Inventory Visibility

• The import parameters reflect the following request:

• For a given store, and for every entry in table IT_ITEMS, what is the total quantity of the article that was sold before
(before = less or equal) the specified timestamp, and what is the corresponding base unit of measure for that
particular article.
• The table can contain many entries for the same material but at different times.
• Articles are identified by their SAP material number.
• Entries with empty material number will be discarded.
• Entries with material number but no begin timestamp will be interpreted as “What are the unprocessed sales for the
material regardless of the time? In other words, return all unprocessed sales for the requested material”.
• The export parameter ET_UNPROCESSED_SALES will contain:
• The article number (SAP material number) that was initially passed part of the input parameter table
• The reference time stamp that was initially passed (part of the input parameter table)
• Total quantity that was sold up to the reference time stamp (based on the existing entries in table /POSDW/TLOGUS
• The base unit of measure of the article as it exists in table /POSDW/TLOGUS
In case no matching articles exist in table /POSDW/TLOGUS, no entries will be returned in the export parameter table. In
other words, the export parameter returns only matching materials.

© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. Early Knowledge Transfer Customer 28
Agenda

1. Introduction and Overview

2. POS Data Transfer and Audit
3. Multichannel Sales Analytics
4. Inventory Visibility
5. Demand Data Foundation
6. Unified Demand Forecast

© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. Early Knowledge Transfer Customer 29
Enhancements in this release

SAP Customer Activity Repository now provides the

Demand Data
Foundation ability to:
 analyze product affinity relationships based off of TLOG data
 setup time dependent or geography-based hierarchies for use in
planning applications
 make better size distribution decisions based on historical size
curves by generic article or even store
 support for a new consuming application, Merchandise Planning
for Retail

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 Enhancements Demand Data Foundation

Affinity Analytics on TLOG

Use Case
When considering how to manage products that interact with each other, it’s
important to understand how an action on one product affects the sales of
another. Understanding these interactions can help make smarter and more
profitable decisions.

Solution
Affinity Analytics as a part of the Demand Data Foundation will allow the user
to identify product affinities for the products within an offer. It will also allow
the user to explore these relationships for all products even outside of the
offer.
• View available for products in the offer as the driver or the drag
• Standard report available to schedule the generation of the relationships
• Based on TLOG data already available within Customer Activity Repository

Customizing
This feature requires HANA SP09 at a minimum. The report can be
configured with values beyond the defaults through the use of variants with
the report. There is also a BAdI (/DMF/BADI_TLOG_DATA_ACCESS) that
can be implemented to change how the TLOG data is accessed. This is
optional.

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Enhancements Demand Data Foundation

Time-dependent article hierarchy

Use Case
For planning applications, it becomes important to roll-in future hierarchies
that will be used in the upcoming season. These hierarchies should not
affect the business now.

Solution
DDF integration with SAP ERP allows for the introduction of time-based
hierarchies. This feature is used in Assortment Planning to produce a
future-based assortment list

Customizing
Time based article hierarchies support different parents for nodes during
different periods of time as well as different associations of products to
nodes during different periods of time.
This type of hierarchy is enabled through a switch, which is defaulted to
OFF. Once the switch is turned on, the user can then import time-based
hierarchies from ERP.
Keep in mind, the hierarchy nodes always have time (00000000-12319999
as default) but there will be multiple times per node if it is truly time-based.
If the switch is off, we only take the default date nodes and all others are
ignored.

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 Enhancements Demand Data Foundation

Geographic Location Hierarchy

Use Case
For planning applications, managing the plans by geographic
groupings is important. This allows for organization by currency or
other geographic distinctions.

Solution
With this feature, you can now create geographical location
hierarchies using the Location Hierarchy service of Demand Data
Foundation (DDF). This allows you to group locations by geography
and across multiple sales organizations. For example, you might
want to create a geographical location hierarchy called “All Stores in
the Southwest”. For more information, see Maintain Location
Hierarchies.

Customizing
Type code 08 is locally created in DDF using the location hierarchy
application (SPRO). This UI is enhanced to create the geographic
hierarchies. The user can create any number of these geo
hierarchies, but only one can be used for planning.

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 Enhancements Demand Data Foundation

Geographic Location Hierarchy

Use Case
For planning applications, managing the plans by geographic
groupings is important. This allows for organization by currency or
other geographic distinctions.

Solution
With this feature, you can now create geographical location
hierarchies using the Location Hierarchy service of Demand Data
Foundation (DDF). This allows you to group locations by geography
and across multiple sales organizations. For example, you might
want to create a geographical location hierarchy called “All Stores in
the Southwest”. For more information, see Maintain Location
Hierarchies.

Customizing
Type code 08 is locally created in DDF using the location hierarchy
application (SPRO). This UI is enhanced to create the geographic
hierarchies. The user can create any number of these geo
hierarchies, but only one can be used for planning.

Today only Merchandise Planning for Retail uses the geo hierarchy,
which is customized to the specific hierarchy of choice.
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 Enhancements Demand Data Foundation

Simple Size Curves

Use Case
Based on historical information, the customer needs to determine how many
of what sizes to purchase or allocate to a particular location. This leads to
better revenue based on the right size being in the right store at the right
time.

Solution
DDF provides a simplistic view of the size curves by variant article > store, or
generic article to store. This functionality is planned to be consumed by the
Allocation Management for Retail application in a future release, as well as Sample Lumira views
integrated into the FMS distribution profiles.

Customizing
These views require note 2258876. The note will add 3 views to the
sap.is.ddf.ddf package: DDF_PROD, DDF_FISCAL_PERIOD_DATE, and
DDFSimpleSizeCurve (used for visualize size curves). If Assortment
Planning is installed no additional configuration is required. If not, the
calendar variant for Retail Week (RW) needs to be configured. See note
2112634 configuring the fiscal variants.

The historical data used to create the curves is from /DMF/TS_PS. This is
joined to calendar, location, and product data in the views mentioned above.

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Enhancements Demand Data Foundation

Support for Merchandise Planning for Retail

Use Case
Using the same data platform as is available to Assortment Planning, the
customer would also like to plan their Merchandise for the upcoming
season. These financial plans will be a key input into future assortment
selections.

Solution
DDF now supports all requirements for data for the Merchandise Planning
for Retail application.
• Customization by project possible for additional requirements
• 9 workbooks, standard BWIP functionality running on top of DDF

Customizing
Please see the configuration guide for CARAB for all customizations to
use Merchandise Planning for Retail

© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. Early Knowledge Transfer Customer 36
Agenda

1. Introduction and Overview

2. POS Data Transfer and Audit
3. Multichannel Sales Analytics
4. Inventory Visibility
5. Demand Data Foundation
6. Unified Demand Forecast

© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. Early Knowledge Transfer Customer 37
Enhancements in this release

SAP Customer Activity Repository now provides the

Unified Demand
Forecast ability to:
 Visibility and traceability into the insights found through
forecasting
 Visualization of these insights through a new FIORI dashboard,
for easier analysis into the forecast results
 Intra-day forecasted unit sales for stock projections or day-part
planning
 Ability to define short lifecycle vs. replenished items for detecting
seasonality differently, resulting in more accurate forecasts
 Enhanced usability, performance, and forecast accuracy

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 Enhancements Unified Demand Forecast

Analyze forecast – FIORI application

Use Case
The output of UDF is a forecast by product/location/day/promo type. What
if the user needs a deeper understanding into the factors that went into
determining the forecasted unit sales? How can the user have greater
visibility into the factors of demand, both historically and into the future?

Solution
Visualize the forecasts provided by UDF in a new FIORI application, which
gives greater visibility into factors that influence demand
• Select forecasts by product, location, or direct link access (e.g. other FIORI app)
• Visualize inputs, pre-processing findings (e.g. outliers), historical sales, and forecasts
• Display information by channel
• Share information on analysis results via mail, pdf, …

Customizing
No additional customizing is required to use the FIORI application, beyond
what is included in the configuration guide for CARAB

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Enhancements Unified Demand Forecast

Intra-day forecast Sample Lumira views

Use Case
Many retail businesses manage their products on a frequency greater
than once a day. Helping them see demand factors that are broken
down by time increments throughout the day would give visibility to a
more profitable plan.
Solution
New intraday forecast can be used for
• Intraday stock projection
• Triggering back-stock activity to avoid out of stock situations
• Scheduling food production or labor around peak activity times

You can configure time granularity (ex.15 min forecasts)

Category and store data will be used if there is sparse data at product-
location

Customizing: To visualize the intraday forecast, you can use view: sap.is.ddf.udf.ifc.IntradayForecast.calculationview
Name SQL Type Description
Name Description
PROD_ID VARBINARY(16) product ID (GUID)
P_SAPClient Client (Mandant)
LOC_ID VARBINARY(16) location ID (GUID)
P_DiagnosticId Diagnostic id used for filtering of data derived from EXT_PROD_ID NVARCHAR(60) External product ID
/DMF/UFC_TS
EXT_LOC_ID NVARCHAR(60) External location ID
P_SlotTimeFrame defines the length of each time slice per day NVARCHAR(16)
TS_SOURCE Time series source
 Parameter unit of measure is minute
 Not mandatory, default is 120 (2 hours) FC_DATE DECIMAL(8,0) Forecast day (e.g. 20151010)
 Max value 1440 (24*60min; one day) TIME
HOUR_START Start of the time slice (e.g. 13:30:00)
P_DateFrom Start date of the forecasts
HOUR_END TIME End of the time slice (e.g. 13:59:59)
P_DateTo End date of the forecasts FC_VAL DOUBLE Forecast value of the time slice

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 Enhancements Unified Demand Forecast

Resubmit Failed Tasks

Use Case

Many times a customer will submit a very large request to model, forecast,
or generate hierarchical priors, in the evening or on the weekend. If a
single task fails for any number of reasons, the work will not be complete.
The customer needs a mechanism to have these failed tasks resubmit
automatically without user intervention.

Solution
If tasks fail for one of the defined services, they can now be resubmitted
automatically for processing. For performance reasons, we recommend
that you use a conservative approach when configuring the number of
times that you want the system to retry. For more information, see the
Monitoring Jobs section under Schedule Model and Forecast.

Customizing
The default # of retries is set to 3. It is recommended to leave this
configuration as is. When running modeling/forecasting in the scheduler UI
(SPRO service), ensure that you have the “Retain Failed Contents”
checked.
Using SE38, run the report “/DMF/MOD_STATUS_REP” to find the status
of tasks. You can drill down or resubmit failed tasks at any level. Note the
job ID to resubmit.

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Enhancements Unified Demand Forecast

Define Lifecycle products by product-location

Use Case
In V2 FP1, the fashion forecasting functionality was delivered. However,
there is a need to define a fashion item at a lower level than the client,
so that some products can use the fashion model and some can use the
replenished model.

Solution
UDF provides the ability to take into account the MRP type from ERP
into DDF to be used in forecasting. With basic configuration, you can
now configure by product which model to use. A fashion model
assumes a short lifecycle, where a replenished item assumes a cyclical
lifecycle. These results are then automatically captured in the forecast
results.
Standard integration is supported, however a Business Add-in is provided to customize

Customizing
Configure the MRP types that are available in your data to a model definition.
• Assumes all diagnostic id’s and model definitions are established, go to SPRO to configure
• Assign the MRP type to a model category
• Assign a model category to a model definition
• Assign a model definition to a time series source

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Enhancements Unified Demand Forecast
Example Holdout test
Limit length of Historical Sales
Use Case
Historical data becomes more and more obsolete when it comes to
understanding your product’s demand. This historical sales also will slow down
the performance of the system unnecessarily if it has no impact, yet we want to
keep the historical sales for reporting reasons

Solution
UDF allows the user to specify the # of days to include in modeling so that
older data is excluded. This allows direct control over the modeling data
inputs. In combination with the model holdout date, the sales data can be
limited in both the beginning and ending days.
Default is set to no limit, so that all data is taken into account initially

Customizing
With this feature, you can now limit the modeling period from the beginning and
end. The beginning is usually for performance reasons or getting rid of bad
data, where the end is usually for a holdout test.
To limit the end (V2FP0), use the scheduler UI (SPRO service) to set the
“Model End Date”. To limit the beginning (new in V2 FP2), go to IMG : SAP
Customizing Implementation Guide -> Cross-Application Components ->
Demand Data Foundation -> Modeling and Forecasting -> Define Modeling
Control Settings. Set the “Days in Mod Period”.
This configuration will take into account the Model End Date, and include only
the # of days you’ve specified in the configuration.
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Enhancements Unified Demand Forecast

Performance and Accuracy Improvements

Use Case
The UDF forecast will be used in strategic parts of the customers business. Continued improvements in forecast accuracy and
performance is important.

Solution
There are several improvements that we have made in regards to improving the forecast accuracy and performance.
POSVDM, exclude holidays and offers from outliers, added season/oc to POS sales.

• Performance of Modeling with the POSVDM, reading and aggregating tlog on the fly
• Performance improvements in the AFL based on new advancements in HANA capabilities (graphical calculation views)
• Added season and order channel to the POS data in DDF to enable faster joins
• Excluded holidays and offers from the outlier detection to further enhance the accuracy of these volatile events.

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 Enhancements Unified Demand Forecast

SAP Community Network Partner Enablement

Use Case
Many of our customers today are using partners to help them implement
their CAR Application Bundle. How can we better enable these partners for
faster go-lives?

Solution
The CAR team has started enablement activities with the SAP Community
Network to bring FAQs and technical know-how to the SAP partner
community. These topics are usually very detailed, and pertain to real-
project problems that are currently being addressed.

• Link available with updates frequently: http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-62097

© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. Early Knowledge Transfer Customer 45
SAP Customer Activity Repository
UDF – Customer Proof of Value

SAP experts calculate demand forecasts based on your data with Unified Demand Forecast as a part of the SAP Customer Activity
Repository on HANA. Key features can be shown directly with your data. This provides you a solid basis in the decision process for
understanding the forecasting capabilities in SAP Customer Activity Repository.

Initial Situation

• Unified Demand Forecast is the basis for all consuming applications • Questions to answer with the Proof of Concept
on SAP Customer Activity Repository. The forecast quality directly • How effective are my promotions?
influences the result quality of all consuming applications.
• What forecast components drive my forecast most?
• Your demand strongly depends on internal and external influences
like promotions, price, seasonality, market trends and calendar
• How do my sales differ by channel, historically and in the future?

events. • How can I forecast first time promotions and seasons for my products?

Description

• SAP provides insights into how the Unified Demand Forecast runs
with your data and the forecast quality you can achieve
• SAP illustrates how forecast capabilities meet your specific business
scenarios.
• Forecasts will be evaluated against pre-determined KPIs.

Your Benefits

 Discover the Unified Demand Forecast benefits before implementation

 Detailed results in a web session or onsite
 Forecast data at the most granular level for comparisons and evaluation
 Unified Demand Forecast parameter recommendations

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© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company.
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