Suning and SAP HANA
Suning is one of the few proactive companies that made an early shift to an internet-based platform. With such high volume moving through their stores, the ability to use big data was all but a necessity. Since 2005, they have been collaborating with SAP to build the largest centralized real-time retail system. Through SAP HANA, they have bolstered their value chain by making it more precise and timely with instant data and accurate results. Despite many peoples’ early reservations about the riskiness of trusting this emerging technology, Suning seized the opportunity to get ahead of the competition, and the reward for their firm was very significant.
In terms of background, Suning is the largest retail firm in China, with over 1800 stores and 180,000 employees. Currently, their market cap is at approximately 470 billion Yuan (Bloomberg), which means that the volume that they move through their stores and online is immense. Their main industries are consumer electronics and appliances. In the fourth quarter of 2013, Chinese home appliance market value reached about 527.8 billion RMB (PRWeb), and the consumer electronics market is almost 1.4 trillion RMB (MarketSearch). Their largest competitor is Gome Electrical Appliances Holding, which merged with China Paradise Electronics Retail back in 2006. With the rise of e-commerce over the past five years, these companies sought ways to move large quantities of product from their stores and warehouses into the homes of millions of Chinese citizens.
Previously, Suning’s ATP and inventory checking process was slow during the sales peak, largely due to their incredible business volume. They responded by implementing SAP HANA, a process that took only two weeks to accomplish. In doing so, they allowed the managers of their retail stores to do real time inventory checks, boosting their performance by a