retail Archives • SAP.iO

Corinna Schmidt In Announcements, Paris, Featured, Consumer Industries

SAP.iO Foundry Paris Launches New Startup Program on Consumer Engagement

September 21, 2023 — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today launched its new startup program focused on the future of consumer engagement at SAP.iO Foundry Paris. 15 startups have been selected to join the program.

In today’s highly competitive market, retailers and consumer product companies face new challenges in the way goods are marketed, purchased, fulfilled and delivered. However, advancements in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence present novel prospects to transform the consumer and shopper experiences.

The six-month program is primarily B2C (business-to-consumer)-oriented and aims to provide all necessary tools and solutions to significantly enhance the end customers’ experience, with a particular emphasis on shopping. The selected startups offer solutions that cover the entire supply chain, from selecting the right product to a timely delivery.

The SAP.iO program will support 15 startups, which were chosen based on several criteria, including their size and relative experience, the technical viability of their solutions, their uniqueness compared to existing technologies at SAP, and their commercial value.

The following startups are participating in the SAP.iO Foundry Paris cohort:

Anaphora designs and creates platforms to help international brands elevate and control their brand experiences across all digital touchpoints.
Booxi is an appointment booking software that enhances customer satisfaction, increases conversions and sales by facilitating seamless customer journeys from the website to the store.
With ChatLabs, brands can create a unique experience for each customer by combining content, products, and calls to action in highly personalized journeys, which are fully automated and powered by AI.
Digitoo is an AI-powered bookkeeping solution designed to tackle the industry-wide problems of understaffing, the high costs and complexity of handling paper documents and difficulty implementing automation systems.
Find & Order has been working with logistics and distribution leaders for three years to challenge their operations and information systems.
Frontnow is a GenAI-powered shopping assistant that helps online retailers offer a seamless in-store-like experience across channels with easy low-code implementation.
Logicbroker connects all participants in an organization’s supply chain through an integrated suite, regardless of their business model.
Measmerize offers a size recommendation solution for fashion that helps consumers know not only what size to buy, but also how it fits on their body, requiring minimal integration from retailers.
Notify uses AI to power an innovative CRM that reduces marketing pressure, personalizes and legitimizes the relationship, and optimizes the CRM’s carbon footprint.
Particular Audience’s solutions include bundled and automated offerings on price alignment policy, sponsored products, transformer-based vector search, visual search, recommendations, price information, and dynamic pricing.
Potions develops and deploys the first cookieless path personalization platform, delivering unique experiences for customer website visitors.
Q°emotion is a semantic and emotional solution that automatically analyzes customer reviews to detect and eliminate customer journey irritants.
Uncrowd is an experience analytics platform that helps companies build a customer journey map by combining customer experience observation, quantitative measures, and comparative results.
Unea enables retailers and brands to collaborate seamlessly by presenting products and reserving real-time placements.
YDISTRI specializes in managing unsold retail inventory, increasing efficiency and profitability while enhancing customer loyalty, sustainability, and supply chain resilience.

About SAP.iO
SAP.iO curates a relevant and diverse startup ecosystem that extends the value of SAP solutions and meets the continuously evolving needs of our customers. Our programs provide dedicated support to the most promising startups as they launch and scale relationships with SAP and our global network of customers, partners, and employees. Since 2017, we have connected thousands of SAP customers with innovative enterprise software startups, helping them find solutions to their unique needs. For more information, visit http://sap.io/.

Kelli Kohout In Munich, CRM & Customer Experience

parcelLab Launches ‘Retain’ to Empower Brands to Recover Revenue and Make Returns More Sustainable

New Product Offers Digital Returns Portal and End-to-End Post-Purchase Communications

parcelLab, the premier global provider of post-purchase customer experience software, announced the launch of Retain. The new product provides the uncomplicated returns experience today’s consumers expect, while providing brands with the flexibility and customization options needed to reduce costs, recover more revenue, and make returns more sustainable.

Retain uplevels the returns, warranty, and exchange process from paper to digital, featuring a digital returns portal as well as tracking and communications to enable customers to effortlessly register their returns, get a label or QR code, and track returns. Personalized emails and a customized Returns Status Page deliver end-to-end post-purchase communication to drive web traffic and repeat purchases.

Returns remain an untapped part of the post-purchase experience and the next revenue retention opportunity for brands. A recent parcelLab study found that brands’ return policies influence 92% of consumers – and 54% of consumers expect access to the return process status at any time. To meet this overwhelming market demand, parcelLab developed Retain to empower retailers to deliver their customers the tools and transparency they require while ensuring personalized journeys that build and sustain customer loyalty over time.

“Retailers have an opportunity to turn potential customer dissatisfaction into opportunities for revenue retention”

How Tech Makes Shopping Quick and Easy for Bosch Customers

Benefits of e-commerce include reaching new customers and better personalizing service. But what if your customers need – and have spent decades relying on – the in-store expertise of your associates? To find a very specific product? For use with another very specific product? To accomplish a very specific task?

“More and more of our users are coming online…[and] they still want to have the similar guidance and the systems they had in-store,” Ganna Lobachevska, the touchpoint owner of Product Finder and Product Guidance at Bosch Power Tools Accessories, told SAP at NRF 2023 for a new video. “Our overall goal is to make it easier for our users to find the right accessory for their job.”

Of course, making something easy to do on the front end is seldom easy to build on the back end. And that was Bosch’s challenge when helping online shoppers narrow their search for the perfect jigsaw blade, drill bit, or abrasive wheel from a truly massive accessory portfolio.

“Any company with a wide range of products has to think how they can simplify the user journey…and how they can make it easier for the customers to find the right product,” Lobachevska said. “With the Bosch Accessory Advisor, we provide a solution that makes it easier and faster.”

Building that easier, faster solution meant finding a high-tech way to satisfy a peculiar demand by online shoppers.

When Brick-and-Mortar Set the Bar (Almost) Too High

Selecting a specific power tool accessory for a specific job – and ensuring it’s compatible with your specific power tool – are big reasons that people historically shopped at brick-and-mortar stores, according to Lobachevska. It makes sense, right? You can consult with a knowledgeable human sales associate.

But Bosch’s e-commerce customers expect the same in-store-style expertise via a quick and painless online exchange, according to Lobachevska. And she doesn’t seem worried.

“The Accessory Advisor guides the user through a series of very simple questions,” Lobachevska said. “In the end, they have three perfect recommendations for the work they want to do.”

It’s pretty much an online conversation that yields the right product, according to Lobachevska. And Bosch found the right tech – and partners – to make these virtual dialogues happen.

Tech to the Rescue

“We realized that there is a need for a better user guidance,” Lobachevska said of Bosch’s decision to go with Zoovu, a Boston-based digital commerce search platform and partner solution in SAP’s industry cloud. “It offered us the best.”

Zoovu’s Semantic Studio translates technical jargon into e-commerce-friendly prose, which saves time for both Bosch data managers and shoppers. A few artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted questions later, and these accessory hunters have enjoyed a smooth, seamless customer experience.

“This means that our customers spend less time searching for a product,” Lobachevska said. “And when they purchase the product, it’s the right one and they are more satisfied.”

This increases efficiency, according to Lobachevska. It also cuts down on returns and poor online reviews.

Obsess unveils Carbon Emissions Calculator for brands evaluating construction of new physical stores

Obsess has launched a Carbon Emissions Calculator for brands to analyse the energy output for bricks and mortar retail stores in comparison to their virtual counterparts.

The company has created 200+ virtual stores for brands including Ralph Lauren, Coach, NBCUniversal, American Girl, and Charlotte Tilbury.

Retailers can input into the tool flexible values for physical store estimates, including store square footage, daily foot traffic, and number of employees.

Based on these inputs, Obsess calculates the average output for store construction (including material production and transportation, and construction activities) and the average output for store operations (including employee labor, commute and store electricity).

Carbon emissions calculations are based on initial construction and one year of operations for both brick sand mortar and virtual stores. Outbound product shipments are not included in the calculation. Corporate employee and office operations have also been excluded.

Check out the calculator here.

Mercaux Pulse of Retail report showcases retailers’ digital transformation strategies in 2023

The latest edition of the annual Pulse of Retail report, exploring the strategies of leading retailers for the upcoming year, was officially released at last week’s NRF 2023 event in New York.

The Mercaux offering, which surveyed more than 500 retailers, has for the first time been jointly commissioned by fellow MACH Alliance members, Fluent Commerce, commercetools and Orium.

According to the research, the top technologies in “launch phase” are centered around customer experiences, with 87% of retailers focusing on this area during 2023.

Additionally, the survey found that composable architectures are important for 91% of respondents, suggesting that retailers are recognizing the need for flexibility and scalability in their technology systems, in order to quickly adapt to changing customer needs and market trends.

Meanwhile, transitioning from legacy to next generation Point of Sale (PoS) systems is important for 79% of retailers.

However, the survey revealed that just 11% of retailers currently offer a frictionless omnichannel experience, where customers can seamlessly transition from shopping online to in-store, and vice versa.

WISY PLATFORMS: BRINGING VISIBILITY TO PRODUCT AVAILABILITY IN CPG RETAIL

Wisy Platforms is building a predictive, decision-analytics retail operations and execution platform to help retailers solve and overcome the product availability challenges that they have lived with until now.

Using Wisy;

Employees performing visual inspection of retail shelves experience an improvement in the amount of time they would otherwise spend doing this task. Practically speaking this is a reduction from 20 minutes of work doing manual inspections to no more than 1 or 2 minutes using Wisy’s AI-enabled platform.
Retailers, CPG manufacturers and brokers experience a 90% or higher improvement in the accuracy of data about product availability on store shelves, and
Retailers, CPG manufacturers and brokers experience revenue gains of between 3% and 10%.

In addition to bringing visibility to Product Availability, Wisy also offers the following:

Price checks,
Real-time share-of-shelf KPIs,
Planogram compliance checks, and
Competitive intelligence: Wisy detects known or unknown competitors’ products on the shelves and transforms the data into business intelligence. This is particularly useful for addressing an industry trend where new niche brands gain market share at a much faster rate than established brands. Wisy provides alerts when new competitors come into a category and keeps track of their growth over time and per location.

Wisy is currently working on real-time object tracking using the video mode on mobile phones. This feature makes it easier for users to capture large shelves without the need to take many pictures. Wisy is also developing predictive analytics to optimize product assortment and basket analysis.

The platform enables CPG retailers, manufacturers, suppliers,wholesalers and brokers to make better strategic, tactical, and operational decisions by decreasing the complexity of the systems they have to interact with while introducing simplicity and convenience into their workflows. Employees just have to be able to take pictures or videos of retail store shelves using any mid-range smartphone.

Wisy’s breakthrough is in its ability to instantaneously run all its analytics processes and algorithms on an employee’s mobile device without the need for an always-on internet connection.

Incumbent solutions are complex, difficult, slow, cumbersome, and impractical for the fast pace at which retail execution must move. Most incumbent solutions require a high speed internet connection in order to produce results.

Wisy is lightweight, portable, simple, fast, and affordable. Anyone who can use a smartphone camera can be trained to use Wisy to perform retail operations tasks. The platform works for large multinational CPGs and retail chains, and for smaller CPGs, retail stores and brokers. It works on a stand-alone basis. But, it can also be with retail execution systems, ERP systems, retail data clouds, retail analytics systems and so on. It can be integrated into a retailer, manufacturer or broker’s existing systems – for example, customers of SAP can find Wisy in the SAP App Center.

New “Future of Shopping” Startup Program at SAP.iO Foundry Shanghai

October 27, 2022 – SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) launched a new startup program focused on consumer and retail technology that will shape the future of shopping at the SAP.iO Foundry Shanghai. A jury of SAP experts, partners, venture capitals, government innovation departments, and SAP customers, including Shui On Land and others, joined the selection committee and finalized seven startups to join the program and build partnerships with SAP.

The COVID pandemic has accelerated the process of global technology and digital transformation, gradually penetrating into every detail of our life. Consumption habits are undergoing tremendous changes, which also brings various business opportunities to new consumer and retail technologies.

SAP.iO Foundry Shanghai launched its “Future of Shopping” cohort to recruit retail and consumer SaaS startups, partnering with SAP to serve global customers in consumer, catering, retail, hospitalization, fashion, and more.

Sophie Zhang, General Manager of SAP Customer Experience (CX) Greater China, “I am very happy that the new SAP.iO cohort can work with CX. We are always looking for innovative solution partners to expand our portfolio and deliver local SaaS solutions to CX customers.”

Meng Xu, Vice President of SAP China Strategic Industry Consulting, adds: “The consumer, retail and fashion industries are the top priorities of China’s strategic industry group, accounting for 40% of our revenue. We pay great attention to the ecosystem of these industries. The seven startups we recruited this time can well meet the different requests of local customers.”

During the program, the startups will have access to curated mentorship from SAP executives, exposure to SAP® technology and APIs, and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers worldwide.

The following startups are participating in the program:

XForcePlus provides enterprises with supply chain information collaboration services and VAT invoice management solutions.
Freemud focuses on rapidly upgrading chain brand stores into smart stores, so that stores can adapt to all the challenges of digital transformation.
Reabam provides flexible configuration and highly scalable SaaS services for chain brand enterprises in the field of large consumer brands.
Zjian offers enterprises with self-developed tools and shopping assistants to revitalize the company’s existing members to improve the customer experience.
Shenyan Intelligent delivers full-stack solutions of data and business centers for domestic and foreign enterprises.
Qiyuesuo is an electronic signing SaaS platform, providing electronic signing and certificate deposit services.
Apexdata helps customers achieve intelligent credit assessment and enhance credit value.

About SAP.iO
SAP.iO delivers new partnerships and products for SAP by accelerating and scaling startup innovation as well as incubating employee ventures. SAP.iO brings together innovators from every region, industry, and line of business to transform how businesses run. Since 2017, SAP.iO has helped 450+ external startups and internal ventures accelerate their growth while enabling thousands of SAP customers to access innovation. For more information, visit http://sap.io/.

Kelli Kohout In Inspiring Innovators, Uncategorized, Foundries, Featured, Business Technology Platform

Inspiring Innovators: Neha Singh Founder and CEO of Obsess, On Listening to Your Gut

At SAP.iO, we work with innovative people and new technologies that positively impact our world every day, and we think it’s time to share their stories with you! In our series, “Inspiring Innovators,” we get to hear how leaders of cutting-edge startup technologies overcame, thrived, and pursued their goals. SAP.iO’s Alexa Gorman sat down to discuss the road to success and lessons learned with some of our most inspiring startup founders.

Meet Neha Singh

Her unique path to entrepreneurship included combining her experiences with her ability to listen to her instincts and trust herself to know what to do. Neha Singh combined her love of fashion with her knowledge of technology to create something entirely new for the market, finding her right fit as the Founder and CEO of Obsess.

Neha studied computer science during undergrad and then attended MIT for her masters. Her appreciation for computer science gave her a way to build the things she imagined, prizing the logical aspect of how inputting a set of instructions can result in predictable outcomes. Her accomplishments are many; for Google, she was on the team that created the first dashboard for Google Ad Words. She then spent time on Google News which she described as an amazing learning experience. At this point, she realized she liked the product side, specifically figuring out how to build something and defining it based on how users interact with it.

Neha took fashion design classes discovering she would excel on the technology side of fashion. When she joined an eCommerce marketplace startup, she realized that all eCommerce sites look the same and have a grid-of-thumbnails database interface. This was because that’s the template the eCommerce platforms provide brands and retailers to showcase their products.

After that experience, Neha was the Head of Product at Vogue and worked on projects for launching the Vogue digital properties, including Vogue.com and Vogue Runway. She saw how much luxury brands were struggling with their online eCommerce experience and especially their mobile experience.

As more brands move online and look to differentiate their experience to engage consumers, Neha knew things had to change. To spearhead this effort, Neha launched Obsess in 2017, creating the next-generation eCommerce interface for today’s consumers. Obsess is a Metaverse Shopping Platform that enables brands and retailers to create highly interactive, visual, and branded Virtual Stores on their websites and metaverse platforms. The Obsess platform creates HD-quality, beautiful, photorealistic 3D 360 experiences that increase awareness, engagement, and conversion. Her team combines expertise in platform engineering, consumer web, mobile tech, fashion, e-commerce, gaming, and 3D. Obsess customers include Coach, Ralph Lauren, Charlotte Tilbury, Mattel, General Mills, and NBC Universal among others.

“When your entire brand gets reduced to four to six thumbnails on a mobile screen, you cannot translate the brand experience you are creating in retail stores, fashion shows, and events, into a digital shopping format. That’s when I understood the need in the market for a better digital shopping experience.”

SAP.iO Foundry New York Launches Sustainability in Retail and Consumer Industries Program

October 19, 2021 — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) welcomes a new cohort for its startup program focused on sustainability in retail and consumer industries at SAP.iO Foundry New York. Seven startups were selected to join the program by a jury of SAP experts, partners and customers among hundreds of startups.

The startups are using next generation technologies to drive sustainability across the value chain in areas such as reusable packaging, responsible and ethical supply chain as well as circular economy. Over the next 16 weeks, the startups will have access to curated mentors, exposure to SAP® technology and application programming interfaces (APIs), and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers around the world.

The following startups are participating in the SAP.iO Foundry New York sustainability in retail and consumer industries program:

Algramo offers a circular platform that encourages consumers to buy in a more convenient, affordable way with zero waste and connects people, brands and retailers to change consumption habits.
Ecocart calculates the carbon emissions of business activities, then programmatically offsets those emissions by funding impactful certified carbon offset projects like planting trees or building windfarms.
Everledger leverages blockchain and internet of things technology to offer transparency into supply chains for clarity on quality, origin, sustainability footprint and compliance standards.
EVRYTHNG helps customers run their business differently with real time data intelligence from each of their products, end-to-end from factory to consumer and beyond.
Inspectorio provides a dynamic and risk-assessment based quality compliance program for digitization, automation, transparency and traceability.
LimeLoop is a platform for sustainable shipping including reusable packaging, real time tracking, and predictive analytics.
Specright delivers a purpose-built platform for specification management that changes how brands, suppliers, manufacturers, and retailers manage data and collaborate to bring products to market.

About SAP.iO
SAP.iO delivers new partnerships and products for SAP by accelerating and scaling startup innovation as well as incubating employee ventures. SAP.iO brings together innovators from every region, industry, and line of business to transform how businesses run. Since 2017, SAP.iO has helped 330+ external startups and internal ventures accelerate their growth while enabling thousands of SAP customers to access innovation. For more information, visit https://sap.io/.

Kelli Kohout In Berlin, ERP & Finance

How CPG Brands Are Keeping Up With Retail’s Fastest-Moving Consumer Demands

Nobody understands the frustration of consumers who can’t find the products they’re looking for more than the experts at Teamcore, an AI-based startup with operations in Latin America and the United States. Teamcore’s cloud-based software platform uses machine learning to power intelligent workflow automation that tells CPG companies and retailers why products aren’t selling and what they can do about it fast.

“We help CPG companies and retailers make sure products are available when their customers are ready to buy,” said Sergio Della Maggiora, founder and CEO of Teamcore. “Whether someone is shopping online or in a physical store, our retail execution platform based on intelligent workflows helps connect data across the supply chain from warehouse to shelf virtually or in-store, so companies don’t miss out on sales opportunities.”

Based on sales data analytics, Della Maggiora said that Teamcore’s machine learning algorithm detects when products aren’t selling as planned, and in over 94 percent of cases, finds the root cause of the problem before assigning a task. Unlike garden variety alerts, Teamcore’s intelligent workflow notifications keep going until they reach the people who solve the problem. If someone in replenishment can’t find the product in the warehouse to restock virtual or in-store shelves, the workflow automatically routes that task to the appropriate store sales representatives, all the way up to regional store and supply chain managers.

“Teamcore connects the whole CPG and retail team for opportunity detection sales, and doesn’t stop until someone actually fixes the problem,” said Della Maggiora. “Over time, the collected data trains the model, improving its accuracy and ability to make predictions about potential issues.”