Broad industry expertise along the entire supply chain

We have underpinned our retail expertise in numerous digitization projects. Our retail customers sell a wide range of products: These include technical materials for craftsmen and DIY home improvement, consumer goods, food, non-food, and groceries. Regardless of whether our customers are looking for modern solutions tailored to their requirements at the point of sale, transparent warehouse management, reliable invoice control or an integrated solution for their purchasing or returns management: Together, we will find the optimal IT solution – whether as part of a migration, new or further development. In doing so, we take into account all process requirements and also ensure a high level of failure protection and the necessary IT security. This is ensured by the ISO27001-certified IT services of our sister company DATIS IT-Services GmbH.

Furthermore, our IT experts support you in all questions concerning the transformation of your IT landscapes as well as the modernization and harmonization of your retail IT.

Benefit from the large number of successfully completed IT projects in wholesale, retail and online trade

Here you will find examples of some IT projects that we have carried out on behalf of our retail customers. They demonstrate our wide-ranging industry expertise and proven IT know-how. We support logistical processes and the management of relevant data. We develop customer-specific purchasing processes with and further, and accompany the topic of quality assurance.

Our experts have in-depth process and solution expertise along the entire supply chain. This enables us to work with you to find suitable solutions for your individual business processes. In our project database you will get to know our professional and IT experience in detail:

For example, in order to provide key figures and analyses that are important for logistics planning, our IT experts developed a solution for the data-driven analysis of logistics processes from scheduling to goods receipt. Without further ado, we transformed Excel-based data analyses, which were associated with a high level of manual effort and susceptibility to errors, into a modern web application with highly complex logics, easy-to-understand visualizations and evaluation options in the front end. With this automated individual solution, retail companies are able to optimize their logistics and transport processes and are thus well prepared for future requirements.

We also know what to do when it comes to optimizing and further developing warehouse management systems. Applications in a warehouse management system control the operational processes that are important in goods receipt, returns, goods issue, picking and inventory management.

Based on SpiraTeam, an integrated application lifecycle management (ALM) system from our solution partner Inflectra, we test and manage all processes in goods receipt and goods issue, thus increasing the quality of process flows. Integration tests can thus be established without much effort.

When it comes to fundamental analyses to ensure, further develop or optimize the operation of IT landscapes, we have the necessary methodological expertise. We support our retail customers with strategic planning, quality assurance, and sophisticated business process management (BPM) with the aim of continuously designing processes and optimizing business processes.

In common ERP systems such as SAP, all purchasing processes from forecasting to ordering to supplier invoicing can be mapped digitally. Associated processes, such as payment requests, are controlled. Supplier contracts or inventory management as well as a comparison of supplier invoices with the stored purchase prices can also be managed by the system. Any corrections, cancellations, credit memos or subsequent claims can be automated in this way.

This not only speeds up processes, but also improves supplier relationships through well-maintained and up-to-date data in the supplier and article master. With our proven SAP expertise, we support our retail customers in customizing SAP standard solutions, establish automated workflows, and ensure their maintenance and further development.

Inventories and the associated current status of merchandise availability are of particular importance in retail. As part of our test management, we use SpiraTeam’s test tools to document the quality assurance of inventories that our customers from the wholesale, retail, and online retail sectors regularly perform.

SpiraTeam is a product of our long-term partner Inflectra, which offers excellent tools for test management through to comprehensive application lifecycle management (ALM). Through these integration tests, results of inventories can be consistently optimized and data quality can also be increased. Retail companies thus achieve transparency as to which items need to be prioritized or reordered at the POS.

As part of their returns management, retailers and suppliers plan, control and monitor their returns. In doing so, they need to keep an eye on information, financial and goods flows. We develop individual IT solutions that enable suppliers to manage returns by assigning return numbers. Suppliers benefit from enormous time savings in the returns process and gain greater transparency over the associated processes.

A good inventory management system supports the smooth flow of goods through the plant. With such a system, warehouse management can register and document all goods movements as well as input and output. Intelligent systems also support scheduling here, for example.

Our IT experts expand a central enterprise resource planning system on behalf of the customer so that a wide range of wholesalers and retailers as well as suppliers have access to a uniform database. The expansion is accompanied by the optimization and standardization of sales planning.

Centralization gives wholesalers, retailers, and suppliers access to all contracts, which can be managed uniformly and structured in terms of content. This creates a solid basis for efficient billing of all centrally or decentrally recorded services such as inbound deliveries, outbound deliveries or services. This leads to greater transparency and cost savings.

On behalf of a customer, we programmed a special IT tool that can be used to specifically evaluate past web campaigns and relate them to the sales figures achieved. In a first step, a detailed business analysis was conducted and based on its results, the development of the planning tool as well as its quality assurance was advanced, taking into account different levels in the database context. Particularly in view of the fact that the number and prices of the items on offer vary greatly from region to region, the IT solution enables a differentiated analysis of individual promotions in terms of their turnover rate.

In the context of modern and efficient purchasing planning, the issues of traceability are playing an increasingly important role and require comprehensive transparency. On this basis, we have developed a web-based IT tool in a customer project, with which article and supplier data, conditions, transport routes, contract comparisons and supplier confirmations can be clearly recorded, displayed and maintained in comparison with the purchase prices. In addition, we manage the interfaces to third-party systems and reports. In this way, data from different sources can be bundled for a holistic view. Live support rounds off our services.

We deliver IT solutions and managed services for retail by eye

Based on our broad industry knowledge, coupled with in-depth solution expertise, we advise, design and implement integrated IT landscapes for our retail customers and, if desired, also ensure their secure and highly available operation in DATIS’ data center. Our service provider makes IT infrastructures and managed services available to our retail customers if required. Private cloud solutions are very popular in the retail sector. Retail companies operate these either under their own responsibility on their own IT systems or, on request, with high availability in the DATIS data centers, hosted in Germany. We also realize public cloud solutions for our retail customers, which can be accessed via Internet connection.

This so-called virtualization offers the advantage of distributed computing. With this approach, retail companies benefit from a high degree of control, security, flexibility and transparency. This is because they always have control over their data and are therefore geared to consumption. Our Backup as a Service (BaaS) services are also highly relevant. These are important for retail companies when it comes to outsourcing, restore, recovery and disaster recovery of data. These IT services are of central importance for liability issues. In particular, the legally compliant backup of data is a mandatory prerequisite when it comes to meeting insurance requirements.

Retail companies using SAP should look at moving to SAP S/4HANA

We recommend that retail companies that use SAP to manage their processes should consider replacing their legacy systems as soon as possible. And this is not only because the data model of the new SAP Suite is much simpler. Far more important is the fact that many IT systems in warehouse management are often highly individualized or even outdated. On the one hand, this means high costs for maintenance or, in the worst case, a lack of real-time data, especially since SAP has already announced the end of maintenance for its previous ERP suite by 2027. With SAP S/4HANA, the Walldorf-based software manufacturer and one of our long-term partners offers various warehouse management options as an integrated or separate IT solution. SAP Stock Room Management or SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) are powerful options that retail companies can particularly benefit from.

In this context, there is a wide range of functionalities to choose from, but also deployment options, i.e. how the SAP solution is operated – on premise, on cloud, embedded or decentralized. Different licensing models round off the portfolio.

In addition, our process experts analyze and document, for example, source codes of SAP systems that are used productively, such as SAP Retail, SAP F&R (Forecasting and Replenishment), and SAP PI/P, a middleware platform that we use to connect an SAP system with third-party systems, such as the connection of a web store. Our SAP experts use tried-and-tested methods to evaluate which options are best suited to your company in a personal selection process.

Together to the optimal solution, because we know how trade is timed

At the most important leading trade fairs in the retail industry, such as EuroShop, the HDE Congress or the EHI Technology Days, our IT consultants are in constant exchange with a large circle of customers as well as numerous experts. In this way, we are always up to date and keep pace with the dynamics in which the retail industry is changing.

In addition, we have access to a strong network of partners in the retail environment. We maintain this in the long term, so that we have already successfully realized many projects with our partners by pooling our expertise and covering even the most complex and also ever new project requirements:

Have we aroused your interest?

Marcus Rödiger

Marcus Rödiger

Bereichsverantwortlicher Handel

marcus.roediger@pta.de

  • LinkedIn

  • Xing