SACO (Saudi Company for Hardware) is a provider of home improvement products in Saudi Arabia. Founded in 1984, SACO started out with one store in Riyadh. Over the next two decades, the company expanded its reach across the country and, to date, operates 34 stores in 18 cities, including five stores (known as SACO World), each occupying between 2,350 and 24,500 square meters.

Objectives

With its continued growth and expansion plans, SACO required a world-class analytics solution aiming to provide near real-time advanced analytics capabilities to achieve its strategic objectives as part of their wider digital transformation initiative:

• Accelerate decision-making at board level with executive cross- departmental analytics

• Provide actionable insights with best-in-class analytics capabilities across its various departments (Retail, Supply Chain, Commercial, Finance, Procurement, IT and many more)

• Ensure scalability to extend to new business areas and new technologies (SAP S/4HANA, geospatial based analytics and machine learning)

• Become an industry benchmark and trailblazer in its peer group of retailers

Project Scope

Driven by strong executive leadership and support, the solution implementation and adoption were successfully achieved by including directors, managers and team members early on in the requirements definition, mapping to source systems and data visualization following Clariba SEIDOR’s Visualization Framework Methodology. The scope of the project was divided into following key stages:

• Deployment and configuration of the architecture to create a scalable platform in the cloud

• Analysis and design of the solution by organizing workshops with each department to align expectations and define performance indicators

• Development of a robust data model that includes master and transactional data features

• Implementation of detailed operational reports allowing drill- down from dashboards

• Implemented Virtual Layers using Layer Scalable Architecture to leverage the Self service

• Design and development dashboards to meet the departments’ analytical needs following a proven, iterative prototyping approach

• Training business users in the autonomous use of the tools

Technology Results

Implementing the right architecture was a critical foundation to ensure a scalable, user-friendly analytics platform in the cloud.

Analytics

• SAP Analytics Cloud

• SAP Business Objects

• SAP Analysis for Office

• SAP BW4HANA

Source Systems

• SAP ER

• SAP CAR

• SAP FNR

• SAP CRM

• SAP CX

  • SAP Marketing Cloud o SAP E-Commerce

  • SAP Cloud for Service

• GKPOS

• Infor WMS

Results

• Data-driven decision making - business users are able to absorb massive amounts of data about their operations – from sales, market trends, customer behaviour and needs, to logistics, services, and more

• Inventory Management Optimization –automatically triggered reports with stock status and exceptions, from sourcing to storing, to selling inventory & finished goods

• Improved interaction with vendors through broadcast reports and Vistex analysis

• Store planogram optimization based on stock, consumer trends and profitability

• Better understanding of consumer trends based on multiple benchmarks – Target/ Budget, Previous Year, Like for Like etc

• Self-Service capabilities for business users with no dependency on the IT department