Enterprise SOA

Store-specific pricing

As SAP continues to extend the functionality of its packaged applications using enterprise services and composite applications (its xApps), opportunities to create xApps using ESA principles have already emerged. One lightweight xApp created in just days for SAP's customers in the retail industry uses guided procedures, a handful of simple interfaces, and analytic tools to make a key feature of their Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) systems available to managers at the individual store level.

These managers were all but barred from accessing the sales, pricing, and margins data—to name just three of more than 100 fields and parameters—residing in their company's ERP system. The complexity of that application, coupled with the potential for confusion and misuse if hundreds of middle managers were granted access to an industrial-strength application they were ill-equipped to use, had kept control over pricing consolidated in the hands of category managers at corporate headquarters.

However, the store managers were also the ones closest to the front lines of the business—the ones responsible for monitoring the prices of their immediate competitors and the effect of price changes on their own business. This led to tension between store managers who understood local conditions and needed the flexibility to respond, and category managers who possessed ultimate responsibility and access to analytical tools but were unable to focus on a store-by-store basis. In many ...