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Document History
2.0 Final February 28, 2019 Document updated to reflect the latest changes.
Table of Contents
Table of Figures
1 Getting Started
Before you start working with SAP Sales Insights for Retail, make sure that the following prerequisites are met:
· One of the following web browsers is installed on your machine:
o Microsoft Internet Explorer 10 / Microsoft Edge
o Mozilla Firefox 70 or above
o Google Chrome 70 or above
· You have received the URL to call up the application.
· You are authorized to access the application.
SAP Sales Insights for Retail is tailored to meet your needs as retail category managers and merchandising
managers. This highly flexible reporting tool allows you to analyze your point-of-sales data on market basket level
and determine product affinities.
For example, you can analyze the following:
· Absolute numbers of market baskets that contain products from two selected sets of the product hierarchy
· Average multiplicities of products in market baskets
· Change of multiplicities during promotion
· Causal relationships between products
· Total market basket sales or profits associated with specific products
· Most successful and least successful products or product groups for the selected stores and time frame
· Root causes for changes in revenue and profit for the selected stores and products
SAP Sales Insights for Retail is based on SAP HANA®, SAP's in-memory database. This technology allows you to
perform real-time computations on extremely large data sets.
Concept Explanation
Concept Explanation
Analyzing the affinity allows you to discover co-occurrence relationships among
products or product groups in a set of market baskets. The affinity is calculated by
applying certain metrics and filters on the point-of-sales data in the database.
Heat map The graphical representation of data, where the individual values contained in a
matrix are visualized as colors.
Market basket A sales transaction comprising the goods purchased by a certain customer at a
certain point in time at a certain location.
Metric A key performance indicator (KPI) that is included in or can be directly derived
from point-of-sales data.
Product set Any combination of items from any level of the product hierarchy.
Snapshot A set of filters and analysis results that is saved for later reference.
Stockkeeping Unit A distinct item that is offered for sale. The SKU is the lowest level in the product
(SKU) hierarchy.
Value driver tree The graphical representation of a metric concept that splits value-based metrics
into their sub-metrics to show the source of the value added.
The value driver tree shows how KPIs change over time and how they affect each
other. This allows you to quickly analyze root causes for revenue and profit
changes in any set of stores and on any level of the product hierarchy.
The following sections help you to familiarize yourself with SAP Sales Insights for Retail. They provide information
about the available workspaces as well as options for selecting and configuring the calculation and display of the data
you want to analyze.
To open the SAP Sales Insights for Retail workspace, proceed as follows:
1. Open your web browser and enter the URL provided to you by your local IT department.
The SAP HANA log-on screen appears.
2. Enter the user name and the initial password provided to you by your local IT department.
3. Change the initial password (if required).
4. Choose Log On.
SAP Sales Insights for Retail allows you to analyze your point-of-sales data on market basket level. The application
focuses on identifying quantitative relationships between different products or product groups.
You select the data you want to analyze by setting the scope for a computation, for example, time frame, products,
and stores to be included in the analysis.
Note
The screenshots in this document are intended to provide an example of the user interface. The actual
options available to you may differ. This depends on the data in your database as well as on the system set-
up.
Available Workspaces
You can use the following workspaces to analyze your point-of-sales data:
· Genie Insights
This workspace gives you an overview of notifications related to computation results, for example, significant
increases or decreases.
· Value Driver Tree
This workspace allows you to identify what drives an increase or decrease in business performance for the
selected stores and products or product groups by comparing profit-related KPIs in two different time frames.
· Key Item List
This workspace helps you to find the most successful or least successful products or product groups in the
selected stores or in a certain area of your assortment. You can also use the key item list to identify the stores or
regions that are most or least successful at selling a selected set of products.
· Affinity Insight
This workspace enables you to analyze the composition of market baskets, for example, by determining how
many customers purchased a certain combination of products.
For more information about the individual workspaces, see Performing the Analysis.
Metrics are key performance indicators (KPIs) that are included or can be derived from point-of-sales data. SAP
Sales Insights for Retail is based on the idea of calculating and visualizing different metrics based on a defined set of
market baskets.
The following table lists the metrics that the system calculates when you trigger the analysis.
Note
The calculation depends on the workspace that is currently being displayed. If you are in the Affinity Insight
workspace, for example, the system only calculates the metrics that are relevant for this workspace.
Average basket profit The average profit resulting from a transaction that Key Item List
contains at least one item of the selected product
sets.
Average basket revenue The average revenue resulting from a transaction that Key Item List
contains at least one item of the selected product
sets.
Average basket line items The average number of items included in the baskets Key Item List
that contain at least on item of the product or product
group.
Average buying frequency The average number of times a customer purchases Value Driver Tree
the selected products in the selected stores in the
specified time frame.
Baskets (also: number of The number of distinct sales transactions that contain Affinity Insight
transactions) at least one item of the selected product set. Key Item List
Value Driver Tree
Distinct buyers (also: The number of individual customers that purchased Key Item List
number of customers) any item in the selected product set. Customers are Value Driver Tree
identified by their loyalty card ID. If this is not present,
the system considers each transaction as unique.
Gross margin The gross income expressed as a percentage of the Value Driver Tree
net sales.
Gross margin = (Sales revenue - cost of sales) x 100
÷ sales revenue.
Profit The surplus remaining after all costs are deducted Affinity Insight
from the total revenue generated. Key Item List
Profit = Gross margin x revenue Value Driver Tree
Promotion share The total revenue generated by products on Value Driver Tree
promotion divided by the revenue generated by all
products.
Revenue The income generated from the sale of goods before Affinity Insight
any costs or expenses are deducted. Key Item List
Value Driver Tree
Score A numeric expression that is calculated based on the Key Item List
rating of a metric on a scale from 0 to 100. The final
score is the weighted average value resulting from the
values calculated for the individual metrics.
Share The number of times (in percent) items of both Affinity Insight
product sets A and B appear together in distinct
transactions relative to the total number of distinct
transactions.
Share of A in baskets The share of transactions that include product set A Affinity Insight
containing B relative to the number of transactions that include
product set B.
Share of B in baskets The share of transactions that include B relative to the Affinity Insight
containing A number of transactions that include A
Unit sales The total number of units (SKUs) of a product that are Affinity Insight
sold in distinct transactions. Key Item List
You set the scope of your analysis when you start a new computation. The parameters for setting the scope of your
computation are available for the Value Driver Tree, Key Item List, and Affinity Insight workspaces. You can adjust
your settings at any time using the New Computation menu at the left in the application.
The available settings may vary depending on the type of computation that you are performing. For example, to
calculate product affinities, you must select two product sets A and B. In contrast, the metrics for the key item list and
the value driver list are calculated for one product set only.
To make settings, you use the New Computation menu at the left. This opens a dialog in which you can do the
following:
1. Set a time frame for the analysis.
To generate a value driver tree, you set two time frames to be compared.
2. Select the relevant products.
To analyze product affinities, you select two product sets. To calculate the metrics for the key item list or the
value driver tree, only one product set is necessary.
3. Select a set of stores.
4. Set additional transaction filters as required.
5. Choose Compute to start the analysis
When the computation is finished, the respective results are shown automatically in the relevant workspace.
The following sections provide more detailed information about the individual steps for performing a computation.
Specifying a time frame for your analysis allows you, for example, to evaluate seasonal effects of sales or the effects
of promotional campaigns over a certain period of time.
Note
The start and end dates that you enter are included in the analysis. For example, you enter a time frame that
starts on February 1, 2019 and ends on February 3, 2019. In this case, the system takes into account the
data available for these three days.
If you want to generate a value driver tree for the selected product set, you must set two time frames that are
compared with each other. In this case, another selection area for the comparison time frame is provided.
Note
When you use the date picker to set the time range, use a single click to select the dates for the desired
range.
When you have set a time range, the number of days in the range is shown and the dialog uses color coding to give
you an idea of the computation time necessary. The larger the time period, the more computation time required.
· If your time period is greater than 60 days, then red is used.
· If the time period is greater than 30 days, the number of selected days is shown in yellow.
· Short periods involving smaller amounts of data are shown as green.
If you are comparing two time periods, you can choose the clock button to obtain a suggested period. For
example, if you have selected a time range of 8 days for the first time period, choosing this button for the second time
period automatically sets it to the eight days preceding the start of the first range selected.
After you have set the time frame for your analysis, you select one or two product sets, depending on the type of
computation that you want to perform:
· To calculate product affinities in the Affinity Insight workspace, you select two product sets A and B.
· To generate a key item list or a value driver tree, you select one product set. In this case, Set B is deactivated in
the dialog.
For example, you can select items on product category level, such as food or clothing, or you can select brands of a
certain product category.
You can select single items in the product hierarchy or include their subordinate items:
Button Effect
Instead of drilling down the levels of the hierarchy, you can search for products or product categories using names or
IDs. For more information about using the search field, see Searching for Products and Stores.
If tags have been assigned to products or product categories, you can further narrow down your selection by
selecting one or multiple tags.
When you select items or tags in a product set, the area at the lower right in the selection dialog immediately shows
you how many products you have selected out of the entire hierarchy. Color coding here also gives you an indication
of whether your selection might be too small or large.
When setting the parameters for a computation, you can select stores on various levels of the store hierarchy. For
example, you can select all stores located in a certain region or country. You can also select individual stores.
For more information about using the search field, see Searching for Products and Stores.
You can further narrow down your selection by filtering the available stores using one or multiple tags that are
currently assigned to them (if available).
As with the product selection, the area at the lower right in the selection dialog immediately shows you how many
stores you have selected out of the entire store hierarchy. Color coding here also gives you an indication of whether
your selection might be too small or large.
When you're selecting products and stores, you can also use the search field to find relevant items. Note the
following about the search function:
· You can use the percentage sign wildcard or enclose your search term in double quotations to find similar terms.
· You can right-click the column header in the product or tag hierarchy for products or stores to apply an additional
filter.
Instead of drilling down the different levels of a product or store hierarchy, you can search using the name or the ID of
the product or store. You can even search for a list of products or stores. For example, to search for multiple IDs or
names, separate your entries using semicolons:
Example
You type 0002;0003 in the search field for stores and press E n t e r . The system shows all stores with the
ID number 0002 and all stores with the ID number 0003.
You can also copy a list of IDs for products or stores directly from a spreadsheet and paste them into the search field.
The application automatically handles them as separate search terms and it is not necessary to enter separating
semicolons.
Additional search settings are available for selecting products. You can choose between the general product
hierarchy and the marketing product hierarchy. For each selection, you can decide whether you want to exclude
inactive product or include the promotion ID.
3.5 Setting Options for the Key Item List and Affinity
Calculation
When you are in the Key Item List or Affinity Insight workspace, you can use additional options to configure the
calculation and display of the analysis results.
When you make settings for a key item list computation, you can make settings that affect the data displayed:
Note
Which levels are available to you and how these are named depends on your system configuration.
2. You determine which metrics in the list are most important by rating them on a scale from 1 to 100 in the Score
Adjustable Weights section.
Based on your rating, the system calculates the score for all metrics. The overall score that is displayed in the
key item list is the weighted average value created from the score for the individual metrics.
3. You specify whether to display the items with the highest score or those with the lowest score in the key item list.
o To display the items with the highest score, you select the Show Results with the Highest Scores option.
o To display the items with the lowest score, you select the Show Results with the Lowest Scores option.
When you make settings for an affinity insight computation, you can also make settings that affect the data displayed:
You can specify that product affinities are calculated at SKU level in addition to the hierarchy levels that you selected
when specifying the product sets.
Example
You select set A = Beverages and set B = Bread. If you do not activate the calculation at SKU level, the
system analyzes how many transactions contain at least one item from the beverages category and one item
from the bread category. If you activate the calculation at SKU level, the analysis is performed for any
possible combination of SKUs in these categories.
When the results are displayed in the Affinity Insight workspace, you can use the dropdown to switch
between displaying the results for the selected product category level (Levels) or on SKU level (Products).
You can activate delta support for the computed heatmap. If this is activated, the heatmap results are based on the
difference between the metrics for support and expected support. You can use this setting to make sure that the
detected correlations between two sets of products are significant.
The following elements are used to calculate this, using two product sets, A and B:
· Count(S): This is the total count of distinct transactions (also referred to as “market baskets”) in the selected
transaction set.
· Count(A): This is the total number of distinct transactions in which one of the SKUs from A appears.
· Count(B): This is the total number of distinct transactions in which one of the SKUs from B appears.
· Count(AB): This is the total number of distinct transactions in which both one SKU from A and one SKU from B
appear.
Example
Assume that there are 100 market baskets and two product sets. Product set A contains beverages and
cheese, while product set B contains milk. The value for count(S) is 100. The value for count(A) is the
number of market baskets that contain at least one beverage or cheese product. The value for count(B) is
the number of market baskets that contain at least one milk product. The value for count(AB) is the
number of baskets that contain at least one beverage or cheese product and at least one milk product.{ XE
"Affinity Metrics:Support" }
The number of times that a pair consisting of product A and product B appears together in distinct transactions,
relative to the total number of distinct transactions, is called support. This is calculated as follows:
You can automatically use subcategories as levels in the heatmap. Then you don't need to set them explicitly when
you're creating your computation.
After selecting stores and product sets, you can further limit the scope of your analysis by setting additional
transaction filters. For example, the available point-of-sales data may include information about the customer
segment or the time of day at which the products were purchased.
Note
Which transaction filters are available depends on the information included in your point-of-sales data as well
as your system configuration. If no filtering options are available, additional configuration may be necessary.
If in doubt, contact your system administrator.
This section of the user guide describes the available workspaces that you can use to analyze your point-of-sales
data.
This workspace is the first one shown after you have logged on to SAP Sales Insights for Retail. This area gives you
an overview of notifications to alert you of important computation results. The alerts are grouped according to various
categories, such as significant product variation. The relevant thresholds for alerts are set during implementation.
To see the computation details, choose Expand Group.
You can provide feedback about whether a notification was useful.
This workspace also allows you to set up and start a new computation for value driver tree, key item list, or affinity
insight.
The Value Driver Tree workspace allows you to quickly analyze the root causes for changes in revenue and profit for
the selected store and product set. The value driver tree shows how the profit-related metrics develop over time and
how they affect each other. In addition, you can display a bar chart that breaks down the amount of profit according to
the vendor company.
The header area in the workspace shows the settings selected for the computation.
To change the settings, choose Edit. You can then create a new computation using the adjusted settings. When the
computation is complete, the workspace opens to show your results.
You can use the History dropdown at the right to access the last ten computations that you have performed in the
workspace.
The color coding shows you immediately whether and to what extent a metric is trending upwards or downwards:
· Green means that the trend shows an increase of more than 3%.
· Red means that the trend shows a decrease of more than 3%.
· Gray means that the upward or downward trend is below 3%.
You can click one of the squares in the hierarchy to get a detailed view of the increase or decrease:
You can change the display of the tree using the buttons provided:
Button Effect
Bar Chart
In addition to the actual value driver tree, you can also display a bar chart that breaks down the data according to a
range of available metrics such as profit, revenue, or unit sales and a selected level, such as product or brand.
The bar chart compares old and new amounts for each selected combination of metric and level.
Additional functions are available at the upper right that allow you to do the following:
· Show or hide the legend
· Zoom in or out
· Expand to full screen
· Export the results to a spreadsheet
Note
Note that when you export data to a spreadsheet, any filters that you have set in the view are not taken into
account. You can apply filters after exporting the entire data set.
The buttons at the right also allow you to choose between the following bar graph modes:
· Comparison
· Variation
· Table view
In the table view, you can right-click on column headers to apply additional filters and sorting criteria.
The Key Item List workspace allows you to quickly identify the most successful and the least successful products or
product groups. The system creates the key item list based on the time frame, products, and stores you selected.
The header area in the workspace shows you the settings selected for the computation.
To change the settings, choose Edit. You can then create a new computation using the adjusted settings. When the
computation is complete, the workspace opens to show your results.
You can use the History dropdown at the right to access the last ten computations that you have performed in the
workspace.
You can show the calculation results as a table, as a scatter plot chart or as a bar chart.
Table-Based View
The sequence in which the items are displayed in the table depends on how you rate the metrics in the key item list
options as described in Setting Options for the Key Item List and Affinity Calculation.
To check the current weights, choose the button highlighted in the diagram below. Products for which a significant
price variation occurred in the selected time frame are denoted using blue color coding in the first column at the left.
You can use the View dropdown to choose a subset of columns to be shown.
Additional functions are available at the upper right that allow you to do the following:
· Expand to full screen
· Export the results to a spreadsheet
You can sort and filter the columns by clicking on the column headers. You can also select the column headers to be
displayed here:
Figure 19: Sorting, Filtering, Grouping, and Column Selection in Key Item List
You can also drag and drop column headers to focus on the data that interests you.
Which columns are available depends upon what was specified during implementation.
Each dot represents one product or product group. You can click the individual dots to display detailed information.
Additional functions are available at the upper right that allow you to do the following:
· Show or hide the legend
· Zoom in or out
· Expand to full screen
Each bar represents one product or product group. You can click the individual bars to display detailed information.
Additional functions are available at the upper right that allow you to do the following:
· Show or hide the legend
· Zoom in or out
· Expand to full screen
For each item shown in the table-based view of the key item list, you can obtain information about development over
the selected time frame. For example, you might want to find out details about the relationship between the price and
the number of units sold.
To obtain this information for a key item, click an entry in the table.
You can use the dropdown lists to set the axes and aggregation levels for the selected item. Various metrics whose
development over time you want to analyze, such as price details, total basket contents by revenue, and statistics.
Price Details
When you're looking at the development of key items over time, you can also take a closer look at the price details.
This graph shows you the average actual and optimal price positions for the items and automatically computes the
price elasticity:
You can click on the dots shown in the graph to obtain detailed explanations. You can also view this data in table
form.
You can click on each segment shown to obtain details. This gives you an idea of items that are bought together.
Statistics
You can also display a range of statistics about the computed data:
· Units per basket
· Total basket revenue
· Similar products
· Correlations with other product
· General correlations - here you can hover over the correlation value to obtain more details about the analysis
results.
The Affinity Insight workspace allows you to find product affinities, for example, by calculating how often products of
the two selected product sets are sold together.
The header area in the workspace shows you the settings selected for the computation.
To change the settings, choose Edit. You can then create a new computation using the adjusted settings. When the
computation is complete, the workspace opens to show your results.
You can use the History dropdown at the right to access the last ten computations that you have performed in the
workspace.
You can visualize the calculation results as a heat map, a tree map, or a table. The diagrams show you the number
of baskets.
In each visualization, additional functions are available at the upper right that allow you to do the following:
· Show or hide the legend
· Zoom in or out
· Expand to full screen
· Export the results to a spreadsheet
Heat Map
Using the dropdowns, you can specify whether to display the results for the top product levels or for the top product
pairs (SKUs).
The items in product set A are displayed on the x-axis and the items of product set B are displayed on the y-axis of
the heat map.
You can display the heat map for the following metrics:
o Baskets
o Share
o Share of A in baskets containing B
o Share of B in baskets containing A
The color-coding allows you to identify patterns and exceptions in the analysis results. The more intense the shading,
the higher the affinity is.
o Red means that a combination is "hot." That is, items of both product sets are sold together with a certain
frequency in the same distinct baskets.
o Blue means that a combination is "cold." That is, the items of both product sets are not or only rarely sold
together.
o Gray means that the selected metric is not relevant for the heat map.
Tree Map
In addition to the heat map, you can display the affinity metrics as a tree map. Using the dropdown, you can specify
the metric for which the chart is displayed.
You can display the tree map for the following metrics:
o Baskets
o Units
o Revenue
o Profit
Table View
You can also display the affinity metrics in a table view.
You can use snapshots to save results that you would like to use again later. A snapshot is a set of settings and
analysis results. The snapshot feature is helpful if you want to compare the results of the current session with the
results of a previous session. You can also use it for storing settings that you use regularly.
Creating Snapshots
To save the current results of the current session as a snapshot, proceed as follows:
1. Choose the Manage Snapshots button at the upper right corner.
This opens the workspace for managing snapshots.
2. Choose New Snapshot.
A dialog box appears.
3. Enter a name for the snapshot you want to save.
4. Specify whether you want the snapshot to be visible to others.
5. Choose Save.
Your snapshot is then shown in the overall list of available snapshots.
Managing Snapshots
To retrieve a saved snapshot, choose Manage Snapshots. Then choose the relevant option to load the snapshot
settings and results:
You can now compare this snapshot with the current analysis results.
Note
When you load your snapshot, it replaces your current settings and results.
Snapshots also help you to run an analysis more quickly. If you use similar settings on a regular basis, you can
simply load the relevant snapshot, adjust as required, and then trigger a new computation.
Note
You can only modify and delete your own snapshots.