Relational Solutions
Reduce SAP DSiM Complexity and Risk with a Data Delivery Platform

Today, Consumer Goods manufacturers have to work with many disparate data sets which come from different sources with varying data elements and inconsistent formats. Internal data sources like shipments, promotion planning, and internal hierarchies have to be combined with external data including downstream POS (Point of Sale) data from retailers. “Building a consistent source of information that is fully integrated is a monumental task,” says Rob York, President, Relational Solutions. To curb the challenges in the SAP environment and SAP DSiM (Demand Signal Management), many companies approach Relational Solutions for its comprehensive data delivery platform.

Headquartered in North Olmsted, OH, Relational Solutions offers an SAP certified data delivery platform. The company’s SAP DSiM data delivery service provides the foundation to gain insight into on-shelf availability, assortment optimization, retail compliance, pricing strategies, market analysis, and trade spend optimization. The data delivery platform reduces data complexity issues by integrating data directly from the source—retailer, third party supplier, and syndicated data supplier—on a daily basis. “Customers get clean, fully integrated data that has business rules and validation processes fully applied before it enters the SAP DSIM platform,” says York.

Relational Solutions’ integration engine also supports the ability to extract, integrate and harmonize POS data along with transactional data from SAP R3 and SAP BW. With the company’s unique Match Flow and Audit Stream technology, data is matched, validated and cleansed so that SAP DSiM is always 100 percent valid for reliable and consistent reporting, deep analytics and valuable insights via SAP HANA. “Our application audits the data from beginning to end for reliable and accurate insights,” says York. Relational Solution’s Direct Discovery technology communicates data anomalies back to the data supplier via email or text messages, allowing for immediate collaboration and correction of data feeds. The traceable flow of clean, validated data is then directly streamed into SAP DSiM.

The company’s flagship product, POSmart, is a multi-retailer Enterprise DSR (Demand Signal Repository) architecture. POSmart automates the integration, cleansing and harmonization of POS data for consumer goods companies along with data coming from SAP ERP systems and POS data from virtually any retailer. “The POSmart data integration and analytics engine pulls in demand data with its built-in retailer specific data connectors. It applies Dynamic Matching Technology and algorithms to validate and harmonize the data to deliver actionable insights needed to change the way customers do business,” says York.

Relational Solutions has leveraged its extensive industry experience to help many notable clients across the globe. For example, a large DSD (Direct Store Delivery) beverage company lacked insight into on-shelf availability to understand out-of-stock and low inventory positions. In addition, it was important for them to optimize shelf space and product mix to improve overall sales volume at every store. Relational Solutions came to the scene with predictive analytics and data correlation (causal) technology to solve the problem. The company reduced the out of stock frequency by 13 percent, while increasing the sales by 10 to 15 percent. Inventory on-hand was also reduced by 2 percent. This resulted in huge cost savings and big ROI for the customer.

The POSmart data integration and analytics engine pulls in demand data with its built-in retailer specific data connectors

Moving forward, Relational Solutions is working extensively on advanced trade spend intelligence and improving bottom line margins for its customers. The company is focused on advanced predictive and high ROI solutions for its customers. “We will continue to build solutions based on our customers’ needs and the overall direction of the industry itself,” concludes York.