Historically, the TravelCenters of America (TA) business team had daily reports that it could not run due to the large amount of data needed to be queried. Many reports would time out or crash, especially if they were run across enterprise data. Due to the limitation on the amount of information teams could get in one report, TA had to run multiple reports and piece the information together in Microsoft Excel or Access. The information could not be generated in a timely fashion to make key business decisions. Additionally, the TA category managers had no market basket analysis capabilities despite having a large amount of data collected over the past decade. SAP Customer Activity Repository has now changed the way TA accesses and analyzes data. TA migrated its SAP POS Data Management and SAP BW/4HANA platform to the HANA-based SAP Customer Activity Repository platform and implemented various pre-built and self-service analytics capabilities. In addition, several new SAP technologies were enabled at TA, such as: SAP HANA, SAP Fiori, SAP Landscape Transformation Replication Server, SAP BusinessObjects, and sales insights. These new tools were implemented in the cloud—TA’s first foray into adopting cloud technology for the SAP platform.
Key Business Benefits:
- Improve assortment, pricing, inventory management, and margins by making better decisions using better and faster data. Inventory stockouts at stores are now visible immediately, enabling quick actions to improve in-stock positions and increase sales.
- Perform market basket analysis, enabling better decisions on promotions and pricing strategies.
- Set foundation for TA’s analytics platform of the future.
