SAP AFS, Retail

SAP offers basically 2 products to apparel and footwear companies depending on the spot a company occupies in the supply chain:

Industry Solution SAP AFS
Industry Solution SAP for Retail

According to SAP:

"A standard SAP Retail system is a completely integrated retailing system. It provides the functions necessary for modeling business processes within a retail company. The business process area -Retailing- comprises the procurement, storage, distribution and sales of merchandise. SAP Retail supports both Wholesale and Retail scenarios.

AFS enhances R/3 standard components in order to meet the unique requirements of the apparel and footwear industry. The result is a comprehensive solution for AFS business and logistics needs.

The main strength of SAP Retail is distribution and the main strength of AFS is the manufacturing of size-dependent products, as in the apparel and footwear industry. For this reason, AFS has a supplying role for retail companies. These two types of companies have a Customer-Supplier relationship. The interface considers the AFS system as a supplier of the Retail system and Retail as a Customer of the AFS company".

I have a solid experience with SAP AFS and some with SAP Retail. So I will start to round up my knowledge with SAP Retail as a first step. For that I have decided to pursue certification in SAP for Retail.

For now, I’ll be posting in this blog my journey towards certification in SAP for Retail. During the preparation, I’ll be comparing SAP Retail with SAP AFS and providing insights about how the two systems complement each other and about the differences and drawbacks as well.