SAP has been quietly growing its retail footprint and penetration for some years now. It takes an event like Retail Forum to bring that point home. This year’s event was held in Dallas, themed “Retail without Boundaries. ” More than 70 retail companies were in attendance, an increase in 40% over last year. Most keynote and break-out sessions were packed, and thanks to the high overall attendance, there was some attendee spillover into nearby hotels.

Happily, SAP and its customers are talking far more about business value delivery these days and far less about technology underpinnings. I think this is one reason for the company’s growth in our industry. The other reason for its growth is a gradual shift in corporate philosophy: no longer are companies asked to “eat the whole thing ” all at once. Instead, modules, pieces and parts are available for sale, deliverable in relatively short periods of time, and bringing rapid value to its retail customers.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t a technology story here. But it is finding its rightful place. If you want to get an overall flavor for the event, you can either look up my tweets (@paula_rosenblum) or just look up hashtag #sapforum. Lots of folks were tweeting besides me.

In this article, I’m going to focus on two particular retailers, 99 Cent Only Stores and Hobby Lobby. 99 Cents is a nice example of bringing “pretty big data ” into near-real-time (I can’t call it ‘big data,’ but it is a LOT of data), while Hobby Lobby shows there are some very practical considerations when you’re going mobile.

First, let’s talk about 99 Cent Only Stores and its processing of real-time POS data (called ‘TLog’ in geek-ese). You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that a chain called “99 Cents Only ” generating one and a half billion dollars in annual sales is processing a lot of transactions. In fact, I have in my notes that they are processing (wait for it…) 1.5 billion transactions a year. I can tell you from personal experience that the small party supply retailer I worked for generated more transactions than the shoe chain I worked for earlier in my career that was ten times its size. So when executives from 99 Cent Only Stores told us they’re doing real-time analysis of their Tlog data right in memory using HANA, I was blown away. Using Tlog data means there has been zero data aggregation. This is as raw as data gets. And it’s used by Merchandising, Loss Prevention, Store Operations – pretty much anyone in the company looking for data. It is the data warehouse. The data comes in every 15 minutes, via a technology called “trickle polling. “

Now, I’m not saying that POS data is “Big Data. ” Retailers have routinely been summarizing and using POS data forever. But using it in its raw form? In a dollar store chain? That’s BIG. The lesson here is that you don’t have to rip and replace back office systems to get at your data in a timely basis. You can get it as quickly as you can use it. That’s a big deal.

Next, I wanted to spend some time talking about Hobby Lobby and its mobility implementation.

As a quick overview, Hobby Lobby has 520 stores operating around the US. Most of their product is private label, all distributed through its distribution centers. All re-orders are initiated from the store, which historically has been a very manually intensive process. The goal was to improve the order process (we are not talking mobile POS here). I’m not going to get into the details of the technology beyond saying the chain opted to use iPads as their devices, SAP/Sybase Afaria for device management and SUP for its application platform.

When I chicken-scratched my notes I wrote “Getting Practical with Mobility “. And that’s just what these guys have done. Essentially, the company had three issues:

• How to have the associate carry them: The person creating the store orders also might be called upon to serve a customer. Just putting the iPad down on the floor wasn’t a good alternative, so some kind of carrier was needed.
• How to secure them: This is a two-parter. I’ve already mentioned Afaria, which solves system security, but there’s also a matter of device security as well. How to store it?
• How to charge them: If you’re like me, you’ve got a clown-car collection of device cables and wires in your suitcase and attached to outlets in your walls. This wouldn’t work so well in a retail environment, so they sought to find a way to clean that up, and also provide physical security during non-open hours.

These problems and solutions are the ones I like the best, because they make the technology actually usable. It’s “making it real. ” So, what did Hobby Lobby do?

• Hobby Lobby worked with Griffin to create a carrying case. It’s a shoulder bag (in right or left-handed models) that the associate can just swing away from their body when helping a customer. They did such a good job that Griffin will be selling these as an actual product.
• Afaria will control device security. The charging boxes I will describe below take care of physical security of devices during non-open hours.
• Hobby Lobby worked with Datamation to design charging lockers for batches of iPads. They slide into the lockers, get plugged in, and then the door is shut and locked. The result? A secure, tidy charging environment.

I know this sounds like pretty basic stuff, but as I said, it’s making mobility real. Not just demo material, but practical, pragmatic considerations for the field.

So I learned a lot at the SAP Retail Forum. I can’t wait to find out the progress our industry makes in the coming year.