Artificial intelligence (AI) has also arrived in wholesale: 63 percent of wholesalers and manufacturers rate AI as current Opinion poll According to this, it is highly relevant, and by 2030 this proportion will rise to 85 percent.

While the use of smart tools and processes is increasingly becoming a matter of course for the industry’s big players, more and more small and medium-sized wholesalers are also venturing into the topic of AI. And that’s a good thing, says Stefan Binkowski, Vice President Retail & Wholesale Advisory at SAP: “AI helps to automate processes, control costs, sharpen planning processes and make supply chains more resilient – and is therefore a competitive factor in wholesale that even smaller players cannot escape in the long term,” says the retail and wholesale expert.

Central areas of application for AI in wholesale

There are plenty of starting points for using AI in wholesale. The following 5 examples show what is already possible today:

1. Process automation
   From master data maintenance to invoice processing: In wholesale, many processes are still manual. SAP partner Plato, for example, proves that there is another way: “Our AI-supported platform was developed specifically for wholesale companies and automates time-consuming tasks such as quotation and order entry or routine reporting,” says Plato CEO Benedikt Nolte.

   In addition, the AI ​​copilot Joule supports wholesalers with a continuously growing number of intelligent AI use cases. Would you like an example? With the Expiring Price Handling feature, expiring prices can be systematically identified and processed automatically. If you prefer to develop your own automation solutions, you can use the low-code/no-code solution SAP Build Process Automation. It combines robotic process automation, workflow management and AI for intelligent automation of individual processes.

2. Master data management
   “Without consistent data, every automation remains piecemeal,” says SAP expert Stefan Binkowski. SAP offers wholesalers various levers for efficient control and intelligent use of their data stocks: SAP Master Data Governance serves as the central authority for the maintenance and distribution of master data. SAP Business AI complements this with intelligent checks and data enrichment, and SAP Business Data Cloud ultimately brings together information from different sources in a consistent manner. “On the one hand, this is a central requirement for intelligent wholesale processes, but on the other hand it also ensures that operational processes and decisions are based on the same, consistent data,” says Binkowski.
3. distribution
   In order to answer customer inquiries about availability, prices or product specifications, sales employees usually have to laboriously collect the necessary data from different systems. “A time-consuming process that is fortunately a thing of the past for us today,” says Jacob Meesenburg, e-commerce manager at the Meesenburg Group. The building trade wholesaler has equipped its sales staff with a pocket-sized agent. It is based on an intelligent app from SAP partner Plato, which not only reads the required information from the corresponding SAP applications, but also directly shows potential cross-selling and upselling potential. “On average, our salespeople gain up to an hour of time in which they can visit other customers,” says Meesenburg.

   At the same time, SAP anchors dynamic pricing logic directly in the sales process: customer-specific conditions, costs and availability come together in solutions such as SAP Commerce Cloud and SAP S/4HANA, while SAP Business AI evaluates this data and derives price impulses. The result: Adjustments are automatically incorporated into the offer and order in real time.

4. logistics
   Goods management and requirements planning are among the most important control instruments in wholesale. “In view of increasingly complex and extensive product portfolios, manual processes are increasingly reaching their limits,” says logistics specialist Katharina Glock from the Computer Science Research Center in Karlsruhe. This is one of the reasons why intelligent intralogistics is taken into account right from the start when building new logistics centers. In existing warehouses, for example, the interaction of SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) and SAP Integrated Business Planning is already setting the course for intelligent control of workload, order situation and personnel planning.

   “It doesn’t always have to be a fully automated end-to-end solution,” says logistics expert Glock. Especially in transport logistics, a lot can be achieved with “small” steps and very simple means. “For example, by intelligently assigning gates to transport service providers. This significantly reduces waiting and idle times in front of the warehouses.”

5. Customer service
   Many wholesalers are seamlessly integrated into their customers’ business processes – and therefore cannot afford any slip-ups when it comes to delivery dates, prices and availability. Ultimately, in the worst case scenario, these could endanger the customer’s ability to operate. Reliable service thus becomes a central competitive factor.

   “One more reason for wholesalers to establish intelligent chatbots and virtual assistants,” says Stefan Binkowski. Smart agents enable customer support around the clock and provide the necessary information about products, delivery times or order status at the push of a button. SAP Conversational AI creates the technological basis for the development and integration of corresponding solutions: This allows queries to be linked directly to the underlying systems such as SAP S/4HANA, SAP Commerce Cloud or CRM, so that answers are generated based on current transaction and master data.

AI as an integral part of wholesale processes

And these are just a few examples of how AI contributes to greater efficiency and quality in wholesale. “AI is most beneficial when it becomes an integral part of the process architecture,” says retail and wholesale expert Stefan Binkowski. The integrated architecture of SAP S/4HANA, SAP Business AI and SAP Business Data Cloud creates the best conditions for this. Because it connects applications, data and business AI across area and process boundaries. “Data, processes and AI no longer stand side by side, but actively work together,” summarizes Binkowski. “This turns AI from a pure analysis tool into a core component of the operational wholesale business.”

The post 5 AI levers that make wholesale trade faster, stronger and more competitive appeared first on SAP News Center.

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