Project overview
The retailer wanted to sell more items than it could reasonably stock in stores or in the distribution center. Non-stock articles represented a commercial opportunity, but the execution model needed to remain controlled. The chosen scenario was a third-party process in which the customer order triggers procurement from the vendor and the vendor ships directly to the customer.
Business challenges
- Special-order items created manual procurement effort after the sales conversation had already taken place.
- Users needed visibility into both the customer-facing and supplier-facing side of the transaction.
- The process had to support commercial expansion without increasing inventory risk.
- Billing discipline could weaken if vendor execution and customer order status were not linked.
SAP Retail solution design
- Structured the scenario as a third-party sales process for non-stock items.
- Used automatic purchase requisition creation from the sales order item.
- Converted the requisition into a vendor purchase order for direct supply to the customer.
- Aligned vendor invoice verification and customer billing with the same end-to-end order logic.
Expected business impact
- Expanded the sellable assortment without forcing the retailer to hold local stock.
- Reduced the inventory burden for slow-moving or customer-specific items.
- Improved visibility from customer request to vendor execution.
- Created a scalable model for special orders and endless-aisle sales.
Recommended next steps
The next stage can include customer-facing status communication, vendor service-level monitoring and margin analysis by special-order category.