The POI 2025 Consumer Goods Enterprise Planning (EPx) and Retail Execution (RetX) Vendor Panorama Report, released by the Promotion Optimization Institute Monday, honors SAP with 10 best-in-class category distinctions.
We’re thrilled and honored to receive this recognition from the Promotion Optimization Institute, which highlights SAP’s commitment to end-to-end processes, excellence and innovation in the consumer products industry.
SAP provides a complete and comprehensive capability for consumer products companies that leverages the power of SAP Business AI across SAP Business Suite.
SAP Business Suite enables organizations to scale, innovate, and adapt faster to market opportunities and uncertainties. The combination of enterprise applications and robust data enables cross-functional AI agents that can accelerate collaboration and transformation.
SAP offers end-to-end CP solutions for holistic enterprise planning and execution. The industry-specific solutions cover the entire promote-to-cash process for most routes to markets across digital and non-digital channels. SAP’s enterprise planning ecosystem includes integrated solutions for budget planning, commercial planning, supply chain & demand planning, trade management, retail execution, direct distribution, distributor management, marketing spend & activities, digital commerce, and order orchestration across all channels.
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POI 2025 EPx & RetX report
The annual POI Consumer Goods Enterprise Planning (EPx) and Retail Execution (RetX) Vendor Panorama Report assesses vendor support for the most critical sales processes for CPG clients. It aims to help them better understand available technologies and services, enabling them to improve enterprise planning, trade management, revenue growth management, and retail execution to maximize the profitability of their promotions and store visits.
In their 2025 report, POI recognized SAP in seven categories for retail execution and direct distribution:
- Guided Selling
- Omnichannel Engagement (eCommerce/B2B/DTC/Tele-virtual)
- Data and Analytics Visualization
- Retail Merchandising.
- Retail Activity Optimization (RAO)
- Mobile UI/UX
- Back-Office Desktop UX
POI recognized SAP in three categories for enterprise planning and trade promotion management:
- Collaboration-External
- Field Analytics & Insights
- Global Deployment
According to POI, you should evaluate SAP for retail execution and direct distribution when:
“You want intelligent Retail Execution & Direct Distribution solutions that seamlessly leverage enterprise and external data to optimize store visit plans, delivery routes, in-store activities and selling experience. You should also evaluate SAP if you want benefits associated with an end-to-end integrated Retail Execution solution suite that covers all routes to markets (digital & non-digital) and all processes from promotion planning to selling and distribution. Also, if you are seeking a vendor with established global user groups and a proven ability to scale.”
POI also recognizes SAP for integrated end-to-end processes in holistic enterprise planning and trade promotion management:
“A notable SAP differentiator is the complete, native integration with SAP back-office systems (ERP, S/4HANA, APO, IBP, Finance, etc.), particularly in areas such as settlement, accruals,and financial processing, as well as seamless integration with Demand Planning and Retail Store Execution.”
“Evaluate SAP if your organization is focused on cloud transformation with the SAP stack, if you have or are planning to move to SAP S/4HANA Cloud ERP, or if you are considering being a co-innovation partner as SAP continues to build and advance its new SAP Revenue Growth Management TPMx product.”
Access the full POI 2025 Consumer Goods Vendor Panorama HERE.
POI on SAP’s 2025 best-in-class category distinctions
POI’s recognition of SAP is more than an achievement; it’s a testament to SAP’s dedication to continually investing in and evolving end-to-end solutions and services to our valued customers and partners.
In the Vendor Trends and Outlook section of the report, POI stated:
“SAP is aiming for an AI & data-led end-to-end enterprise planning ecosystem, which is strategically aligned with SAP’s product & technology strategy. Utilizing the best of SAP Cloud ERP, SAP Business Technology Platform,SAP Business Data Cloud, SAP Customer Experience, and SAP Joule to provide an AI-enabled business suite on private and public cloud for both enterprise and mid-market consumer products customers.”
According to the POI Retail Execution (RetX) report:
POI recognizes SAP’s end-to-end focus in all routes to market, including delivery of intelligent retail execution and dynamic visit planning, that can leverage a multitude of enterprise data sources and partner capabilities to deliver smart tasks, smart ordering, and smart surveys in-store. This improves the outcome, revenue and profitability from each store visit or van sales while also improving the ordering experience and reducing the cost to serve long-tail customers with B2B commerce.
The POI vendor panorama says:
“SAP’s Retail Execution solution offering provides end-to-end integrated solutions for the promote-to-cash & lead-to-cash processes. It supports all processes & functions such as sales, merchandising, order management, direct-to-store delivery, van sales, pre-sales & distributor management. The Dynamic Visit Planning module enables field sales teams to automate & optimize the visit planning based on business priorities, which boosts sales & productivity.
“The Retail Execution solutions are deployed across all geographies and support all processes for both modern and traditional trade markets. The solutions also cover most processes for FMCG & non-FMCG companies across most channels, including retail stores, food service, and other channels. International CPGs are utilizing the solutions across multiple markets, and they are also employed by other mid-sized CPGs in single markets.”
Regarding SAP’s use of harmonized enterprise data to better enable AI assistance with SAP Joule, the POI Vendor Panorama notes SAP’s latest innovation:
“SAP’s Business Data Cloud consolidates data from Retail Execution and other SAP and non-SAP systems, including both structured and unstructured data, into a single, common semantic layer. This ensures that the most critical data—such as store data, sales data, finance, supply chain, customer, and third-party data—is aligned, governed, and easily accessible. It’s a pre-built ‘data fabric’ that enables companies to accelerate the value of Business AI.”
POI states in the Vendor Trends and Outlook section of the RetX report:
“The Business Suite & Business Data Cloud provide customers with pre-built access to data products across core business areas. It serves as the foundation for developing Generative AI & AI Agents to transform businesses and respond to market opportunities & uncertainties. SAP is committed to continuing its investment in its overall Consumer Products solutions and recognizes retail execution as a critical component of its end-to-end CP offering. SAP will continue to enjoy success by leveraging the input from its user advisory groups and councils.”
According to the POI Enterprise Planning (EPx) report:
- Global deployment: SAP Trade Management has deployed numerous global implementations, supporting some customers with a single instance of the tool tailored to over 60 different markets.
- Integrated business planning: The end-to-end information flow supporting SAP Trade Management includes the option for baseline ingestion from IBP/Demand Planning, as well as the uplift in sales volume returns to feed back into integrated planning.
- Customer-led roadmap & eco-system supporting: SAP’s roadmap and its rate of progress in 2025 demonstrate that the company is focused and investing heavily in its next-generation trade promotion product offering, SAP Revenue Growth Management. SAP will continue to support and maintain its classic SAP Trade Management platform for at least the next five years. SAP is taking a customer co-innovation-led approach to building out their new, public cloud SaaS trade promotion planning, analytics & financial execution product.