OREANDA-NEWS. February 26, 2016. SAP (NYSE: SAP) recently announced the appointment of Achim Schneider as global head of the Retail Industry Business Unit.

Schneider will be responsible for the Retail Industry footprint at SAP and will report directly to Lori Mitchell-Keller, global general manager of Consumer Industries.

In his new role, Schneider leads the Retail Industry with a focus on helping SAP customers transform their business and derive value while getting closer to their customers. By taking the industry view to customer collaboration and offering retailers actionable cloud road maps, the Retail Industry organization serves those customers across every cloud deployment model (private, public and hybrid) and any business size, globally.

Schneider will lead a team dedicated to addressing today’s most pressing and vital Retail Industry–specific issues. Retail has unique customer and employee needs; however, across all industries, customers using SAP® software have come to expect fast, intuitive and rich user experiences. The Retail Industry team will continue to focus on offering the right mix of cloud and on-premise technology solutions that customers can use to reimagine their future, improve their efficiency and enrich the quality of life of their consumers.

“We have an exceptional opportunity to accelerate our Retail customers’ digital transformation with our end-to-end solutions as well as the simplicity and strength of our unique integrated operating model,” said Mitchell-Keller. “Retail is an industry that is under tremendous pressure to fulfill consumer expectations. The digital core in retailing is fundamental to meeting these expectations. SAP places the customer at the center of everything we do, and I am excited about Achim Schneider’s leadership of this crucial industry.”

Schneider brings to his current role over 17 years of experience in Retail Industry solutions with SAP. In his most recent position as global vice president he led the Global Supply Chain team and Fashion team. One of the key products that his organization brought to market, the SAP Fashion Management application, is used by over 25 global fashion brands worldwide. The original solution was codeveloped with 4 key fashion brands as announced here in May 2014.

According to Leslie Hand, vice president for IDC Retail Insights, “Solutions for managing vertical integration continue to be very topical for many retail companies.” Hand added: “Retail companies have realized that they need to improve their ability to harmonize wholesale, retail and manufacturing processes within one back-office software system.” She noted that, among other developments, leading solutions are increasingly providing “manufacturing capabilities for end-to-end scenario integration, multichannel material requirements planning and order allocation with the ability to simulate.”