SAP Fiori app developed by consenso successfully optimises the price reduction process at Ernsting's family

28th November 2025

Founded in 1968, Ernsting’s family is  now one of the most important omni-channel providers in Western European textile retail with about 2,000 shops in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands as well as an award-winning online presence and more than 12,500 employees. Based in Coesfeld (Westphalia), the company offers fashion and accessories for the whole family, specialising in lingerie, women's and children's clothing.ung.

The reduction tool developed and implemented by consenso, or “Redu-Tool” for short, is one of two core components of Ernsting's family's omnichannel pricing solution, which was honoured with the reta-Award and earned consenso the title „Top Supplier Retail 2025“. The Redu-Tool digitises the process of price reductions at Ernsting's family, makes it comprehensible and efficient while optimising it fundamentally: time-consuming, manually processed Excel tables are replaced by a fully integrated, modern SAP Fiori application that automates repetitive tasks without sacrificing control.

The centrally managed price reduction process at Ernsting's family is complex – due to the size of the company, the number of items as well as regional and national differences. All areas involved benefit from the process optimisation enabled by the Redu-Tool, from category management and financial accounting through to the POS and MDE devices in the shops.

In the new process, the price reductions themselves are completely automated in the background. They are taken over by the consenso Price Engine, an SAP standard-based application structuring and controlling the necessary steps by means of BRF+ and mapping Ernsting's operational targets as a central element via a transparent set of rules.

Essentially, this happens in two steps:

In the first step, the items to be reduced are grouped into worklists depending on attributes or combinations of attributes such as distribution channel, term and previous price reductions. For each category, the reductions follow predefined schemes, which are stored in so-called price reduction tables starting from the original price through various reduction levels up to the final marketing as the last reduction level and are then applied.

In the second step, the new, reduced prices are categorised into general and regional condition types. On this basis, the Redu-Tool calculates the amount of markdowns (total, per condition type, GLD, net) as a result of the price reductions and displays them – a decisive advantage in the approval process.

The employees in the Assortment Planning & Allocation department check the price proposals in their worklists, change prices or their validity periods if necessary and release the new prices. All the information required for this, such as article number, sales data by country, stock levels, etc., is clearly displayed to the employees on the modern Fiori interface – from a pool of more than 100 potential price indicators. Role and authorisation concepts ensure that price changes are only released by authorised persons.

The final write-back of the new prices via IDOC into the SAP system is also subject to defined rules at Ernsting's family, thus preventing an overload of work processes in the shops (employees, labelling machines, etc.).

In close cooperation with the business departments, we designed a solution with the Redu-Tool that is both functional and practical and integrates seamlessly into the existing processes. Time-consuming manual price reductions are a thing of the past at Ernsting's family: The automation and mapping of pricing logic in clearly defined rule sets saves time and also reduces the error-proneness of the process. The Fiori interface ensures intuitive operation and a correspondingly high level of user acceptance.

The key to success was the cooperative partnership between Ernsting's family and consenso: from concept to go-live, the tool was continuously developed and successfully tested under real conditions. Just one week after the launch, 500 article groups and 1,308,772 revaluations were smoothly processed and forwarded to POS and MDE devices. The integration into the practical work process demonstrates the stability and performance of the solution recognised with the reta-Award.

In the meantime, the rollout for the entire business department has been completed successfully. In the next phase, the tool will be further optimised. The objective is to use automated rules and forecasts to generate better reduction suggestions – another step towards a future-proof, digital process landscape at Ernsting's family, and one we are already looking forward to.

Photo: Ernsting’s family GmbH & Co. KG, Coesfeld-Lette