Whether you’re an AFS/IS-Retail customer, an FMS customer, or already using SAP S/4HANA, a key topic that continues to spark conversations is Supply Protection. This core feature within SAP S/4HANA helps businesses prioritize inventory to high-value channels, customers and markets, ensuring availability even during high demand.

To gain deeper insights into the latest enhancements and future direction of Supply Protection, we hosted an exclusive webinar with Ravindra (Ravi) Prabhala — an SAP veteran with 27 years of expertise. Our discussion covered:

  • How Supply Protection enhances operations in SAP S/4HANA.
  • How fashion and retail businesses are using it to manage profitability, demand forecasting, and inventory optimization.
  • Common challenges faced by businesses—and how we helped overcome them.
  • The latest enhancements and future roadmap of Supply Protection.

Ravi brings over 27 years of experience at SAP, working closely with Fashion industry clients. At SAP, among other roles Ravi was the Chief Product Owner for Consumer Industries and played a key role in the development of SAP S/4HANA Fashion and Vertical Business as well as SAP Fashion Management Solution. In his current role at Rizing, Ravi helps fashion and retail clients in an advisory role to navigate their transformation journey by leveraging SAP Industry Solutions as well as GROW with SAP, RISE with SAP and SAP Business AI.

Here are a few insights from our discussion:

1. Supply Protection as business enabler

Supply Protection acts as an inventory gatekeeper to ensure high-value segments are always prioritized. In this webinar, Ravi and Susan discussed how Supply Protection extends beyond inventory management, positioning itself as a strategic enabler for businesses. A key takeaway was that it should be considered a strategic initiative, jointly planned by both business and IT teams. Additionally, they explored critical considerations for its implementation, outlining:

  • The difference between simple vertical protection vs. hybrid models.
  • Why Supply Protection requires alignment between inventory priorities, forecasting models, and segmentation needs—rather than a plug-and-play approach.
  • How third-party forecasting tools and SAP IBP integrations require careful customization
  • Strategies to align Supply Protection with your long-term transformation roadmap.

2. The Roadmap of Supply Protection: Enhancements & Future Innovations

With SAP S/4HANA’s latest 2023 FPS 3 release, Supply Protection has evolved into a strategic powerhouse within SAP Advanced ATP (aATP). In fact, several enhancements have come directly from customer needs and implementation experiences to support real-world scenarios. You can watch the webinar replay for a deeper dive into the below points:

  • Smarter Inventory Prioritization – Discover how leading brands are securing stock at both macro (country-level) and micro (sales-channel level), while minimizing channel cannibalization.
  • Fashion-Specific Enhancements – Learn how forward and backward consumption planning ensures fashion businesses stay ahead of evolving demand.

3. Closing the Gaps in Supply Protection

During our webinar, Ravi highlighted some key areas where Supply Protection in SAP S/4HANA continues to evolve in areas such as over-protection monitoring. These are being actively addressed by SAP’s development teams.

As a global partner to fashion and retail companies, our team has been instrumental in bridging gaps—most notably by integrating third-party demand forecasts into Supply Protection buckets using an automated SAP API workflow.

How to get started

With continuous refinement from SAP, Supply Protection is maturing into a strategic capability for fashion and retail businesses.

We’ve been at the forefront of this transformation— conducting discovery sessions, and helping brands reassess their Supply Protection strategies to align with SAP’s latest enhancements. To learn more on how we can help, you can contact us here.

If you want to learn more about our solutions for and would like to sign up for a discovery session, you can get in touch with us here.