"That means better performance and faster speeds in our management of inventory, many completion of transactions, submission of invoices to accounts payable and more," he said. Completed in May, the effort across around 9,000 U.S. stores was part of a five-year IT overhaul grouping applications for retail, merchandising, inventory management and finance, among others, on a platform built on S/4HANA, enterprise-resource planning software from Germany-based SAP SE. The SAP system is tied to retail operations, and isn't used for the company's pharmacy operations. The Morning Download delivers daily insights and news on business technology from the CIO Journal team. Enterprise resource-planning systems are a mainstay of IT operations at large firms, and house accounting, supply-chain and other core business functions.