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  • Oracle Retail Consulting and the Implementation Process, with Maria Porretta

    - by user801960
    Maria Porretta, Engagement Director, discusses Oracle Retail Consulting and its involvement in the implementation process and how it supports customers to maximize their ROI in Oracle Retail solutions. Maria explains the wide range of factors customers need to consider when preparing to implement Oracle Retail, from the solutions being utilized to the current IT infrastructures and available resources of the end user. Oracle Retail Consulting ensures a smooth and efficient process by working with customers from design right through to final implementation, and continues to work with customers to ensure they get value from their software investments and further extend investment in Oracle Retail solutions. Further information is available on our website regarding Oracle Retail Consulting.

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  • ARTS Reference Model for Retail

    - by Sanjeev Sharma
    Consider a hypothetical scenario where you have been tasked to set up retail operations for a electronic goods or daily consumables or a luxury brand etc. It is very likely you will be faced with the following questions: What are the essential business capabilities that you must have in place?  What are the essential business activities under-pinning each of the business capabilities, identified in Step 1? What are the set of steps that you need to perform to execute each of the business activities, identified in Step 2? Answers to the above will drive your investments in software and hardware to enable the core retail operations. More importantly, the choices you make in responding to the above questions will several implications in the short-run and in the long-run. In the short-term, you will incur the time and cost of defining your technology requirements, procuring the software/hardware components and getting them up and running. In the long-term, as you grow in operations organically or through M&A, partnerships and franchiser business models  you will invariably need to make more technology investments to manage the greater complexity (scale and scope) of business operations.  "As new software applications, such as time & attendance, labor scheduling, and POS transactions, just to mention a few, are introduced into the store environment, it takes a disproportionate amount of time and effort to integrate them with existing store applications. These integration projects can add up to 50 percent to the time needed to implement a new software application and contribute significantly to the cost of the overall project, particularly if a systems integrator is called in. This has been the reality that all retailers have had to live with over the last two decades. The effect of the environment has not only been to increase costs, but also to limit retailers' ability to implement change and the speed with which they can do so." (excerpt taken from here) Now, one would think a lot of retailers would have already gone through the pain of finding answers to these questions, so why re-invent the wheel? Precisely so, a major effort began almost 17 years ago in the retail industry to make it less expensive and less difficult to deploy new technology in stores and at the retail enterprise level. This effort is called the Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS). Without standards such as those defined by ARTS, you would very likely end up experiencing the following: Increased Time and Cost due to resource wastage arising from re-inventing the wheel i.e. re-creating vanilla processes from scratch, and incurring, otherwise avoidable, mistakes and errors by ignoring experience of others Sub-optimal Process Efficiency due to narrow, isolated view of processes thereby ignoring process inter-dependencies i.e. optimizing parts but not the whole, and resulting in lack of transparency and inter-departmental finger-pointing Embracing ARTS standards as a blue-print for establishing or managing or streamlining your retail operations can benefit you in the following ways: Improved Time-to-Market from parity with industry best-practice processes e.g. ARTS, thus avoiding “reinventing the wheel” for common retail processes and focusing more on customizing processes for differentiations, and lowering integration complexity and risk with a standardized vocabulary for exchange between internal and external i.e. partner systems Lower Operating Costs by embracing the ARTS enterprise-wide process reference model for developing and streamlining retail operations holistically instead of a narrow, silo-ed view, and  procuring IT systems in compliance with ARTS thus avoiding IT budget marginalization While parity with industry standards such as ARTS business process model by itself does not create a differentiation, it does however provide a higher starting point for bridging the strategy-execution gap in setting up and improving retail operations.

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  • China’s Better Life Selects Oracle® Retail to Support Hypermarket Growth

    - by user801960
    On Monday, China’s first multi-format retailer, Better Life Commercial Chain Share Co. announced that it has selected a broad selection of Oracle solutions including specific Oracle Retail applications to support the growth of its hypermarket operations. Better Life currently operates 186 hypermarkets, department stores, consumer electronics stores, as well as entertainment and real estate operations across Southern China. The company’s expansion strategy for its hypermarket business is integral to its overall plan for rapid growth in an increasingly competitive market and after evaluating Oracle and SAP, Better Life identified a range of Oracle solutions including components of Oracle Retail Merchandising Operations Management, Oracle Retail Merchandise Planning and Optimization, and Oracle Retail In-Store Operations as key enablers to optimizing its operations. The Oracle Retail offering will help Better Life to create a consolidated view of product, price, inventory and associated back office information that facilitates improved fulfilment of customer demand.  These solutions will also provide a better understanding of inventory from buying through store transactions, delivering actionable insight with which it can make smarter, more profitable decisions around planning, forecasting and replenishment. You can read the full blog post here: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1680357

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  • Chinese footwear retailer Daphne on choosing Oracle Retail solutions

    - by user801960
    In January, leading Chinese footwear brand Daphne announced that they had chosen Oracle Retail as a solution provider for its expansion strategy. We were delighted to host Michael Hu, Chief Operations Officer of Daphne, at our exclusive Retail Exchange event in New York in January. We interviewed Michael about Daphne, Daphne's plans for the future and how Oracle's solutions will play a role in that future. The video is below. We are very grateful to Michael for taking the time to speak to us. To find out more about how Daphne is using Oracle, see the full press release HERE. To find out more about Oracle Retail solutions and how Oracle Retail can help your business, visit http://www.oracle.com/oms/retail/index.html

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  • In-Store Innovations with Oracle Retail 14

    - by Marie-Christin Hansen-Oracle
    In this latest video from our demo series filmed at the 2014 NRF BIG Show in New York, Master Principal Consultant Rachel Staniland details innovations in Oracle Retail Stores Solutions. Oracle Retail Stores Solutions provide a brand platform and enable true multichannel retailing. The solution gives retailers improved visibility into store inventory, which both reduces store operating costs and improves the level of customer service offered in-store through store associates. In the below video, Rachel Staniland talks about Oracle Retail’s new tablet POS, coming out the Oracle Retail 14 release, as well innovations made across Store Inventory Management and Point-of-Service solutions. Access more information on Oracle Retail Stores Solutions.

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  • Right-Time Retail Part 2

    - by David Dorf
    This is part two of the three-part series. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Right-Time Integration Of course these real-time enabling technologies are only as good as the systems that utilize them, and it only takes one bottleneck to slow everyone else down. What good is an immediate stock-out notification if the supply chain can’t react until tomorrow? Since being formed in 2006, Oracle Retail has been not only adding more integrations between systems, but also modernizing integrations for appropriate speed. Notice I tossed in the word “appropriate.” Not everything needs to be real-time – again, we’re talking about Right-Time Retail. The speed of data capture, analysis, and execution must be synchronized or you’re wasting effort. Unfortunately, there isn’t an enterprise-wide dial that you can crank-up for your estate. You’ll need to improve things piecemeal, with people and processes as limiting factors while choosing the appropriate types of integrations. There are three integration styles we see in the retail industry. First is batch. I know, the word “batch” just sounds slow, but this pattern is less about velocity and more about volume. When there are large amounts of data to be moved, you’ll want to use batch processes. Our technology of choice here is Oracle Data Integrator (ODI), which provides a fast version of Extract-Transform-Load (ETL). Instead of the three-step process, the load and transform steps are combined to save time. ODI is a key technology for moving data into Retail Analytics where we can apply science. Performing analytics on each sale as it occurs doesn’t make any sense, so we batch up a statistically significant amount and submit all at once. The second style is fire-and-forget. For some types of data, we want the data to arrive ASAP but immediacy is not necessary. Speed is less important than guaranteed delivery, so we use message-oriented middleware available in both Weblogic and the Oracle database. For example, Point-of-Service transactions are queued for delivery to Central Office at corporate. If the network is offline, those transactions remain in the queue and will be delivered when the network returns. Transactions cannot be lost and they must be delivered in order. (Ever tried processing a return before the sale?) To enhance the standard queues, we offer the Retail Integration Bus (RIB) to help the management and monitoring of fire-and-forget messaging in the enterprise. The third style is request-response and is most commonly implemented as Web services. This is a synchronous message where the sender waits for a response. In this situation, the volume of data is small, guaranteed delivery is not necessary, but speed is very important. Examples include the website checking inventory, a price lookup, or processing a credit card authorization. The Oracle Service Bus (OSB) typically handles the routing of such messages, and we’ve enhanced its abilities with the Retail Service Backbone (RSB). To better understand these integration patterns and where they apply within the retail enterprise, we’re providing the Retail Reference Library (RRL) at no charge to Oracle Retail customers. The library is composed of a large number of industry business processes, including those necessary to support Commerce Anywhere, as well as detailed architectural diagrams. These diagrams allow implementers to understand the systems involved in integrations and the specific data payloads. Furthermore, with our upcoming release we’ll be providing a new tool called the Retail Integration Console (RIC) that allows IT to monitor and manage integrations from a single point. Using RIC, retailers can quickly discern where integration activity is occurring, volume statistics, average response times, and errors. The dashboards provide the ability to dive down into the architecture documentation to gather information all the way down to the specific payload. Retailers that want real-time integrations will also need real-time monitoring of those integrations to ensure service-level agreements are maintained. Part 3 looks at marketing.

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  • myToys.de GmbH announces integration of ZVT payment terminal interface with Oracle Retail Point-of-Service

    - by user801960
    In our latest guest post, Sascha Kraatz, Developer Oracle E-Business Suite of myToys.de announces the development and integration of its ZVT payment terminal interface with the Oracle Retail Point-of-Service solution. myToys.de GmbH, which runs Oracle Retail Point-of-Service (ORPOS) in its 13 retail stores in Germany (see press release), has developed and implemented a Java-based interface for integrating the ZVT payment terminal with ORPOS. Through the combined support of payment service provider, easycash GmbH, and Ingenico GmbH, Germany´s leading payment terminal provider, myToys.de has become the first organisation to create this new automated solution for the Oracle Retail Point-of-Service, which has eliminated input errors that could occur with manual payment terminals and is localised for the German market. Ingo Stober, head of retail business at myToys.de confirms: “With this solution, we can speed up the payment process, reduce manual errors and enhance the customer experience in our stores”. myToys.de GmbH is a member of the Otto Group and one of the leading multichannel retailers for toys and other kids products in Germany. Customers can choose from over 100,000 attractive products, starting with items for expectant mothers or basic baby equipment to items for school children and beyond. In 2006, the first of 13 myToys.de retail branches was opened. If you would like to find out more about this solution, please contact the head of Oracle E-Business Suite Development at myToys.de, Mr. Ralf Schmilewski, or leave a comment below.

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  • Interview with Al-Sorayai Group’s Managing Director on the Oracle Retail deployment

    - by user801960
    Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with Sheik Al Sorayai, Managing Director of the Saudi Arabian carpet and rug manufacturer, the Al-Sorayai Group. His business has recently implemented Oracle® Retail Merchandising and Stores applications in only six months to support the launch of its new furniture retail concept, HomeStyle. With an aggressive growth strategy for the new business in place, the Oracle Retail solutions are enabling Al-Sorayai to coordinate merchandising and store operations and improve decision-making and insight to optimise margins, reduce inventory costs and provide a consistent customer experience.

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  • The Oracle Retail Week Awards - Store Manager of the year

    - by user801960
    Below is a video featuring interviews with the nominees for the Oracle Retail Week Awards 2012 Store Manager of the Year Award, in which the nominees talk about the value of being nominated for an Oracle Retail Week Award and what it means to them to be recognised. The video includes interviews with ASDA CEO Andy Clarke, who talks about how important the store managers are to the functioning of a retail business. The nominees interviewed were: Ian Allcock from Homebase in Aylesford David Bickell from Argos in Milton Keynes Karl Lynsdale from Co-operative Food in Heathfield, Sussex Paul Norcross from B&Q in Bristol Darren Parfitt from Boots in Melton Mowbray Helen Smith from H Samuel in Manchester Oracle Retail would like to congratulate the winner, Ian Allcock from Homebase in Aylesford. Well done Ian!

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  • An introduction to Oracle Retail Data Model with Claudio Cavacini

    - by user801960
    In this video, Claudio Cavacini of Oracle Retail explains Oracle Retail Data Model, a solution that combines pre-built data mining, online analytical processing (OLAP) and dimensional models to deliver industry-specific metrics and insights that improve a retailers’ bottom line. Claudio shares how the Oracle Retail Data Model (ORDM) delivers retailer and market insight quickly and efficiently, allowing retailers to provide a truly multi-channel approach and subsequently an effective customer experience. The rapid implementation of ORDM results in predictable costs and timescales, giving retailers a higher return on investment. Please visit our website for further information on Oracle Retail Data Model.

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  • Why Oracle Retail Merchandise Operations Management?

    - by user801960
    Lara Livgard, Director of Oracle Retail Strategy, explains why retailers should choose Oracle Retail Merchandise Operations Management (MOM), sharing the benefits of the solutions and showcasing customer examples. MOM is a highly proven solution supporting over 275 live customers across the world across a range of vertical markets, through its flexible, modular architecture. The robust functionality and scalable nature of the MOM solutions provide the platform to support retail growth through acquisitions, international expansion and the addition of new formats, assortments and channels. Access this video on our YouTube Channel. Take a look at the Oracle Retail website for more information on Merchandise Operations Management.

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  • Immersive UX Changing the Face of Retail

    Changing the Face of Retail is an article Ive been thinking about most of the past couple weeks. I think my goal with the article is to one talk about how technology built into the retail environment can be used to build better experiences for customers and 2 to talk about how this kind of evolutionary extension of the retail environment is better for customers AND retailers.I walked into the Microsoft Retail Store or at least one of them, (see one at Mission Vejo or Scottsdale) and its really impressive...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • Big Companies Influence Retail in 2010

    - by David Dorf
    From a retail industry perspective, 2010 will go down as the year mobile went mainstream, the economy recovered from the crash, and Facebook surpassed Google as the most influential online property. While the economy certainly had the biggest impact on the retail industry, a few big companies also exerted influence. Here's a rundown and a look back at 2010: Apple -- Steve Jobs and company continued to lead the mobile pack. Consumers are using their iPhones to shop, retailers are using the iPod Touch for mobile checkout, and both are embracing the iPad as the next wave of technology. The Next Technology from Apple Mobile Platforms in Retail Apple Stores, Touch2Systems, and the iPad Google -- Not to be outdone, Google's Android platform grew faster than Apple's, plus they support QRCodes natively and will probably beat Apple to NFC. Google Checkout, Product Search, and Boutiques.com continue to impact the e-commerce scene. Google Leverages Like.com Facebook -- While the movie The Social Network certainly made Facebook a household name, Connect, Places, and seeing the "like" button all over the Web really pushed Facebook everywhere. 2010 set the foundations for f-commerce. Facebook Participatory Promotions Crowd Savers What's the value of a Facebook fan? Step Aside Google Leveraging Social Networks for Retail Social Shopping at Nine West Groupon -- This newcomer executed on a simple concept flawlessly, making them the fasted company to reach $1B in revenue. (See cool chart from Silicon Alley Insider.) Google's offer of $5-6B wasn't enough, so now they are raising an additional $1B in funding, presumably to buy-up all the copycats across the globe. Changing the Way We Shop Amazon -- As if leading the e-commerce charge wasn't enough, Amazon shook things up with their purchase of Woot and release of their Price Checker mobile app. They continue to push boundaries with Kindle, and don't seem worried about the iPad at all. You Can't Win on Price Amazon Looks at Your Social Graph eBay -- Acquiring Skype didn't exactly work out, but eBay's purchase of PayPal and RedLaser are driving the company forward. They are still a major force. Bump the Bill Oracle, SAP, HP, IBM, and Cisco left their marks on the retail industry as well with various acquisitions and CxO shake-ups. We'll just have to wait and see what 2011 brings next.

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  • The Retail Week Conference 2012 - Interview with Paul Dickson

    - by user801960
    Recently we attended the Retail Week Conference at the Hilton London Metropole Hotel in London. The conference proves to be an inspirational meeting of retail minds and the insight gained from both the speakers and the other delegates is invaluable. In particular we enjoyed hearing from Charlie Mayfield, Chairman at John Lewis Partnership, about understanding how the consumer is viewing the ever changing world of retail; a session on how to encourage brand-loyal multichannel activities from Robin Terrell of House of Fraser with Alan White of the N Brown Group, Vince Russell from The Cloud and Lucy Neville-Rolfe from Tesco; and a fascinating session from Tim Steiner, Chief Executive of Ocado, about how the business makes it as easy as possible for consumers to shop on their various platforms, which included some surprising usage statistics. Oracle's own Vice President of Retail, Paul Dickson, also held a session with Richard Pennycook, Group Finance Director at Morrisons, about the role of technology in accelerating and supporting the business strategy. Morrisons' 'Evolve' programme takes a litte-and-often approach to updating its technology infrastructure to spread cost and keep the adoption process gentle for staff, and the session explored how the process works and how Oracle's technology underpins the programme to optimise their operations using actionable insight. We had a quick chat with Paul Dickson at the session to get his thoughts on the programme - the video is below. We also filmed the whole presentation, so keep checking back on this blog if you're interested in seeing it.

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  • Retail CEO Interviews

    - by David Dorf
    Businessweek's 2012 Interview Issue has interviews with three retail CEOs that are worth a quick read.  I copied some excerpts below, but please follow the links to the entire interviews. Ron Johnson, CEO JCPenney Take me through your merchandising. One of the things I learned from Steve [Jobs]—Steve said three times in his life he had the chance to be part of the change of an interface. If you change the interface, you can dramatically change the entire experience of the product. For Steve, that was the mouse, the scroll wheel on the iPod, and then the [touch]screen. What we’re trying to do here is change the interface of retail. What we call that is the street, and you’re standing in the middle of it. When you walk into a store today, you’re overwhelmed by merchandise. There is a narrow aisle. Typically, it’s filled with product on tables and you’re overwhelmed with the noise of signs and promotions. Especially in the age of the Internet, the idea of going to a very large store and having so much abundance is actually not very appealing. The first thing you find here is you’re inspired. I have used the mannequins. The street is actually this new navigation path for a retail store. So if you come in here—you’ll notice that these aisles are 14 feet wide. These are wider than Nordstrom’s (JWN). Slide show of JCPenney store. Walter Robb, co-CEO Whole Foods What did you learn from the recent recession about selling groceries?It was a lot of humble pie, because our sales experienced a drop that I have never seen in 32 years of retail. Customers left us in droves. We also learned that there were some very loyal customers who loved Whole Foods (WFM), people who said, “I like what you stand for. I like coming here. I like this experience.” That was very affirming. I think the realization was that we’ve got some customers, and we need to make sure we know who they are. So instead of chasing every customer out there, we started doing customer discussion groups. We were growing for growth’s sake, which is not a good strategy. We were chasing the rainbow. We cut the growth in half overnight and said, “All right, slow down. Let’s make sure we’re doing this better and more thoroughly and more thoughtfully.” This company is a mission-based company. This company started to change the world by bringing healthier food to the world. It’s not about the money, it’s about the impact, and this company is back on track as a result of those experiences. Video of Whole Foods store tour. Kay Krill, CEO Ann Taylor You’ve worked in retail all your life. What drew you to it?I graduated from college, and I did not know what I wanted to do. Macy’s (M) came to campus to interview for their training program, and I thought, “Let me give it a try.” I got the job and fell in love with the industry. The president of Macy’s at the time said, “If you don’t wake up every morning dying to go to work, then retailing is not for you; it has to be in your blood.” It was in my blood. I love the fact that every day is different. You can get to be creative one day, financial the next day, marketing the next. I love going to stores. I love talking to associates. I love talking to clients. There’s not a predictable day.

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  • Willy Rotstein at the Oracle Retail Industry Forum

    - by user801960
    In the video below, Willy Rotstein from Oracle Retail talks about the success of the Oracle Retail Industry Forum that took place in Berlin in October.  Willy talks about the main discussion topics at the forum and summarises the thoughts of the retailers that attended the forum.  The forum was an excellent way for retailers to come together and discuss the challenges of the industry and share experiences in developing solutions to those challenges.  

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  • New Podcast Available - Fusion DOO for Multi-Channel Retail

    - by Pam Petropoulos
    Oracle Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration can help retailers standardize their order and fulfillment processes across all channels.  Listen to the latest podcast entitled “Unify Sales and Fulfillment in Multi-Channel Retail with Fusion DOO” and discover how Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration can deliver value to retail customers and also hear real world examples of how customers are using it today.  Click here to listen to the podcast.

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  • Big Data for Retail

    - by David Dorf
    Right up there with mobile, social, and cloud is the term "big data," which seems to be popping up lots in the press these days.  Companies like Google, Yahoo, and Facebook have popularized a new class of data technologies meant to solve the problem of processing large amounts of data quickly.  I first mentioned this in a posting back in March 2009.  Put simply, big data implies datasets so large they can't normally be processed using a standard transactional database.  The term "noSQL" is often used in this context as well. Actually, using parallel processing within the Oracle database combined with Exadata can achieve impressive results.  Look for more from Oracle at OpenWorld as hinted by Jean-Pierre Dijcks. McKinsey recently released a report on big data in which retail was specifically mentioned as an industry that can benefit from the new technologies.  I won't rehash that report because my friend Rama already did such a good job in his posting, Impact of "Big Data" on Retail. The presentation below does a pretty good job of framing the problem, although it doesn't really get into the available technologies (e.g. Exadata, Hadoop, Cassandra, etc.) and isn't retail specific. Determine the Right Analytic Database: A Survey of New Data Technologies So when a retailer asks me about big data, here's what I say:  Big data refers to a set of technologies for processing large volumes of structured and unstructured data.  Imagine collecting everything uttered by your customers on Facebook and Twitter and combining it with all the data you can find about the products you sell (e.g. reviews, images, demonstration videos), including competitive data.  Assuming you could process all that data, you could then personalize offers to specific customers based on their tastes, ensure prices are competitive, and implement better local assortments.  It's really not that far off.

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  • Reviewing Retail Predictions for 2011

    - by David Dorf
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} I've been busy thinking about what 2012 and beyond will look like for retail, and I have some interesting predictions to share.  But before I go there, let’s first review this year’s predictions before making new ones for 2012. 1. Alternate Payments We've seen several alternate payment schemes emerge over the last two years, and 2011 may be the year one of them takes hold. Any competition that can drive down fees will be good for everyone. I'm betting that Apple will add NFC chips to their next version of the iPhone, then enable payments in stores using iTunes accounts on the backend. Paypal will continue to make inroads, and Isis will announce a pilot. The iPhone 4S did not contain an NFC chip, so we’ll have to continuing waiting for the iPhone 5. PayPal announced its moving into in-store payments, and Google launched its wallet in selected cities.  Overall I think the payment scene is heating up and that trend will continue. 2. Engineered Systems The industry is moving toward purpose-built appliances that are optimized across the entire stack. Oracle calls these "engineered systems" and the first two examples are Exadata and Exalogic, but there are other examples from other vendors. These are particularly important to the retail industry because of the volume of data that must be processed. There should be continued adoption in 2011. Oracle reports that Exadata is its fasting growing product, and at the recent OpenWorld it announced the SuperCluster and Exalytics products, both continuing the engineered systems trend. SAP’s HANA continues to receive attention, and IBM also seems to be moving in this direction. 3. Social Analytics There are lots of tools that provide insight into how a brand is perceived across popular internet sites, but as far as I know, these tools are not industry specific. The next step needs to mine the data and determine how it should influence retail operations. The data needs to help retailers determine how they create promotions, which products to stock, and how to keep consumers engaged. Social data alone does not provide the answers, but its one more data point that will help retailers make better decisions. Look for some vendor consolidation to help make this happen. In March, Salesforce.com acquired leading social monitoring vendor Radian6 and followed up with acquisitions of Heroku and Model Metrics. The notion of Social CRM seems to be going more mainstream now. 4. 2-D Barcodes Look for more QRCodes on shelf-tags, in newspaper circulars, and on billboards. It's a great portal from the physical world into the digital one that buys us time until augmented reality matures further. Nobody wants to type "www", backslash, and ".com" on their phones. QRCodes are everywhere. ‘Nuff said. 5. In the words of Microsoft, "To the Cloud!" My favorite "cloud application" is Evernote. If you take notes on your work laptop, you will inevitably need those notes on your home PC. And if you manage to solve that problem, you'll need to access them from your mobile phone. Evernote stores your notes in the cloud and provides easy ways to access them. Being able to access a service from anywhere and not having to worry about backups, upgrades, etc. is great. Retailers will start to rely on cloud services, both public and private, in the coming year. There were no shortage of announcements in this area: Amazon’s cloud-based Kindle Fire, Apple’s iCloud, Oracle’s Public Cloud, etc. I saw an interesting presentation showing how BevMo moved their systems to the cloud.  Seems like retailers are starting to consider the cloud for specific uses. 6. F-CommerceTop of Form Move over "E" and "M" so we can introduce "F-Commerce," which should go mainstream in 2011. Already several retailers have created small stores on Facebook, and it won't be long before Facebook becomes a full-fledged channel in the omni-channel world of retail. The battle between Facebook and Google will heat up over retail, where both stand to make lots of money. JCPenney and ASOS both put their entire catalogs on Facebook, and lots of other retailers have connected Facebook to their e-commerce site. I still think selling from the newsfeed is the best approach, and several retailers are trying that approach as well. I just don’t see Google+ as a threat to Facebook, so I think that battle is over.  I called 2011 The Year of F-Commerce, and that was probably accurate. Its good to look back at predictions, but we also have to think about what was missed.  I didn't see Amazon entering the tablet business with such a splash, although in hindsight it was obvious. Nor did I think HP would fall so far so fast.  Look for my 2012 predictions coming soon.

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  • BPM Industry papers Financial Services & Insurance & Retail and BPM additional material

    - by JuergenKress
    Whitepaper: BPM for Financial Services Oracle BPM for Insurance Oracle BPM for Retail BPM 11g Patterns and Practices in Industry BPM Without Barriers Assessment: BPM Maturity - Online Self Assessment - Link New Book: "Oracle BPM Suite 11g: Advanced BPMN Topics" by Mark Nelson and Tanya Williams - Packt Publishing SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit  www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: BPM,BPM FSI,BPM Insurance,BPM retail,BPM industries,BPM without barriers,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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  • Webinar: Meeting Customer Expectations in the New Age of Retail

    - by Sanjeev Sharma
    Webcast Date: Thursday, November 8, 2012 Time: 10am PT/ 1pm ET The retail market has expanded into the online, mobile, and social worlds. But the key to success hasn’t changed since the days of traditional, brick-and-mortar business. It’s still about service. A successful retailer today in omni-channel customer engagement must be able to deliver quality service that meets customer expectations. For many retailers, Oracle Web commerce applications help them achieve that success, allowing them to market, interact, and transact across multiple channels in a predictable, consistent, and personalized manner. Join us for this Webcast, and learn what Oracle applications can do for your business. In this session, we will discuss: The significance and dimensions of modern omni-channel customer experience The Oracle Commerce platform Real-world examples of business value derived by running customer-facing applications on Oracle Engineered Systems Register today Speakers: Sanjeev Sharma Principal Product Director, Oracle Exalogic, Oracle Kelly Goetsch Senior Principal Product Manager, Oracle Commerce, Oracle Dan Conway Senior Product Manager, Oracle Retail, Oracle

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  • The State of the Internet -- Retail Edition

    - by David Dorf
    Over at Business Insider, there's a great presentation on the State of the Internet done in the Mary Meeker style.  Its 138 slides so I took the liberty of condensing it down to the 15 slides that directly apply to the retail industry.  However, I strongly recommend looking at the entire deck when you have time.  And while you're at it, Business Insider just launched a retail portal that's dedicated to retail industry content.  Please check it out as well.  My take-aways are below after the slide show. &amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span id=&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;XinhaEditingPostion&amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; [Source: Business Insider] Here are a few things I took away from the statistics: Facebook and Twitter are in their infancy.  While all retailers should have social programs, search is still the driver and therefore should receive the lions share of investment.  Facebook referrals are up 92% year-over-year, but Google still does 80% of the referrals. E-commerce continues to grow at breakneck speed, but in-store commerce is still king. Stores are not showrooms yet.  And social commerce pure-plays like Gilt and Groupon are tiny but worthy of some attention. There are more smartphones than PCs on the internet, and the disparity will continue to grow. PC growth will be flat and Tablet use will continue to grow. Mobile accounts for 12% of all internet traffic. A quarter of smartphone sales come from China, so anyone with a presence there better have a strong mobile strategy. 38% of people have used their smartphone to make a purchase, and many use their smartphones inside stores.  Smartphones are a critical consumer tool for shopping. Mobile is starting to drive significant traffic to e-commerce sites, especially tablets.  Tablet strategies are crucial for retailers. Mobile payments from the likes of Paypal and Square are growing quickly.  It will be interesting to see how NFC plays in this area. Mobile operating systems are losing market share to iOS and Android.  I wonder in Microsoft can finally make a dent? The internet is being dominated by mobile devices, and retailers had better have a strong mobile strategy to meet consumer demand.

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  • Customer Experience Management for Retail 2.0 - part 2 / 2

    - by Sanjeev Sharma
    In the previous post, i discussed some of the key trends shaping up in the retail industry, their implications and the challenges facing retailers seeking to regain control of the buyer-seller relationship. Is Customer Experience Management the panacea for the ailing retailers who are now awakening to the power of the consumer? Quite honestly, customer acquisition, retention and satisfaction have been top of mind for retailers for quite some time now. The missing piece of this puzzle is bringing all those countless hours of strategy and planning to fruition. This is more of an execution gap than anything else. Although technology has made consumers more informed, more mobile and more social, customer experience is still largely defined by delivering on the following: Consistent experiences, whether shopping online or offline Personalize-able interaction ("mass market" sounds good as an internal strategy but not when you are a buyer!) Timely order fulfillment, if not pro-active notification of delays Below is a concept architecture for streamlining front-end, mid-office and back-end interfaces through shared process to achieve consistency and efficiency in managing the customer experience from order capture to order provisioning.

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  • Oracle Retail Mobile Point-of-Service

    - by David Dorf
    When most people discuss mobile in retail, they immediately go to shopping applications.  While I agree the consumer side of mobile is huge, I believe its also important to arm store associates with mobile tools.  There are around a dozen major roll-outs of mobile POS to chain retailers, and all have been successful.  This does not, however, signal the demise of traditional registers.  Retailers will adopt mobile POS slowly and reduce the number of fixed registers over time, but there's likely to be a combination of both for the foreseeable future.  Even Apple retains at least one fixed register in every store, you just have to know where to look. The business benefits for mobile POS are pretty straightforward: 1. Faster checkout.  Walmart's CFO recently reported that for every second they shave off the average transaction time, they can potentially save $12M a year in labor.  I think its more likely that labor will be redeployed to enhance the customer experience. 2. Smarter associates.  The sales associates on the floor need the same access to information that consumers have, if not more.  They need ready access to product details, reviews, inventory, etc. to meet consumer expectations.  In a recent study, 40% of consumers said a savvy store associate can impact their final product selection more than a website. 3. Lower costs.  Mobile POS hardware (iPod touch + sled) costs about a fifth of fixed registers, not to mention the reclaimed space that can be used for product displays. But almost all Mobile POS solutions can claim those benefits equally.  Where there's differentiation is on the technical side.  Oracle recently announced availability of the Oracle Retail Mobile Point-of-Service, and it has three big technology advantages in the market: 1. Portable. We used a popular open-source component called PhoneGap that abstracts the app from the underlying OS and hardware so that iOS, Android, and other platforms could be supported.  Further, we used Web technologies such as HTML5 and JavaScript, which are commonly known by many programmers, as opposed to ObjectiveC which is more difficult to find.  The screen can adjust to different form-factors and sizes, just like you see with browsers.  In the future when a new, zippy device gets released, retailers will have the option to move to that device more easily than if they used a native app. 2. Flexible.  Our Mobile POS is free with the Oracle Retail Point-of-Service product.  Retailers can use any combination of fixed and mobile registers, and those ratios can change as required.  Perhaps start with 1 mobile and 4 fixed per store, then transition over time to 4 mobile and 1 fixed without any additional software licenses.  Our scalable solution supports lots of combinations. 3. Consistent.  Because our Mobile POS is fully integrated to our traditional POS, the same business logic is reused.  Third-party Mobile POS solutions often handle pricing, promotions, and tax calculations separately leading to possible inconsistencies within the store.  That won't happen with Oracle's solution. For many retailers, Mobile POS can lower costs, increase customer service, and generally enhance a consumer's in-store experience.  Apple led the way, but lots of other retailers are discovering the many benefits of adding mobile capabilities in their stores.  Just be sure to examine both the business and technology benefits so you get the most value from your solution for the longest period of time.

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