Store Systems: The Hub of the

Retail Experience

le Retail
sTalk

RETAIL

While the share of retail sales conducted via e-commerce and mobile channels
continues to grow, your brick-and-mortar stores remain the focal point of your
customers experience. In a cross-channel retail environment, stores are physical
command centers for customer interaction and fulfillment execution. As consum
ers shopping habits continue to blur retail sales channel boundaries, retailers must
respond with appropriate store-level systems adjustments that accommodate
cross-channel expectations. The evolution of stores systems must leverage the
applications and facilitate the trends that will ensure the stores relevance.
The Internet and mobility continue to grow as forces
in consumerism, both facilitating an increasing
volume of commerce. Simultaneously shopping and
buying without regard to channel, a growing legion
of omni-channel shoppers is blurring traditional
operating lines. Armed with a smartphone, the
consumer can handily check the prices of your com
petitors from your aisles and is easily influenced by
constant contact with social mediums. Your brickand-mortar point-of-service system must therefore
facilitate conversion from Web shopping to store
purchasing, creating a seamless experience that gives
your customer cause to buy from you, rather than
from your competitor.
Meanwhile, retailers are looking for opportunities
to expand the reach of their products and services
around the world. Oversaturation of existing markets
makes growth at least partially dependent on the
ability to expand beyond traditional geographies.
Without the right systems in place, management of
international expansion creates challenges that can
force retailers to lose focus on their core objectives.
Creating Your Experience Platform
Our perspective is that all operations should be
aligned and all redundant silos of information elimi
nated to achieve a thoroughly connected experience
for business users and customers alike. In order to
do that, you need to:

Connect interactions by creating a unified

experience across the store, Web, mobile, and call
center channels.
Gain actionable insight to make smarter
decisions across your business.
Optimize operations to automate end-to-end
processes, take advantage of economies of scale, and
align the business around strategic
customer-centric KPIs.
It takes all three working in unison to create the de
sired experience; focusing on just the connected cus
tomer experience will only provide limited benefits
if insight and operations are not aligned. You need
to create an experience platform that is tuned to your
specific business strategy, so that it truly becomes
your experience platform.
Building the Store Experience with Oracle
Oracle Retail stores solutions features applications
that are specifically designed to help you capitalize
on current customer trends and overcome todays
retail challenges while continuing to deliver a brand
and customer experience. Oracle Retail stores solu
tions includes Oracle Retail Point-of-Service, Oracle
Retail Back Office, Oracle Retail Central Office and
Oracle Retail Store Inventory Management. Work
ing together, these solutions create an extensible,
standards-based backbone that serves your brand
by providing a foundation for your unique business
processes and requirements.

Providing a Platform for Brand

and Customer Experience
An important part of the in-store experi
ence, for both the customer and the store
associate, is the delivery of the retailers
brand. Designed with the highest degree
of flexibility on the market, Oracle Retail
Point-of-Service provides retailers with a
user interface that can be easily modified
to reflect an individual brands look and
feel. The overall solution can also support
multiple brands.
More complete knowledge of the customer
through past purchase history and profile in
formation can be used to improve customer
brand loyalty. Customer lookup and capture
at the point-of-service (POS) allows for a
unified experience across the enterprise. To
ensure a consistent positive experience, the
POS will execute customer specific pric
ing and calculate best deals for competing
promotions. Providing a full spectrum of
transaction options including cross-channel
sales/pickups, external orders, special orders,
layaway and send sales, you are certain to
deliver a superior shopping experience.
Delivering the Essentials for
Associate Productivity
A highly intuitive user interface and menu
structure is presented in the associates
preferred language, providing clear direction
to lead associates through their day-to
day activities. With screen level help and
built in capabilities that allow new users
to undergo training in a real-life simulated
mode, productivity and technology adop
tion can be achieved quickly. Associates will
also become more knowledgeable through
on-screen item messages, item images and
configurable item inquiry features. Auto
mated discount and promotion rules execu
tion, item and transaction level discounts,
suggested selling and related items prevent
human error at the POS.
The simplified receiving processes include
advanced shipping notice and carton and
pallet receiving, which improve productiv
ity in the back room. Further, the ability to
track store inventory is supported on a num
ber of mobile devices that place enterprisewide inventory visibility in the palm of the
store associates hand.

Finally the integrated reporting package

provides retailers with hundreds of ways
to measure key business metrics for sales,
employee, and register/till reporting. Re
porting functions, which include the ability
to schedule, preview, print, ad hoc, add to
favorites or export to e-mail, print, and file
formats, allow users to share and leverage
business intelligence anywhere, any time.
Facilitating Global Expansion
While the base product is available in 18
languages, it can also be easily translated,
allowing the applications to support the lan
guages of countries where you door want
to dobusiness. Multiple language support
means a preferred language can be assigned
to the store, the employee and the customer.
But globalization is much more than just
language support. Oracle Retail stores solu
tions enable deployment into international
markets through localization foundations.
Localization foundations leverage applica
tion configurations within the software to
facilitate deployment in specific geographies
and markets. Examples of the foundations
include the approach to isolate and support
multiple authorized payment providers.
Register receipts are highly configurable
to address geographic, language and even
branding purposes. Additional global
capabilities include locale-based currency,
locale-based date/time format and configu
rable address and telephone format.
Managing Store Systems,
Processes and Data
By supporting store-level and register-level
configuration and orchestrating business
parameters, roles and security both locally
and centrally, retailers can implement and
execute store policies more efficiently and
consistently. Store managers have access to
mission-critical data wherever its needed
at a register, on a back-office PC or via
tablet devices. Real-time access to accurate
information across the store enables quick
reaction to business needs and trends. With
the ability to efficiently perform essential
store operations and analyze in-store data,
retailers can improve customer service and
optimize profits.
Oracle Retail Central Office is the informa
tion clearinghouse, it allows retailers to

centrally manage customer and transaction

information across channels and distrib
ute that information to the POS level. In
addition, it facilitates the management of
cross-store and cross-channel transactions
and the electronic journal, including access
to electronic customer signatures for audit
and loss prevention activities.
Deliver Accurate Store
Inventory Visibility
Oracle Retail Store Inventory Management
provides insight into store-level, transfer
group, and enterprise level inventory. When
tightly integrated with POS, this provides
accurate and timely visibility into inventory
that is important to providing superior cus
tomer service. In this way, the POS becomes
the enabler of the endless aisle.
Recognizing that visibility, accessibility
and accuracy are linchpins of cross-channel
and omni-channel retailing, this inventory
availability can only be relied on when the
retailer has implemented perpetual inven
tory best practices. Oracle Retail Store
Inventory Management efficiently manages
and automates tracking of receipts, transfers,
adjustments and stock counts, helping to
maintain perpetual inventory and reducing
inventory management costs.
Oracle Retail: Enabling the
Modern Consumer
Tight integration, from the POS to store
inventory management and through every
channel, enables true cross-channel customer
centricity. Cross-channel customer centric
ity is the key to building and maintaining
profitable customer relationships in the new
era of retailing.
Built on a proven, scalable, standards-based
Java foundation, Oracle Retail stores solu
tions are helping retailers grow internation
ally and profitably through increased basket
sizes, supply chain stock reduction, and
inventory optimization.
COntACt US
To learn more about Oracle
Store Systems please visit
oracle.com/goto/retail or email
oneretailvoice_ww@oracle.com
to connect with an Oracle
representative.

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