Oracle has announced the availability of Oracle Retail Release 16, which allows retailers to deliver unified consumer experiences across e-commerce and brick and mortar locations.
According to Oracle, the retail industry is in a period of migration to cloud technologies and as a result, Oracle has a strategy that supports cloud and on-premise solutions, so customers can migrate to the cloud at a pace that meets their strategic needs.
Access to retail-specific cloud services is a key differentiator to help brands streamline operations, expand offerings and scale at a fast pace, says Ray Carlin, senior vice president and general manager of Oracle Retail. With Oracle Retail Release 16, brands of all sizes can access industry solutions through Oracle cloud services.
Oracle has extended its Oracle Retail Planning and Optimization technology to the cloud and enables retailers to reduce implementation costs with the Oracle Retail Planning Enterprise Cloud Service platform. The shift to next generation cloud-based planning capabilities allows retailers to plan by exception and scale when needed by paying for capacity used. Oracle now offers more than 33 Oracle Retail cloud services including its merchandising solution.
In addition, Oracle says its Retail Release 16 helps improve user productivity by leveraging persona-based dashboards highlighting opportunities that will impact service levels, inventory margins and key business metrics. In addition, the new modern, user experience and mobile applications across Oracle Retail Merchandising Release 16 support collaboration with context to make better and faster decisions. With this release, Oracle Retail Merchandising is also expanded to support Android and Apple devices. Existing buying, allocating, inventory management, sales auditing and invoice-matching capabilities are extended to mobile devices.
Oracle Retail is also bridging the productivity gaps between online and traditional point of sale functionality. Also now available, the Oracle Retail Extension Module for Oracle Commerce allows retailers to deliver a common brand experience across all touch points by using Oracle Cloud Services to manage orders, optimize fulfillment decisions, and give everyone the same single view of customers across your enterprise. Oracle’s Xstore POS also enables retailers to help customers pick up, complete, or change purchases from any location by integrating with Oracle Retail Customer Engagement Software, Oracle Retail Order Broker and Oracle Retail Order Management System.
The mobile Oracle Retail Xstore Point of Service is also optimized to provide traditional web functionality like in-depth product details, ratings and reviews, and task management so associates are able to engage consumers away from the register with deep insights operating on the Oracle MICROS Family Workstation. With this release, Oracle Retail Xstore now offers four different ways for store employees to engage – using a traditional fixed device, dockable tablets, tablets, and mobile. All use the same POS platform and provide full check out, CRM visibility, cross- and up-sell functionality, fulfillment, search, price check, and loyalty program integration from any device.