Oracle Retail Release 16.0 (v16) is the most compelling release that the retail market has seen in years as it empowers retailers to deliver streamlined unified consumer experiences across channels profitably. For retailers to be competitive, they need to provide a differentiated and unified online and in-store experience, while bringing together the best combination of products, service, and knowledge. Engagement between the brand and the consumer is critical for a retailer to successfully meet this challenge head on, and v16 provides the tools and processes to help deliver on consumer expectations.

At the core of the v16 footprint comprises the Retail Merchandising System (RMS). RMS v16 represents a significant modernization and simplification effort during which the existing feature-rich product was re-platformed to a common architecture leveraging the industry leading Oracle Fusion standards. Significant focus has been accorded on improving user efficiency coupled with enhanced rich user experience. Here is a sneak peek into a few of the compelling features introduced in RMS v16:

• Exception Based Retailing
• Simplifying ERP
• Notifications
• Mobile
• Configuration and Customization

In this 2-part series, we will discover the updates with exception based retailing and Simplifying ERP.

Exception Based Retailing

The retail world has been hearing “exception based reporting” for quite some time now. There are many ancillary systems in the market that highlights this feature but it is hard to predict the ROI. Since an Oracle Merchandising system is a center pillar of the ERP suite, the cost reduction is measurable. Retailers worldwide implement RMS for its rich functionality and its ROI.

Now added with exception based reports, the operational costs are reduced and the benefits are measurable. These reports are not for CxOs of the retailers, rather for the business users and persona-based dashboard which provides real-time information which highlights actionable or frequently monitored activities. These dashboards will focus on the key users of RMS and will easily surface exceptions to the users to help them identify and prioritize their work. For example, highlighting to a buyer the purchase orders that are awaiting their approval or highlighting inventory discrepancies to an inventory control analyst. Reports will provide quick action options to resolve the discrepancy from the dashboard itself, such as the ability to update order dates for late shipments, or the ability to launch from the dashboard to a transaction for further actions or review.

The entire UI is focused on user behavior, providing multiple methods to view, filter, and take action on items on their dashboard. This saves the user significant time by bringing the details to them in a graphical and easy to understand manner not requiring them to search for them.

Simplifying ERP

Simplifying ERP doesn’t mean reducing the functionality of the ERP system. It is about reducing the work flow of the application and increasing the ease of use by intuitive design. It is also about redefining the UI so that the business users who perform their day-to-day job more efficiently with less time and achieve more. The focus has been on providing an enhanced user experience through the use of BI-driven workflows, user-centric design, role-based dashboards, and complementary mobile applications all aimed at improving overall user efficiency.

Oracle Retail Merchandising also provides key dashboards that highlight the work a user needs to focus on and the tools to resolve these issues, direction from the dashboard, as well as the way to go directly to the item requiring resolution. Contextual BI provides the users additional information on a platter to aid in their decision making without having to need to search and harvest the information.

In the next post we will discuss Notifications, Mobile, and Configuration and Customization.

– Raj Krishnamoorthy, General Manager, Logic Information Systems