The digital transformation affects everyone – every sector and every line of industry. Retail is also increasingly feeling the effects. To assist companies with development, Oracle presented the new retail cloud services in 2015 – and has now further extended them.
No retail company can do without software tools today in order to monitor and control the movement of goods, manage customers and suppliers, keep the finances under control, and maintain and optimise its shop, website and other online activities. Numerous manufacturers provide companies of all sizes with extensive applications for this purpose. These are, however, mostly pure on-premise products, which companies must permanently licence as well as install and administer locally.
The digital transformation is driving the demand
While there are also a few applications that can be purchased from the cloud as a subscription model, they usually only cover certain aspects, work with vendor-specific operating concepts and user interfaces, and lack interfaces for seamless data communication among the individual modules. Comprehensive cloud solutions that cover all aspects of modern retail and are also compatible with existing on-premise products have so far been hard to come by.
A growing interest in flexible cloud solutions can be observed across all industries in the course of the currently widely discussed digital transformation. Back in 2014, Oracle acquired the company MICROS, which operates in Germany under the name MICROS-Fidelio. Based on the company’s retail products, Oracle developed a new suite of retail cloud services that were presented to the public in April 2015. Oracle Retail Release 15, which extends the functionality of the suite even further, has just been released in early 2016.
Cloud services specifically for the retail market
Oracle’s retail cloud services complement the company’s portfolio in the retail sector. The version presented back in the spring of 2015 already included six cloud services specifically tailored to the needs of retailers:
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The Oracle Retail Brand Compliance Management Cloud Service helps with the planning, monitoring and management of merchandising campaigns, drop shipping, and contacts with suppliers.
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The Oracle Retail Customer Engagement Cloud Service provides a granular view of individual customers, the option of creating wish lists (e.g. for weddings), as well as tools for implementing loyalty programs for campaign management.
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The Oracle Retail Open Commerce Platform Cloud Service provides retailers with an e-commerce solution giving them access to functions for search engine optimisation, searching on websites and personalisation. In addition, sales and marketing staff can use this service to design and edit websites, create promotional campaigns and build up user groups with common interests.