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"Retailers know that they need to be focused on pleasing the individual in order to be successful in what is called the "Era of the Individual - Era Of I," according to Oracle's recent survey of 300 C-level executives across a number of industries. And "I" includes employees as well as customers. But although executives across industries acknowledge the importance of the individual, just 13% of retailers gave themselves an "A" grade for these efforts (more than 50% gave themselves a "C" grade), as noted in the survey report, titled: The Era I Enterprise: Ready For Anything."

"Retailers know that they need to be focused on pleasing the individual in order to be successful in what is called the "Era of the Individual - Era Of I," according to Oracle's recent survey of 300 C-level executives across a number of industries. And "I" includes employees as well as customers. But although executives across industries acknowledge the importance of the individual, just 13% of retailers gave themselves an "A" grade for these efforts (more than 50% gave themselves a "C" grade), as noted in the survey report, titled: The Era I Enterprise: Ready For Anything."

In a briefing held at NRF 2014, Mike Webster, SVP and General Manager of Oracle Retail, explained that Release 14 is designed "to connect all of these [customer] interactions" in order to create a seamless customer experience. "The industry has made great strides in building great digital experiences," Webster said. "It has set the marker in terms of how we use mobile and online commerce to build a brand. We'll see the industry work more aggressively towards hyper-personalization."

In a briefing held at NRF 2014, Mike Webster, SVP and General Manager of Oracle Retail, explained that Release 14 is designed "to connect all of these [customer] interactions" in order to create a seamless customer experience. "The industry has made great strides in building great digital experiences," Webster said. "It has set the marker in terms of how we use mobile and online commerce to build a brand. We'll see the industry work more aggressively towards hyper-personalization."

"Speakers at Oracle Industry Connect, being held March 25-March 26, in Boston, discussed how retailers can use advanced technology to enable growth and understand inventory levels across all channels (and share that knowledge with their customers)."

"Speakers at Oracle Industry Connect, being held March 25-March 26, in Boston, discussed how retailers can use advanced technology to enable growth and understand inventory levels across all channels (and share that knowledge with their customers)."

Oracle Retail Week Awards saw the UK's top retailers come together to celebrate the very best of the retail and fashion industry. The judging panel included some of the most prestigious names in the retail industry ... These are retail veterans who have e

"A central theme of the Oracle Industry Connect conference, held in Boston March 25-26, was "Commerce Anywhere," or the new customer experience paradigm that requires enabling the consumer to purchase products how they want, when they want and to do so in a connected, nearly seamless fashion. IT also entails delivering targeted assortments, making inventory transparent and accessible to customers and employees in real-time, and integrating the systems supporting retail operations."

The retail industry hasn't traditionally given technology top priority, but with consumers' expectation of "anything, anywhere, anytime I want it," tech expertise has become a competitive focus for the industry's big players. Oracle Industry Connect, a two-day conference held March 25 and 26 here, brought together roughly 240 retail executives to network and share system implementation case histories as they chase omnichannel selling. Today, more than half of shoppers - 58 percent - rank product availability as more important than price, according to an Oracle study of 4,500 consumers worldwide. Mark Webster, senior vice president and general manager of Oracle's retail practice, said Amazon sold 426 items a second on Cyber Monday. "If you don't think consumers are taking advantage of new access points [to shop], then you are misguided."

Last week, Oracle hosted its second annual Oracle Industry Connect conference in Washington, D.C. This seat of world power was an appropriate setting for a two-day summit explaining how retailers can use technology to obtain better control of every aspect of their enterprises.

What does success look like in 2013? It's a question that will increasingly be asked of retailers. As consumer concerns about the economy begin to subside, attention will soon turn to who is best placed to ride any wave of recovery - no matter how small. The Oracle Retail Week Awards is not only the single biggest celebration of this great industry but a unique opportunity to reflect on just that. Sales figures and footfall tell a story, but they are far from the whole narrative. And the people, brands and companies on show at this week's awards give an insight into the strategic advances made by retailers in the past 12 months.

Sir Philip Green, winner of this year's Outstanding Contribution to Retail award, talks about building his empire, US success and doing his bit for the industry.

At a glittering awards ceremony on Thursday night, he was accorded the honour of the Outstanding Achievement Award at the Oracle Retail Week Awards and it is only fair, whatever Sir Philip says, that it is marked. Simon Cowell flew in to present the gong, and the great and good from Britain's retail industry stood to applaud the man whose instinct for what works has made him the leading retailer of his generation.

Entries for two thirds of last week's 18 Oracle Retail Week Awards came from the contenders themselves. This is not to denigrate the winners' success, as many powerful peers had also put themselves forward. But no entries were invited for the top five awards, which depended solely on the judgement of the industry and the panel. And they coincidentally had something else in common: Aldi, Alliance Boots*, Arcadia, Inditex and John Lewis are all privately held or controlled businesses (*pre Walgreens).

The Times ran a Monday Manifesto interview with Stefano Pessina from Alliance Boots and referenced The Oracle Retail Week Awards.

Industry experts agree that now is the time for retailers to invest in mobile

Shoppers are channel-agnostic; they expect interaction from their mobile devices and the time to deliver is now...In this article, Stores executive editor Susan Reda talks with retail industry experts about what's ahead in 2012. Oracle's David Dorf is among those that weigh in on mobile, BI, personalization and other trends.

The Authorized Payment Foundation is a secure and flexible application programming interface that enables integration with payment processing solutions from industry leaders such as ACI Worldwide and Servebase

Oracle's latest release of software for the retail industry - Oracle Retail 14 - extends its POS suite to include tablets, and expands its planning layer to encompass "consumer decision trees, demand transference and advanced clustering," said Mike Webster, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Retail, during a press briefing at the 2014 NRF Show.

Oracle Industry Connect 2015 wrapped recently, and best-of-breed retailers and brands including Nordstrom, ULTA Beauty, Adidas, Lilly Pulitzer, Gap, Charming Charlie, and more presented their paths to omni-channel, or as Mike Webster, senior VP and GM retail and hospitality, put it "evolved omni-channel, as it blends digital and physical, because 'it's all retailing.'"

Tim Danaher, editor of Retail Week, offers his insight into what makes last night's top two winners so important to the retail industry

"Karen Katz , chief executive officer and president of Neiman Marcus Group, told a packed audience at the Oracle Industry Connect conference in Boston yesterday that the specialty retailer is putting a big focus - and a lot of money - into its technology infrastructure."

At the recent Oracle Industry Connect Conference held in Boston, a number of speakers from prominent retailers including Kohl's, Hot Topic, and C. Wonder extolled the virtues of "vanilla" implementations of enterprise systems. In this context, vanilla means implementing an enterprise platform with all or many of that vendor's applications, minimizing customization or use of one-off "best of breed" solutions.