Oracle Media Resource

When consumer demand for the latest trends surges, fashion retailers must move quickly to engage with shoppers and ensure they have the right product mix on the shelves.

When consumer demand for the latest trends surges, fashion retailers must move quickly to engage with shoppers and ensure they have the right product mix on the shelves.

Women's contemporary jewelry and accessory retailer Charming Charlie has selected Oracle Retail Merchandising solutions to support both its immediate business needs and its international expansion plans.

Women's contemporary jewelry and accessory retailer Charming Charlie has selected Oracle Retail Merchandising solutions to support both its immediate business needs and its international expansion plans.

Over a 13-month period beginning in late 2013, Charming Charlie implemented several Oracle solutions including its Merchandising System, Retail Trade Management, Price Management, Invoice Match and Store Inventory Management.

Over a 13-month period beginning in late 2013, Charming Charlie implemented several Oracle solutions including its Merchandising System, Retail Trade Management, Price Management, Invoice Match and Store Inventory Management.

Retail is becoming an increasingly hot market for hosted cloud computing providers. Some of those providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the Aliyun cloud division of Alibaba, are operated by retailers.

Survey: Amping up tech spending - Internet Retailer exclusive survey results find that in the next year most online retailers will spend more on technology, with many focusing on applications that will help them acquire customers and please mobile shoppers

As part of its Models of Excellence program, the August edition of University Business includes the following article highlighting how Valdosta State University improved student retention by using an Oracle platform to integrate five technologies into one system that could extract information and deliver it to custom applications designed to serve students. Models of Excellence, presented by University Business, recognizes college and university initiatives that address student success three times a year. Two- or four-year colleges and universities apply for the recognition, so it is likely that someone at Valdosta State University applied and mentioned Oracle in their submission.

Women's contemporary jewelry and accessory retailer Charming Charlie has met consumer demand with a timely technology upgrade that supports both its immediate needs and its international expansion plans.

Looking at the many tech trends affecting full-service restaurants, two overarching themes emerge. One is the use of technology, particularly mobile devices, to enhance the guest experience-prior to the meal, at tableside, and beyond. The other big theme is restaurateurs' need for consistency and repeatability throughout the enterprise, in areas encompassing everything from pricing, menus, and reporting to regulatory compliance.

The Global Hotel Alliance (www.gha.com) runs a customer loyalty program known as Discover on behalf of its brands, providing a technological systems platform for members to use. "We provide knowledge and insights to help our member brands run a loyalty program," Folker Heim, director of loyalty marketing, says... The backbone of the program is the OPERA customer informa­tion system (OCIS) which is connected to the OPERA PMS (www.oracle.com/hospitality). "We exchange data on loyalty program members, profile, preferences, card members, join dates, amount of rewards, rewards redeemed and so on," Heim explains.

...For Ovation Brands choosing to move the POS to the cloud was a matter of "future-proofing." The company already had experience and a comfort level with the cloud through its back-office system and was ready to move its POS above property with very specific goals in mind. "We were looking for something that had high-speed to value, lower cost of ownership and would save us from the traditional IT intensive POS implementation where you have to administer it and have a staff to support it," Benson says. "Having the POS in the cloud helps us modernize the way we conduct business."

...For Ovation Brands choosing to move the POS to the cloud was a matter of "future-proofing." The company already had experience and a comfort level with the cloud through its back-office system and was ready to move its POS above property with very specific goals in mind. "We were looking for something that had high-speed to value, lower cost of ownership and would save us from the traditional IT intensive POS implementation where you have to administer it and have a staff to support it," Benson says. "Having the POS in the cloud helps us modernize the way we conduct business."

Neiman Marcus generates more than a quarter of revenue online so far this year - In its IPO filing, the luxury retailer says it plans to invest more in mobile. "We are able to associate substantially all browsing behavior on our digital platforms with unique individuals," the company states in the filing. "By aggregating this data and employing advanced analytics, we are able to generate a single view of these customers' engagement with our brands. We utilize this data to enhance the interactions with our customers when they are in our stores and personalize the presentation of merchandise to our customers when they shop online." Neiman Marcus uses Bloomreach, Oracle, Rapleaf, RichRelevance, WibiData and in-house services for personalization, according to Top500Guide.com.

Returns are a fact of retailing and merchants have to be ready to deal with them. For instance, Stage's Oracle Corp. merchandising system allows the retailer to route online returns to either a distribution center if an item is still in season and salable or, if it isn't, to one of four clearance centers the chain maintains. During the holiday season, Hunter sets up special arrangements with makers of traditional holiday gifts, such as heated ice scrapers and other small items that might be featured in a Black Friday display, to have those products returned directly to the manufacturers or to have them shipped back in bulk from the stores' returned goods center in Jacksonville, Texas. Some vendors also agree to take back unsold products.

Still time to update e-commerce systems before the holidays - The advent of cloud-based solutions make it possible to overhaul an e-commerce platform in as few as 10 weeks.

Following the implementation of a new e-Commerce solution from Oracle, National Pen has seen its loyalty and retention rates rise significantly; and e-Commerce average order size is now 20% larger than the company's traditional direct mail orders. National Pen, a 60-year-old company, supplies personalized, branded products to more than 1.2 million customers in 27 countries.