Oracle Media Resource

In addition to moving to a new e-commerce platform, Kohl's is also taking several other steps to make it easier for consumers to shop both in its stores and online, Mansell said

The September 1 issue of Destination CRM included an article highlighting how colleges and universities are not taking full advantage of CRM technology. The article improving student experience and retaining current students as reasons for deployment, but few schools are using CRM to do this. The article includes comment from Joe Burkhart, Director of Higher Education Solutions, Oracle who notes that schools are looking at taking care of existing students - from the admissions office to financial aid to dining halls. Further, the article discusses the growing use of technologies like live chat and web self-service. Of note, the article discusses how DeVry University uses Oracle's RightNow cloud solutions to provide current and prospective students with fast, accurate answers to their questions. It includes comment from Dave Trafton, DeVry's online student service manager, who notes that Oracle RightNow has helped the school become more responsive to student needs. The article also includes comment from David Richter, U.S. Sales Director for Higher Education Service Automation, Oracle who notes that only a handful of schools currently marry student data with their CRM systems.

CEO Jill Brown Dean: "What this system really gives us is the precision to plan floor set by floor set, week by week to ensure that each of our big businesses and each of our key categories is appropriately positioned in the preplanning phase and then appropriately reacted to, whether it is promotions, slowing down inventory in the supply chain, moving up inventory, the whole read-and-react thing. So it's giving us a precision around these big top 30 styles, which, as you said, really when we're successful, they're half our business. And it's just giving us a tremendous level of insight and visibility that we have not had." CFO and COO James Bell: "As an organization, we have worked diligently to develop many inventory management disciplines in recent years, but we're lacking adequate tools to fully maximize our inventory investment. This past March, we completed the implementation of a new Oracle-based inventory planning system. The capabilities of this new system are significantly more robust than anything we've used in the past, providing a level of transparency that represents a meaningful opportunity for us to drive more consistent sales and margin improvement over time as we become more proficient with this new capability."...

At tech giant Oracle, Mike Webster, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Retail, says the biggest challenge facing retailers is breaking down existing siloed processes and data stores, as in information that is stored but not used day-to-day. "Customers look at online, mobile and in-store as essentially one thing - the brand they are interacting with," Webster says. "Retailers must align their business to meet this reality. Successful analytics initiatives require data from every part of the business that affects the customer experience. So it is not only online, mobile and in-store, but also supply chain and promotions."

Cross-channel experiences are vital to customer experience. Recent customer experience studies of retail executives - by Oracle Corp. and Tata Consultancy Services - show that to 50% and 47% of respondents, respectively, cross-channel experiences are vital to providing overall customer experience.

Tesco CIO and CMO speak from main stage at Oracle OpenWorld. Central comments are captured here.