Arcadia Group chooses Oracle Retail
By Retail Technology | Thursday March 27 2014
Fashion retailer will use merchandising, planning and e-commerce management applications to optimise global operations and enhance its customer experience
Arcadia Group has revealed an investment in Oracle Retail systems to ensure it can maintain a consistent customer offering and experience across all of its brands as a key part of its global expansion strategy.
The Group will use its new retail applications to support enhanced inventory management in order to deliver the right products to the right market segments, targeted to the needs and tastes of different global consumers.
The international fashion retailer has chosen Oracle Retail Merchandising Operations Management, Oracle Retail Merchandise Planning and Optimisation, alongside Oracle Commerce applications to create a platform to help optimise retail operations and support its developing international business.
Scaling to meet customer demand
Arcadia Group will use Oracle Retail applications to improve core merchandising and supply operations and enable the business to better meet customer demand in its 2,507 owned stores and 600 international franchised outlets across 36 countries.
It will use the Oracle Retail platform to gain greater visibility into inventory management and tracking throughout the supply chain to determine requirements at the item and location level.
The Oracle Retail Planning and Optimisation applications, including Oracle Retail Merchandise Financial Planning, Oracle Retail Item Planning and Oracle Retail Assortment Planning and Size Profile Optimisation, will provide actionable insight, which the retailer will use to capitalise on emerging opportunities, to deliver the best assortment and to improve on the profitability of in-season inventory in each store.
The announcement also stated that, in particular, Arcadia Group expects to improve the customer experience with the creation of more accurate profiles of size distribution based on individual stores, rather than at a country level, to better align assortment with customer demand.
And the Oracle Retail Merchandising Analytics will be used gain additional insight into critical performance indicators that track sales, profit, inventory and supplier performance to further optimise operations.
Part of wider growth strategy
The investment also supports the retailer’s strategy to create international distribution hubs as part of its global supply chain for additional operational efficiencies and to promote a more streamlined distribution network for owned stores and franchise partners that maximises inventory availability.
The Oracle Commerce applications will enable Arcadia to provide consumers with an effective way to dynamically explore the Group’s brands online and quickly find the relevant and desired items they are seeking. And the Group has also selected Oracle Database technologies to underpin its new Oracle Retail applications.
“Our brands are committed to delivering an interactive, exciting and efficient shopping experience to all our customers around the world, no matter which channel they choose to use to visit us, from flagship stores to mobile devices,” Sir Philip Green, owner of Arcadia Group, stated.
“Global expansion is a key strategic focus for Arcadia, and to do this successfully, we need to make sure the best merchandise assortment is available in each store and channel. We expect Oracle to help us enhance our merchandising strategies to help ensure that we deliver the best possible customer promise every time.”
Arcadia Group also recently selected new supply chain software to orchestrate its fulfilment operations and further drive business growth.
The current Winter 2014 issue of Retail Technology magazine features an exclusive interview with Arcadia Group’s chief information officer about the retailer’s recent electronic point-of-sale (EPoS) systems refresh and its wider IT strategy. Contact us here to subscribe.
