We sponsored Oracle Crosstalk in Dallas, ORIF Europe in Lisbon, Portugal, and finally ORIF Middle East in Dubai as well.
Having visited all these events, it feels distant markets are addressing their own challenges differently.
In the US it feels that the retail market is already prepared for a next step. The discussions there about Oracle’s Modern Retail Platform are lively and inquiring, looking into the future of Retail and the importance of knowing the Customer better.
Overseas, in Europe the market is also awaiting the next Oracle Cloud platform and its potential, however there is also an increasing interest for improving on planning and stores processes: Covid’s long term impacts are still pointing towards the importance of a better planned inventory and more flexibility of the order management and POS solutions.
In Dubai, the interest has a rather merchandising and stores focus at the moment, but not necessarily due to the lack of solutions in these areas. As Middle East is a vivid market to also experiment with new ideas, implementing new features and processes may result in market leading concepts such as a ‘phygital’ store. A ‘phygital’ storeis a mixture of brick-and-mortar and online shops: a physical location with only tablets and displays operating in the store, but nothing on the shelves. The selection process is a modern clienteling experience, and there is a KPI on the chosen product to arrive to the fitting room in no more than 2 minutes. While the cost of such a concept as an actual store may be high, but the customer experience also leads to significantly higher conversion rates as well.
In general, all these markets started to focus on more accurate planning, knowing the customer better and having a higher number of processes in the stores to serve during these trying times.
In recent years we have seen supply chain disruptions, economic uncertainty, challenges of finding talent, and increasing demand on executing sustainability goals. Three key strategies address all these challenges at once:
- Building a blueprint for agility will secure the quickest reactions to the ever-changing economic circumstances and market demands
- Getting closer to customers grants a better understanding of their needs, interests and preferences.
- Creating a space for innovation not only attracts talent but by automating and streamlining processes it will free up people, so the quality of daily task execution increases
The Oracle Retail Cloud Platform supports exactly these 3 strategies for retailers.
