With the addition of Oracle Retail Insights and Oracle Retail Science, Oracle is now a “one-stop cloud shop,” with 17 different software-as-a-service (SaaS) cloud offerings available for large and mid-size retailers, explained David Dorf, Senior Director of Solutions Management in an exclusive interview with Retail TouchPoints. And, he added, expect more cloud announcements from Oracle later this year.
Oracle’s two other recent cloud announcements included Oracle Commerce Cloud and a number of new components added to its Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering.
During development of the new cloud services, Oracle collaborated with retailers to find out “the business problems they are trying to solve,” Dorf noted. “For example, a business unit might want to do something fast but is not agile enough. Cloud services can help roll out a new solution to all devices and the web, consistently.”
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With Oracle cloud services, Dorf said, retail companies can expect to receive three primary advantages:
- Business Agility: Now retailers can focus on the business of being retailers, instead of worrying about everyday IT issues;
- Security: By centralizing customer records in data centers in the cloud, a breach is less likely; and
- Cost: With a utility based pricing model, retailers pay for what they use; and upgrades are included and automatic.
Each of the new services feature three different components. Oracle Retail Science includes Advanced Clustering; Customer Decision Trees and Demand Transference; and Retail Assortment and Space Optimization. Oracle Retail Insights offers Merchandising Insights; Customer Insights; and Advanced Science Insights.
In two examples, Oracle described how these new cloud services can improve the bottom line through better customer service.
- Using Advanced Clustering, retailers can learn how to group stores based on shared customer buying patterns.
- With Advanced Science Insights, market basket analysis can help identify product affinities, halo and cannibalization effects, promotion effectiveness, stock turnover and more.
Getting More Actionable Information From Loyalty Programs
Cloud services can help retailers improve merchandising and inventory optimization significantly, particularly when there’s a loyalty program in place. Dorf explained: “Assuming you have a loyalty program in place, you can capture the behavior of customer in-store and make better decisions about how to optimize selling space.”
Retailers also can use cloud science to analyze how customers react to inventory shortages. Do they purchase an alternate product when their favorite is not available? By implementing A/B testing using the data collected from the combination of cloud services and loyalty programs, merchants can make more effective merchandising decisions.
These new offerings from Oracle also are expanding the solution provider’s reach beyond Tier 1 retail companies. “The SaaS offerings are much more affordable for mid-tier retailers, in part because they are paying for what they use,” Dorf noted. “We are now able to avail cloud science to smaller retailers.”
