After three years of acquisition and integration, Tuesday (June 17) saw the official launch of Oracle's Retail Release 13, consisting of some 33 retail applications, only four of which were new. The rollout was billed by Oracle as the be-all and end-all of end-to-end integrated retail application suites, but some analysts said the integration was lacking.
"Given that they waited so long, I would have expected better connectivity with some of the supply chain assets that they've acquired over the years and not have to wait until who knows when for some of that connectivity," said AMR Research Director Mike Griswold.
(Will Oracle succeed with its 13 rollout? Read our column to find out: Legacy Mindset Goes Far Beyond Legacy Apps.)
Gartner Analyst Hung LeHong said he had different concerns, namely that the suite is not nearly as comprehensive as it's billed.
"They tout themselves as having a complete suite, but they miss some fairly key components," LeHong said. "With this announcement, (Oracle is saying that they are) a complete suite. They are more complete than a lot of the players out there, but they certainly are not complete."
For example, Oracle does not have product-display planograms. Oracle 13 "does have space optimization, which assists in managing space, but no planograms," LeHong said, adding that product lifecycle management is also missing, along with a fresh item management application.
Oracle made the obligatory argument that their application suite is software ecstasy ("We now have the most complete, most open, most integrated suite of applications in the world," said Duncan Angove, general manager and senior vice president of Oracle Retail), but focused its case mostly on return-on-investment arguments.
Dave Boyce, Oracle Retail's product strategy VP, said the suite's integrated pricing feature "can achieve 5-15 percent improvements in gross margin dollars by integrating pricing and markdowns all the way down to the point-of-sale," its forecasting section promised a "5-10 percent" profit boost, grocery analytics can "reduce inventory carrying costs by as much as 10 percent," the promotions segment can yield "as much as a 2.5 percent margin improvement and 1 percent sales improvement" and better checkout/returns features will boost sales 1-3 percent.
The problem with those kinds of ROI goals is that they are meaningless unless they describe a specific retailer's infrastructure. How inefficient is Oracle assuming this hypothetical retailer was to begin with?
"It's kind of a best case scenario," said IHL President Greg Buzek. "I don't even know if all of the components need to be installed to get that" kind of ROI benefit.
Some analysts also questioned how best-of-breed the new suite is. "I'm not sure they're viewed as best-of-breed," said AMR's Griswold. "And if not, people need to then go through a kind of mental optimization exercise. 'Because I want a connected footprint, am I willing to take some sub-optimal functionality in order to have that connectivity?'"
That being said, those same analysts also concede that Retail 13 was an enormous undertaking and that Oracle got a lot closer than many might have expected.
"There's been a fair amount of customer feedback that has been actually listened to," Griswold said. "They've been asking for the ability to link the applications together, they've been asking for a single robust demand engine. Oracle has listened to what the customers have been asking for and has delivered."
Forrester Research Principal Analyst George Lawrie said the ability for Oracle to do as much as it's done, allowing retailers to manage so many functions simultaneously, "is impressive. That's impressive how they've done that. Retailers will be able to test feasibility against their constraints of their supply chain. That's pretty hard to do."
Some of the effort Oracle put into Retail 13 was channeled into the creation of four new applications: wholesale functionality; a merchant workspace; retail price optimization; and multiple sets of books and stock ledger VAT enhancements.
The wholesale functionality provides retailers with an improved ability to sell products to other businesses. The merchant workspace allows retailers to report functions across solutions and provides flexibility during planning. It also delivers the single sign-on and dashboard.
Retail price optimization enables retailers to maximize sales and margin through an insight-driven understanding of the most optimal everyday pricing. This is accomplished "as part of an end-to-end retailing approach that aligns Oracle Regular Price Optimization to overall category planning and extends through downstream supply chain activities to in-store execution," according to an Oracle statement.
And the multiple sets of books and stock ledger VAT enhancements can assist with international growth.
AMR's Griswold said Oracle's usage of Retek Demand Forecasting, which it acquired about three years ago when it bought Retek, is what impressed him the most about Retail 13. He said Oracle is beginning to integrate the system, which forecasts supply chain planning, distribution and restocking functions, into the suite.
Although this aspect of Oracle is a highlight, according to Griswold, he added that JDA's recent release of Assortment Planning isn't far off.
"Right now, I think it's a two-horse race between Oracle and JDA," Griswold said. Assortment Planning lets merchants visualize products the way that consumers shop, based on the retailer's plan.
Boyce went on to say version 13 marks the first time Oracle ever launched 33 applications available on the same platform. In other words, Boyce said retailers can "log into the suite, not just an individual application, and I can get my job done leveraging business processes across a complete, open and integrated suite of applications. And that's unique in the industry."
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When the PCI Council officially unveiled PCI 2.1 on Wednesday (Oct. 1), it included virtually no meaningful changes from what PCI had announced the key changes would be back in mid-August. But far from the mild tweak officials had described, the final PCI 1.2 version actually includes dozens of wording changes, most of which reflect technology changes since 1.1 was released two years ago.
When a manager tries to connect a new kind of device to a network, IT is typically all over it, trying to discover potential security issues. But the much bigger risk is when a longtime network element, one that has been seen for years as innocuous and trivial, slowly becomes more intelligent and connected and quietly morphs into something that is anything but innocuous.
A U.S. Patent for a payment card that can be turned on and off was issued last year with little fanfare, but it's owners are now starting to shop it around to retailers and banks. The premise is that when the consumer turns off the card, neither the card nor its associated numbers can be used for any purchases.
Why do vendors—including some top-notch vendors—insist of taking something very good and trying to make it into something it's not? Why bother? It's as though the need to hype was some prenatal attribute their genes absorbed when their mothers saw too many used car commercials.
Most merchants and application vendors seriously underestimate both the scope and the force of the Payment Applications Data Security Standard (PA DSS). If so, it's only because they haven't read the standard or don't immediately grasp what's involved, said GuestView Columnist David Taylor.
By agreeing to pay $250 thousand for "assistive technology for blind consumers," Apple has settled a lawsuit that accused the company of not making its iTunes site accessible to those with visual difficulties.
Visa is running a mobile phone trial where consumers will be able to transfer money using their phones to any other Visa user. "The pilot, which is intended to begin by the end of 2008, is the first U.S.-based trial testing mobile money transfers between Visa accounts," Visa said, but it has already been doing it in 13 countries in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
Merged channel is all the rage—as it should be—but one key analyst is arguing that retailers must merge their channels, not their IT groups. The problem is that most IT functions in-store are behind-the-scenes. To put a finer point on it, argues Nikki Baird of Retail Systems Research, is that in-store IT is not usually creating things that are customer-facing.
Many Gen Y shoppers have never known—or believed they had—any privacy, so they are dramatically more willing to give up or sell personal data in exchange for something they see as having value. Their attention span is short, their multi-tasking skills are high and many find the idea of paying for software quaint and old-fashioned.
New information released by Forever 21 confirms that the almost 100,000 credit and debit cards accessed from the chain in a breach included transactions from 2003 through 2005, which were stored on a corporate data center, apparently in violation of PCI rules.
A recent Best Buy incident raises an interesting security question: What call center verification methods should be used to authenticate customers before allowing them to cancel or change an order?
A second defendant in the so-called TJX Breach case—which also had at least seven other major retail chains as fellow victims—pleaded guilty Monday (Sept. 22), this time to charges of conspiracy, unauthorized access to computer systems, access device fraud and identity theft.
GuestView Columnist David Taylor advises that IT leaders start prepping their frequent flyer miles as new PCI regs will be sending them on the road a lot more often. If you use third parties to collect, process or store confidential data for you, then you need to do more than simply get a letter from them once a year that says they are doing right by your data, they're PCI compliant or what have you. You'll need to visit.
StorefrontBacktalk needs some opinionated, brilliant retail IT execs who like to discuss kiosk strategies. Although these traits are not desired for a lively cocktail party, they are very much in a demand for a StorefrontBacktalk panel next month in New York City (Javits Center).
Here's a frightening question: "Who is going to report ‘questionable' assessments of vendor applications when neither of the parties to the process (the vendor and the assessor) has any motivation to do so?"
When a major site performance research site reported last week that the Oriental Trading Company Web site had a major meltdown through all of August, Oriental Trading officials raised questions about whether the report was correct. On Monday (Sept. 15), two leading site traffic tracking firms—including the firm that issued the original report—backed Oriental Trading's position, to varying degrees.
After a one-year trial, Walgreens has now officially committed to making its 600,000-square-foot distribution center in Anderson, S.C., fully RFID automated with a system that alerts employees before they load a shipment on the wrong truck bound for retail locations throughout the Southeast.
As one of the 11 defendants in the federal data breach charges involving TJX and others pleaded guilty Thursday (Sept. 11), federal officials confirmed that there are quite a few other victims of the breach that have yet to be publicly identified.
Merged channel and E-Commerce issues will be the fighting words of the day at Retail Perspectives 2008 in Montreal on Monday (Sept. 22), where StorefrontBacktalk will be speaking and moderating discussions on those topics plus PCI, in-store strategies, supply chain and global tactics.
Trying a grocery approach to buy online pick up in store, the 181-store Meijer supermarket on Thursday (Sept. 11) launched a trial called Grocery Express. It allows customers to make purchases online, schedule a pickup time and then drive to a local Meijer to have the pre-bagged and already-paid-for groceries loaded into their cars.
A U.K. firm has developed an on/off "switch" for RFID cards that could protect cardholders from being hacked. The cardholder activates the RFID transmission by squeezing the card between his thumb and forefinger when it must be scanned by a reader.
Online customers trying to reach the 76-year-old crafts catalogue retailer Oriental Trading Company found a lot more hassle than crafts last month, according to the latest figures from online availability research firm Gomez. But the apparent Web performance plunge may not have happened, and it's a fascinating look into the limits of Web traffic analysis.
In what some software vendors dub a shakedown, a PCI list of compliant applications—which retailers will soon be limited to purchasing from, if they want to stay PCI compliant—is excluding software vendors who decline to pay a financial tribute to PCI.
Rite Aid has severed part of a 9-year-old deal with Drugstore.com and will take back its over-the-counter medication online purchases, a move that forced Drugstore.com to "significantly cut its outlook for fiscal 2008."
A California startup is touting technology that it argues will make RFID chips that can't be cloned. Verayo's approach is based on a circuit-building approach called PUFs (Physically Unclonable Functions), which uses subtle chip differences to fuel a challenge-and-response system.
Almost a year ago, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a controversial state breach bill that would have forced retailers to reimburse financial institutions for replacing compromised credit and debit cards.
With a new entry into the browser battleground—Google's Chrome—comes more customization nightmares. This problem is going to get a lot worse very quickly as many E-Commerce sites try and get more complex with more interactivity, multimedia and even 3-D experiments at the same time as consumers are getting more comfortable playing with their browser settings.
Matt Carey, who had served as CTO for both eBay and Wal-Mart, became the new Home Depot CIO on Monday (Sept. 8), the $77 billion home improvement chain has confirmed. Home Depot said that Carey is joining the company directly from his SVP/Chief Technology Officer role at eBay, a job that—according to eBay—he started Feb. 1, 2006.
If the slip of a lip can sink a ship, perhaps a retailer's flick of the click can kill a prestigious campaign mighty quick. The best way for a retail chain to make a customer happy is to offer him/her a program that few others can get. And the best way to undermine that—as Best Buy discovered on Wed. (Sept. 3)—is to then accidentally make that offer to every single reward customer you have.
Now that the PCI Council has confirmed that version 1.2 will be unveiled Oct. 1, the pre-briefings set for Oct. 21-23 in Belgium are especially perplexing. The initial intent of the briefings had been to show respect to European industry leaders, to give them an opportunity to provide feedback on 1.2 before it was solidified.
Over the last month, I've been struck by an unusually large number of reader E-mails that fundamentally question whether E-Commerce will ever truly work: Whether it will consistently make money, be profitable and be, well, worth all of the effort.
It looks like Amazon is no longer backing up its pricing, putting an end to its Post-Order Price Guarantee — a policy that allowed customers to recover the difference from an Amazon price drop within 30 days of a purchase. As of Monday (Sept. 1), customers who place orders on Amazon.com are not offered the 30-day guarantee, a customer service representative confirmed.
Security is nothing if not filled with seeming contradictions, and the latest version of PCI—slated to be officially unveiled next month (October)—is highlighting a beauty: To most effectively protect payment-card-related systems, protection must be focused on anything that is not related to payment card data.
Quite a few retailers have been involved in site changes to make the Web more accessible to those with vision difficulties, but Target has been the most aggressive in fighting such efforts. As such, Target's settlement has an especially strong chance of pressuring retailers to aggressively embrace such changes.
Wal-Mart on Wednesday (Sept. 3) launched what it dubbed the Walmart Smart Network—a series of next-generation digital-ad systems—to 2,700 stores. The funky aspect of this rollout is that all 27,000 screens will be centrally controlled via an Internet Protocol Television connection.
Site navigation problems and unpleasant booking engines are driving customers away from online travel sites and pushing them through the doors of traditional, more personable travel agencies. Even though sales for online travel sites are growing, fewer travelers are actually booking their trips online.
A TJX senior executive is apparently trying to push chip-and-PIN, arguing that cyberthieves are focused on the United States partly because we haven't adopted it. "Criminals, I believe, are focusing on the countries that haven't added that higher level of security," TJX Vice Chairman Donald G. Campbell said.
Calvin Klein finally gave its HTML blessing to E-Commerce, offering its first for-sale items on its Web site, although the E-Commerce launch is U.S.-only. Anyone visiting from outside the United States will be routed to the existing corporate brochure site.
It seems clear that most retailers are adopting one of two distinctly different strategies when it comes to data security and compliance. Let's label them Cost-Effective Compliance (CEC) and Compliance-Driven Security (CDS). Both approaches are based on best practices and solid risk management principles. But, GuestView Columnist David Taylor argues, they lead to quite different spending patterns, technology decisions and business cultures.
A retail IT lesson from the world of politics? Maybe. Web tracking firm Keynote was studied the text message blast sent by the U.S. presidential campaign of Barack Obama, the one in which his campaign promised to tell supporters his VP selection before it was broadly announced.
Has Amazon decided what it wants to be when it grows up? More to the point, are there indications that it has now decided that one thing it does not want to be is yet another thin-margined retailer?
The IT chief at Netflix has pointed the finger of blame for its site problems last month at "a database corruption event in our shipping system." The problem prevented customers from receiving their DVDs for about three days.
Almost a year after TJX settled with banks and bank associations impacted by the worst data breach in credit card history, another bank has come forward with its own lawsuit against the retailer, claiming the incident compromised some 4,000 of its customer accounts.
The number of data breaches reported as of Aug. 22 of this year has already surpassed the total number in all of 2007, including a new one from Macy's impacting some 4,100 customers.
On the best-paid list of CIOs at publicly held companies, Best Buy's Bob Willett ($4.7 million), Home Depot's Bob DeRodes ($4.3 million) and Kohl's Thomas Kingsbury ($2.5 million) stand at the top, doing the pocket-protector crowd proud.
With the frequent product changes executed by any large e-tailer's site, the tech hurdles of launching a mirror site in another language can be daunting. But this challenge has created a small industry of companies that are trying to facilitate rapid globalization for e-tailers.
JCPenney is testing the Australian waters a bit with an online push. The retailer has a local URL and an Australian company handling all operations, but it's still shipping merchandise from the States and asking Australian shoppers to wait "12 to 14 working days. This "request" prompted one Australian publication to ask "whether Australians would be prepared to wait two weeks to receive something purchased online."
In an overall down market where the 150-store Nordstrom chain is seeing a 4.3 percent sales drop, online operations are accounting for 15 percent, hitting almost 8 percent of all sales. Company execs there now project online to soon top 10 percent.
It's late on a Friday night and as Jane Smith walks into her local grocery frozen food aisle, she notices a neighbor walking away carrying a frozen pizza, right near a digital advertisement for 20 percent off of a Budweiser six-pack. Jane reaches into the freezer to grab her favorite Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream but notices that the digital ad instantly changes to hawk 40 percent off fresh apple pie in the bakery section.
It's generally accepted that any key economic issue—whether it's a housing slump, rising gas prices or tax refund checks—can have a sharp impact on business spending. But the IHL Group is floating an interesting theory that recent gas price hikes are going to have a very specific and direct impact on IT spending next year.
After years of trials with only the rarest evidence of CFO-friendly RFID ROI, shelf stock monitoring is quickly emerging as "the first major application of RFID in retail with a strong business case," according to a new report from London-based RFID analyst firm IDTechEx.
While North American retail execs are planning for trivial—if any—IT investment increases this year, with "more than one-quarter of retailers expecting lower IT spending," more than half of their Asian Pacific counterparts are preparing for significantly higher IT spending, according to new Forrester numbers released this week. A bit of the Tortoise and the Hare perhaps?
A gang of data thieves in Ireland has well learned the lesson that the best place to hide is in plain sight. The group hit a large number of retailers throughout Ireland and grabbed more than 20,000 payment cards by placing skimmers on card-swipes by wearing what appeared to be maintenance uniforms and saying that they were performing bank repairs.
These days, when U.S. government officials want to ask questions about privacy and data security, it's never clear if they want to protect consumers' privacy or learn the best way to violate it themselves. But retail execs who want hints can drop by a Sept. 22 hearing at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's Washington, D.C., headquarters.
Retailers who are worried about RFID security problems will have more details available to them now that a federal judge has killed a gag order on MIT students who had identified flaws in Boston's contactless RFID subway cards.
Based on the PCI Standards Committee's official hints about what will be in the 1.2 release, it appears that clarifying when and how virtualized servers can be PCI compliant didn't make the cut. But before the server and security geeks start lighting their torches and getting all "vigilante" on the card brands, let GuestView Columnist David Taylor make his case for why it won't matter in the slightest.
As major chains are doubling up their focus on computer-savvy young consumers, some are finding their aversion to avatars giving in to their adoration of avarice.
A "persistent and mysterious technical glitch" has severely disrupted business operations at the massive online film rental site Netflix, "potentially affecting millions of its customers."
