In late March, retail executives gathered at Oracle Industry Connect 2015 to share perspectives. Here is a glimpse of what you missed from the sessions....
Making complete store inventories available to both its online shoppers and associates in physical stores has given Lids Sports Group a 1.5% in-store sales boost and helped e-commerce sales rise “dramatically,” according to Vice President of Information Technology Larry Havlik. He and Lids Director of Applications Development Kevin Thompson revealed the bottom-line and customer service benefits of implementing the Oracle Retail omnichannel order broker solution at Oracle Industry Connect earlier this year.
Prior to going live with the Oracle Retail Order Broker solution (formerly Oracle’s MICROS Locate) in February, online shoppers only saw the caps, apparel, and sports memorabilia currently in stock at Lids’ Indianapolis distribution center, meaning that some items and sizes would display as “unavailable.” However, by adding the on-shelf inventory of 800 of its 1,400 brick-and-mortar stores, Lids immediately moved an additional 72,000 UPCs into the “available for purchase” category.
“Where the inventory is currently located isn’t visible to the online customer, and it doesn’t need to be,” said Havlik. “Locate’s job as an order broker is to accept an order and then look for the best ‘match’ for filling it, whether that’s the DC or another Lids store.”
In addition to expanding offerings to its online shoppers, the Locate deployment has created flexible save-the-sale options in physical stores. Associates can arrange for a requested item to be shipped to a customer’s home or for it to be picked up at another Lids store.
The enhanced availability is particularly beneficial for Lids, which features a large amount of branded team merchandise. Home-town loyalties to different sports teams means stores located in different cities, or even just in different parts of a region, can carry widely varying assortments. “Even stores located only 15 miles apart can have stock differences of as much as 65%,” explained Thompson.
Havlik and Thompson both appreciate the ability to apply Lids-specific business rules to Locate’s order management and fulfillment functions. Settings can be adjusted to decrease available quantities of an item from an individual store to ensure it doesn’t go out of stock, or to increase available quantities if the item is easily available from a DC or other source. For fragile items such as Tiffany lamps, the system can be set up to only fulfill from the DC to ensure products are packaged and shipped so as to avoid breakage.
Other factors used by the system’s decision tree include choosing the fastest/cheapest shipping option; consolidating multi-item orders into as few shipments as possible; and even using different stores’ sell-through and shrink rates as a “tie-breaker.”“Locate could choose to fulfill an item from a store where this item hasn’t been selling well, or it could take into account that a store with a high shrink rate might not be trusted to actually have the inventory on hand,” said Thompson.
Havlik expects even bigger sales increases, both in stores and online, as Lids brings additional stores’ inventory into the system and as “people get more comfortable with saving ‘lost’ sales via Locate.”
Now Available: Augment the Store Experience with Cloud Services
Cloud-based applications essentially outsource many elements of IT management including maintenance and upgrades, leaving time for internal teams to focus on driving business improvements (versus keeping the lights on). Like most industries, the retail industry is increasingly looking to cloud-based solutions when an IT organization can’t carve out time to explore and implement new functionality that the business side seeks due to a lack of resources and competing priorities. Cloud deployments free up IT resources for more strategic projects, and they also allow technology vendors to deliver innovation to retail users more quickly and with more frequent updates. On April 1st, Oracle Retail announced the Cloud Services offerings. By taking advantage of the flexibility afforded by cloud-based solutions, your team will find it easier to extend and support new technologies to stores located throughout your geographical footprint.
Call to Action: How will you differentiate your store experience?
Oracle Retail Xstore with Order Broker will also be available for demonstration at booth #709 during the IRCE conference on June 2-4, 2015 in Chicago. Stop by and see us or contact Oracle Retail oneretailvoice_ww@oracle.com to take steps that will impact your bottom line.
For more insights from OIC, see the remarks by Nordstrom, ULTA Beauty, Our Executive Team and watch here for more Oracle customer stories. And for another perspective on Lids’ success, click here.
The Oracle Retail team loves the LIDS co-branded shirts. Photo credit: Steve Paradise