By Mike Webster, SVP and General Manager, Oracle Retail and Hospitality
It’s no overstatement to say that the roadmap of consumers’ shopping journeys has shifted radically in recent years – and that these journeys continue to change shape as new personal technologies and apps, accompanied by an avalanche of data, are adopted by shoppers worldwide. To take just one example, Oracle’s research reveals that when faced with an out-of-stock situation, 92% of consumers will not wait for a desired product to come into stock. Instead they will find an alternate source for purchase, including buying the item directly from the brand manufacturer.
This is one indication of the imbalance between what consumers want (and increasingly expect) from their shopping experiences, and what retailers are capable of providing. While empowered shoppers seek real-time item, price, and inventory information along with convenient deliveries and fast, simple returns, 72% of today’s retail community still has no visibility into its own real-time perpetual inventory. It’s not really possible to create integrated, streamlined omni-channel experiences when retailers don’t have access to basic data about what stock is currently in their stores, in fulfillment centers, in transit, or somewhere in the extended supply chain.
Yet even as today’s retail world becomes more complex, the calm at the center of this storm is a return to retailing basics: laying down an IT foundation that automates a number of critical business processes, so that retailers can deliver to both consumers and associates the services they need, when and how they need them.
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