Vanilla Is The New Black
By Erin Harris, Editor-In-Chief, Cell & Gene
Follow Me On Twitter @ErinHarris_1
Oracle Industry Connect 2015 wrapped recently, and best-of-breed retailers and brands including Nordstrom, ULTA Beauty, Adidas, Lilly Pulitzer, Gap, Charming Charlie, and more presented their paths to omni-channel, or as Mike Webster, senior VP and GM retail and hospitality, put it “evolved omni-channel, as it blends digital and physical, because ‘it’s all retailing.’”
Many of the retail presenters shared that their roads to omni-channel excellence are paved with sustained growth, order optimization, personal engagement, mobility, and vanilla implementations of enterprise systems. In this context, vanilla means implementing an enterprise platform with all or many of Oracle’s applications. This minimizes customizations, and thanks to hosted platforms, retailers don’t have to worry about managing these systems in-house. They’re much faster to roll out, they’re more cost effective than custom jobs, and despite retailers having their own unique business needs, vanilla implementations can meet most of their requirements. We’ve heard about vanilla implementations of the software giant’s enterprise systems before, but this is not your father’s Oracle. Since the MICROS acquisition especially, Oracle has crossed over into hospitality as well as the SMB market to help smaller retailers address their business challenges to better serve the savvier-by-the-day consumer.
Think of a vanilla implementation in regard to some staggering stats presented at the show and where your internal resources are best served to drive personal engagement with the customer. In her keynote, Jill Puleri, senior VP and GM, Oracle Retail Global Business Unit, explained that innovation starts with the consumer, and that:
- 83% of consumers insist that retailers adopt new technology
- 57% expect a seamless shopping experience
- 50% expect a mobile-friendly product search
- 70% list stock transparency most important
“Our focus is integration,” says Puleri. “It’s all about the cloud. It’s about a shift of work. We don’t want you to be an IT shop.”
Puleri also explained that consumers still want to shop — and do shop — in the store. Consumers also want the convenience to buy online with various delivery options. The retailer that has both will win.
Vanilla implementations will not work for every retailer, but ERP vendors are bringing out industry-specific solutions and newer methodologies to cut the length and costs of implementation. Retailers may reduce the total cost of implementation if they reduce customization by adapting to the ERP’s built in best practices as much as possible. Selecting the right employees to participate in the implementation and process and training them accordingly is critical for the implementation’s success.