Leading Retail Companies Across EMEA Select Oracle for Business Efficiencies and Operational Excellence
Retailers invest in Oracle for greater choice and support
Geneva 17-NOV-2006 09:53 AM As companies in the retail industry in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) look to increase their business efficiencies, Oracle continues to be the choice for information technology products and services. During the 6 months ended August 2006, Oracle saw key customer wins in the retail sector across EMEA, as companies such as Arnotts in Ireland, Kamal Osman Jamjoom Est. in UAE, Kingfisher plc in UK, and ReWe Group in Germany are endorsing Oracle’s strategy of choice and support.
Choice is paramount for retailers as the industry undergoes a transformation and growing demand for operational excellence has set the stage for changes in retail economics and business practices. From supply chain, operations, merchandising, store systems, optimisation and information technology solutions, Oracle offers the single source for innovative and comprehensive solutions. Oracle’s family of products which include core retail applications, Oracle® E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, Siebel applications, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Database 10g enables organisations to serve their customers better by applying insight into daily business decisions for more profitable results. 17 of the top 20 retailers use Oracle applications (Source: Stratascope Independent Study 2005).
“Retailers face many challenges as they strive to understand customer needs, and evolve into innovative, consumer-driven organizations,” said Tarik Taman, Vice President EMEA, Oracle Retail, Oracle. “Oracle has invested in building significant retail expertise in EMEA, and today is uniquely positioned to help retail organisations integrate their diverse IT environments, better utilise their resources, and build winning strategies that differentiate them from the competition.”
Arnotts
Arnotts, Ireland’s oldest and largest department store, has gone live with its Oracle Retail platform. “If you want business benefits and improved efficiencies, you have to change your business to reflect best practice processes, not the other way round,” said Paul Dickson, Director of Information Systems at Arnotts. “We needed a technology provider that understood best practice in retail and could deliver a proven integrated retail footprint with the potential for a quick ROI. This would enable us to aggressively expand our business, while at the same time minimise the risk that can often be associated with major infrastructural business change initiatives. Oracle provided the best partnership opportunity for our business with its proven track record in department store retailing.”
Kamal Osman Jamjoom Est. (KOJ)
Kamal Osman Jamjoom Est. (KOJ) of the United Arab Emirates owns the Mikyajy make-up and accessories brand, and the Nayomi lingerie brand; as well as holding franchises for The Body Shop in the Western region of Saudi Arabia and Early Learning Centre across the GCC. The group already has around 260 stores in the region, but plans to grow this to over 1,000 stores in the next three years. The Oracle Retail and Oracle E-Business Suite solutions that have been selected by KOJ will help the group to gain greater insight and management of its business processes, enabling it to make informed decisions, increase efficiency and achieve visibility across the enterprise.
“As KOJ is responsible for both our own highly successful brands and for two well-regarded international brands, we understand the importance of providing the best possible retail experience to our customers. With the planned expansion of our group, it becomes even more important that we are able to manage our staff and provide them with high standards of training, that we have full transparency and management of our supply chain to meet customer demand, and that we have a clear and consistent view of our whole operation, to enable us to plan our growth strategy accordingly,” said Thameem Rizvon, Group IT Manager, KOJ. “Oracle’s E-Business Suite and Retail solutions offer us the most powerful applications to manage all of these processes, along with the flexibility to expand as the group grows, and to integrate new applications as we require them,” he added.
Retail organisations that selected Oracle in the six months to end August 2006 include:
Arnotts (Ireland), Baumax (Austria), Kamal Osman Jamjoom Est. (UAE), Kingfisher Plc (UK), Dixons Group Plc (UK), MFI Furniture Group plc (UK), Phones4U (UK), Narodne Novine (Croatia), Tengelmann Warenhandelsgesellschaft KG (Germany) and ReWe Group (Germany).
Major department stores around the world who use Oracle include include Galerie Lafayette, Selfridges, Nordstrom and Federated Department Stores.
Filed under: Oracle
