Insight-Driven Retailing Blog

Oracle's iPhone Apps

2009-11-18T15:03:36Z

I went looking for a list of the iPhone application released by Oracle, but couldn't find a single source. So I compiled a list from iTunes and have posted it below.

Oracle Business Indicators is a business intelligence application that provides real-time, secure access to business performance information on the mobile device.

Oracle Business Approvals for Managers enables managers and executives to review key targeted tasks, access relevant business intelligence reports, make informed decisions and take immediate actions easily and securely while on-the-go.

Oracle iReceipts is an enterprise application that is part of Oracle PeopleSoft Expenses, which allows users to create and submit expense lines for cash transactions in real-time.

Oracle Mobile Sales Assistant is a CRM application that provides real-time, secure access to the information your sales organization needs on the mobile device. Complete frequent tasks, collaborate with colleagues and customers, and close deals more quickly while on the road.

Oracle Mobile Sales Forecast is an easy-to-use application that provides real-time visibility into an individual or organization's opportunity pipeline.

Oracle Enterprise Asset Maintenance Workbench is an application available to help maintenance department to increase their productivity and effectiveness. The application will help field workers/maintenance engineers to take advantage of iPhone GPS capabilities to be location aware and respond to maintenance requirements in a more effective manner.

Oracle Business Approvals for Sales Managers enables sales executives to review key targeted tasks, access relevant business intelligence reports, make informed decisions and take immediate actions easily and securely while on-the-go.

Jim Van Heel reviewed some of the applications here.

If you're interested in developing iPhone applications using Oracle's JDeveloper, see this article.

Gift Card for Coach

2009-11-18T14:20:32Z

This week marks the end of the soccer season for my three kids, so now we've transitioned into "end-of-season parties" mode. (Yes, its finally getting cold in Texas.) As with every season, my wife goes out and gets thank-you cards for the coaches that each player signs. Then she gets the coaches gift cards, usually from a home improvement or sporting goods store. It actually takes her a few hours to get it all done.

Bass Pro Shops is going to make that process a little easier for next season. They recently teamed up with Transaction Wireless to offer mobile gift cards, or better said, electronic gift cards that are accessible on a mobile phone. Consumers are able to create a personalized gift card and transmit it via email and/or SMS to the recipient. Then the recipient can manage the card's balance and make purchases all from their mobile phone.

I especially like the fact that you can personalize the electronic gift card with pictures and video, and then time the delivery.

Best Buy Wants to be Your Mobile Solution Provider

2009-11-13T19:25:43Z

Yesterday Best Buy launched their m:IQ service, a free offering that backs-up your mobile phone to a private web account, much like Apple's MobileMe and Microsoft's MyPhone. Both Apple and Microsoft charge for their service, but the Best Buy service is free. ReadWriteWeb reports that Best Buy will pre-install the service on the phones it sells. Many phones are supported, but not the iPhone.

Best Buy also launched a website dedicated to Mobile phones. Best Buy Mobile is a portal for news, reviews, how-to videos, and app recommendations that cover the iPhone, Blackberry, Android, and Palm Pre. They also included a useful upgrade tool that tells owners whether they are eligible for a reduced-price upgrade.

These sites combined with Best Buy's joint venture with Carphone Warehouse demonstrate that Best Buy is serious about the mobile market. And it should be. Not only are sales of phones continuing to increase, but they have the potential to impact daily lives in much the same way the PC and internet have in the past. Having long-term influence over a device that everyone owns will be powerful for sure.

Interview with Mike Dominy

2009-11-12T23:08:35Z

Mike Dominy looks after the retail aspects of Oracle's horizontal assets, such as Siebel, EBS, and Peoplesoft. I recently asked Mike his opinion on a few topics:

1. What are some disruptive technologies for retail?

Web 2.0 and mobility are the two that come to mind immediately.

After the dust settled following the dot com bust, three things happened. One, web and ecommerce technologies evolved and improved. Two, social networks sprung up. Three, retailers started integrating their direct (online and call center) and indirect (store) channels. The implications of these 3 developments have led many retailers to realize that they need to evolve their business strategies and move from a product and location centric mindset to a customer focused organization.

As retailers realize that they must engage, sell and service customers - and do that in a brand consistent way across stores, web, call centers, social networks and mobile platforms it becomes clear that they need a solid customer management platform that includes customer history, customer preferences, customer specific offers, customer specific rewards, customer specific orders, customer specific pricing and customer service they realize that they need a CRM system and that it needs to be integrated with store operations and merchandising.

Mobile is disruptive for multiple reasons. In certain parts of the world it is disruptive in retail because m-commerce alters the traditional buying experience in retail. As smart phones get smarter, will customers even need to go through a check-out line? I find something I like in the store, I scan it using my smart phone and then click "confirm" to purchase it. No more waiting is lines - what could be better?

The other implications around mobile phones involve cross channel retailing and personalization. On the cross channel side, mobile phones make it easy for shoppers in the store to search and order from the web store to see if the retailer offers the same item in a different size, color, etc. It also enables shoppers to look-up prices online and browse catalogs at your competitors stores (physical and web) to see if they can get a better deal from the store down the street - or the one the one that only exists in cyberspace! The other thing mobile does is enables retailers to provide personalized offers. These personalized offers flow from a CRM / Loyalty to customers that participate in the retailer's loyalty program.

2. How is social media being used by retailers?

Social media is being leverage in multiple ways by retailers. The Retail CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers) I have been speaking and working with are using social media as a marketing / campaign channel. I am seeing retailers offer promotions through Twitter and Facebook. I am also seeing retailers using social media as another way to engage and service customers more effectively. Some retailers are actually asking - through social channels - customers what products to carry.

The other thing I see retailers doing -- or wanting to do - is leverage technology to make better sense of what is being discussed (good or bad) in social networks and then having some way to respond using social media or direct interaction (calling or e-mailing customers - especially members of a loyalty program).

3. Describe a recent shopping experience you've had, and how it could have been improved.

Instead of talking about my experience, I want to share the experience my wife had this week shopping. She had Veteran's Day off as a holiday - I was jealous - so she spent the day shopping at a nearby mall.

She told me that she was surprised and disappointed with several of the merchants she visited. Across the board she said there were not enough associates in the store. Specifically at one store, that was running a big Veteran's Day Sale, she had to wait for 10 minutes before an associate was available to show her a handbag she wanted to look at (the handbag was locked in a glass display case). She asked me why the merchant had so few associates on the floor on the day they were running a sale. Good question - right!

Another experience she had on the same shopping day was with another merchant in the high end department store space (and yes they are one of our customers). At this particular retailer the lady's suites were displayed by designer. This was very frustrating to my wife. She doesn't shop by designer she shops by size. Unfortunately, I don't have an easy answer for this problem without combining competing designers in the same rack / rounder. Forcing a high value shopper to walk all over the store to find items in her size is not customer centric (and this particular retailer fancies themselves as being customer centric).

M-Commerce Momentum

2009-11-10T21:08:17Z

This week I've been in Florida at the quarterly meeting of the Association of Retail Technology Standards (ARTS). One of the projects we're just starting is a "Mobile for Retail Blueprint," modeled after our successful "SOA for Retail Blueprint." Several other standards bodies are collaborating with ARTS to create this blueprint with the objective of speeding adoption of m-commerce in the retail industry.

The truth is, m-commerce is as inevitable as e-commerce was when it first appeared. Retailers that lag in this area will struggle, so we want to make sure retailers know the different use cases for m-commerce (e.g. product information, payment, promotions, etc.) and understand the technology and applicable standards.

The following is from the article All Eyes on Mobile Commerce from Forbes:

The analogy from bricks and mortar to e-commerce and from e-commerce to mobile commerce, or m-commerce, does apply, and the technology giants know it. Traditional "e-tailers" know better than to sit on the sidelines when a new disruptive technology threatens to encroach on their turf, and do to them what they did to bricks and mortar.

The large players are lining up with their models and their strategies. Already, Apple, Amazon, and PayPal have between 50 million and 100 million customers set up to transact; Google is seeding the market with Android phones, each with their own millions of subscribers billing arrangements; and Nokia, with the largest installed base of handsets in the world, wants to deliver banking to those handsets. One thing is certain: We are at the beginning of a new Mobile Internet technology cycle. Creating new advanced smart phones was the first step, mobile commerce is the second.

Frequent readers will recognize that m-commerce is one of my favorite topics. Below are many of those postings:

Walmart's iPhone Application
iPhone Application Recipe
iPhone RedLaser
Starbucks on the iPhone
Finding Products
iPhone Bump for Retail?
Tesco's API
Augmented Reality
Mobile Coupons
Shopping on my Phone
CTIA Wireless Conference This Week
Shopping on the iPhone
Does Mobile Commerce Really Work?

I encourage both retailers and technology vendors to get involved in this ARTS project. This is an exciting area that is advancing rapidly, and has the potential to change retail forever.

Walmart's iPhone Application

2009-11-05T20:03:36Z

I downloaded two more iPhone applications from retailers and played with them a bit. The first is Gucci's app, which is unique presumably because their customers are unique. They run "iPhone only" specials like $500 designers sneakers (limit one per customer, please). The've attempted to capture the tastes of their designers by displaying their music playlists and places they visit. I suppose this makes sense for their audience, but it didn't do much for me. The interesting feature I found was the ability to post products to Facebook to share with friends.

Walmart's iPhone application has a similar feature. It allows users to post a product to Facebook so that you can ask for advice. I tried this as you can see in the picture. Seems like a pretty handy feature. It also allows users to "bookmark" products, sort of like a wishlist although it doesn't appear to be linked to their e-commerce site. Bummer.

The Walmart application is limited to electronics, which is a good place for them to start. There's an innovative feature that lets you take a picture of your room and determine the best TV size. I didn't bother to really see if it works well (I took a picture of the first class cabin on a 757. It said it needed a 20" TV, which is actually about right.), but it demonstrates outside-the-box thinking.

Any other retail-industry apps I should be using?

Next-gen Search

2009-11-04T03:04:45Z

If you've followed the hype surrounding Wolfram Alpha, you know that search is slowly changing. Typically, people use search to find information that is then used to make an informed decision. That's traditionally how it works with product searches as well. For instance, searching for a digital camera yields several different results, including sellers, reviews, and shopping aggregators. Now you are left to comb through the different sites, noting information in order to make a purchase decision.

But here's the problem. That's actually lots of work. Some of the prices include tax and shipping, but some don't. One or two reviews don't actually constitute a trustworthy assessment. You need to dig up lots of perspectives and look for trends. And you should probably search the coupon sites as well so you're not passing up an even better deal.

So while the Web and search engines are great at finding tons of information, they don't do much to help process the information into something usable. That's where search is starting to change. Microsoft's Product xRank (from Bing) has attempted to better aggregate information into usable data. For example, their product rankings help aggregate information and shortcut the decision process.

We're closing in on the ability to ask, "Where can I buy the best compact, point-and-shoot digital camera for the lowest price?" Give it a couple more years.

Exadata for Retail

2009-10-30T17:45:28Z

A year ago Larry Ellison announced Exadata, Oracle's latest attempt to get into the hardware business. It was followed by the announcement of Exadata v2 (video), which significantly improves upon the first version. I don't think that Oracle wants to expand into hardware per se, but instead is targeting systems. The difference is optimization. When hardware and software are optimized to work together, you can offer customers a solution that not only simplifies implementations, but also offers greater functionality and performance. Enter Exadata.

Strictly speaking, Exadata is the intelligent storage server, not the entire solution. The Database Machine is the combination of multiple Exadata storage servers, database servers, and network switches pre-configured and hooked together in a rack. The Database Machine is the whole system, but its frequently referred to as "Exadata" since that's a more unique brand.

Typically applications "ask" the database a question in the form of a SQL query, like "who are all my customers in Texas?" To answer this question, the database server asks the storage for all the data in a table, then does comparisons to find the matching records. There are two big benefits of using Exadata storage servers. First, they are intelligent so they will do the comparisons and return only matching records. That reduces the load on the database server and the network that connects them. Second, Exadata storage servers use flash technology, which is faster than disks and cheaper than memory.

The Database Machine simplifies implementations because the storage, database servers, and networking are all included and optimized to work together. It uses Oracle Enterprise Linux and the Oracle 11gR2 database with RAC. Its also fully redundant and scalable. No big decisions, no expensive consultants, no arguments over configurations.

Oracle Retail plans to benchmark both our data warehouse and transactional applications on Exadata and measure the performance gains. The retail industry is in desperate need of ways to increase performance while reducing costs, and I expect this "systems" approach will yield awesome results. Stay tuned.

David Taylor

2009-10-29T15:40:27Z

I was very saddened to hear that David Taylor, founder of the PCI Knowledge Base, unexpectedly died of a heart-attack yesterday. Apparently his website will live on. Evan Shuman's note says it better than I could.

Classifying Merchandise

2009-10-26T15:31:55Z

There are three related yet often confused terms that creep into conversations about retail. I started a conversation on that topic over at the ARTS Linked-in discussion board that has some interesting comments. The three terms are (with definitions from Wikipedia):

Hierarchy "is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another and with only one "neighbor" above and below each level."
Taxonomy "is the practice and science of classification. Typically this is organized by supertype-subtype relationships, also called generalization-specialization relationships, or less formally, parent-child relationships."

Ontology "is a formal representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. It is used to reason about the properties of that domain, and may be used to define the domain."

Did I loose you on that last one? Ignore it for now. When we classify merchandise, do we use a hierarchy or taxonomy? The generally accepted term in the retail industry is "merchandise hierarchy" but I'm not so sure its accurate.

The classic example of a hierarchy is that of the organization. The lieutenant reports to the captain who reports to the major in the Army hierarchy. For a taxonomy, the classic example is the classification of animals. The dog is a canine, carnivore, mammal (sparing you lots of Greek and Latin words).

So which term fits Electronics --> Televisions --> Plasma --> Panasonic TH-50PX60U best? Looks like a taxonomy to me because each successive layer gets more detailed. I'm amazed at the lack of standards in this area. Supplier/retailer data pools should be much simpler than they are.

Which brings me to my final rant. Until we, as an industry, straighten this out we'll never achieve the machine-to-machine communications we strive for in the Semantic Web. This is where the term "ontology" becomes relevant, as it provides the discipline to define a constant view of the retail domain that moves us from information to answers.

iPhone Application Recipe

2009-10-20T14:30:07Z

RetailWire ran articles yesterday and today on the success of iPhone applications for the retail industry. Apps from Amazon, Target, Gap, and Whole Foods seem to be getting traction, but all of them had shortcomings. Here's my list for what makes an iPhone app successful:

Utility -- the application has to be useful,usually by saving me time. If I can do something easier on my PC, I will so don't duplicate it on an iPhone. A big part of this is taking advantage of mobility and the iPhone's unique features, like location awareness. For example, the Dunkin Donuts application allows a person to collect orders from friends before going to Duncan Donuts.

Intuitive -- if I have to guess at anything, I quit. I've been spoiled by iPhone user interface and expect all applications to be very easy to use. The Amazon application is easy to use, and the "remembers" functionality that allows you take pictures of things to remember is easy to use.

Entertaining -- if the application is amusing, I tend to let friends know about it, but it doesn't stay on my iPhone for very long. This is great for applications that are focused on short-term marketing programs. For example, I recently downloaded the Amp Energy (drink) application only because its funny (and politically incorrect). Allowing social features helps to keep the content fresh.

Most applications meet 2 out of 3, which is just enough to keep them on my iPhone. But even that standard doesn't ensure success. The best applications will lie unused if no one knows about them, so a certain amount of marketing is necessary. For example, both Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore created iPhone applications that allow the user to take a picture, then select a color within the picture and be told the matching paint color. Even though Sherwin released their application first (May 12), Moore (June 1) had better marketing and therefore more downloads. Here's a quick video from AdAge that talks about the Ben ColorCapture application.

RedLaser -- Part 2

2009-10-19T13:21:59Z

As described in last week's posting, RedLaser is an iPhone application that accurately scans product barcodes using the built-in camera. The product was created by University of Michigan graduates Jeff Powers and Vikas Reddy through a start-up called Occipital. I was fortunate enough to be able to interview co-founder Jeff Powers, who left U of M to commercialize on his computer vision interests.

Why did you decide to create RedLaser?

We realized, despite 50,000 apps at the time, there was no barcode scanner for the iPhone that actually worked. There were a few that required an add-on lens, but nothing that could do it well without the lens. There was clearly a need for such a thing, with quite a bit of chatter around the web incited by the fact that Android phones had a decent ability to scan barcodes due to their improved camera. As a boostrapped company, we saw RedLaser as a clear opportunity to keep the company afloat, as long as we could actually execute and create something that worked.

What separates RedLaser from similar iPhone apps?

The barcode recognition algorithms in RedLaser are state of the art. We've explicitly compensated for blur, lighting, curvature, among other parameters, making RedLaser extremely robust. We also went as deep as ARM assembly to make it work fast, making full use of the available CPU. Similar apps mostly use open source barcode software, which performs miserably on low quality images. There's only one other application that attempts to deal with poor quality images, but it doesn't perform as well as RedLaser.

How do you think RedLaser will change the way people shop?

Retailers enjoy being able to control what information consumers have at the point of purchase. But with RedLaser, people can take back some control and immediately know if it's a good price, or link through to find out if others think it's a good product. In the short term, RedLaser is already helping people get better deals from retailers that have price match guarantees..

Where do you see this all going?

Right now, it's mostly about online retailers getting increased visibility. Longer-term, I think we'll see physical retailers making their items visible online as well. This will help physical retailers compete with online, and give consumers even more choices and information.

Technology-wise, barcodes are just one way we can use mobile cameras to access information about products and real-world objects. Occipital is expandng mobile visual processing capabilities, which should lead to exciting new applications in the near future.

iPhone RedLaser

2009-10-16T19:46:09Z

Frequent readers know I like to experiment with iPhone applications as I believe mobile commerce will continue to gain even more acceptance. In past reviews, I've been disappointed with iPhone barcode scanners but always assumed the problem was a lack of resolution on my 3G. Recently I downloaded and tried a new iPhone application called RedLaser that seems to work much, much better even on my 3G.

The RedLaser application is dirt-simple. When the camera activates, just aim the cross-hair at a barcode and when the software is happy, it automatically takes the picture. No need to press a button and wonder if its a good shot. I tried this in two stores (Fry's and Toys-R-Us) under different lighting conditions and it worked each time.

Once the barcode has been scanned, the application does product searches on Amazon and Google to find prices. For example, while in Fry's there was a Buffalo DriveStation (external harddrive) for $86. Is that a good deal? I used RedLaser to find that other online stores were selling it for $100-132 so the $86 price was a bargain. Yes, I could have manually entered the barcode but its so much easier to just snap a picture.

And RedLaser is available to other iPhone application developers as software development kit, so I expect new, innovative uses to follow.

Retail at OpenWorld - Part 2

2009-10-14T15:47:40Z

As I described last year, Oracle Retail POS ran the bookstore at OpenWorld again this year. It's a great opportunity to see our software in action, as Jeff Grossman describes in this video.

For some reason, this has been the year for POS. The "perfect storm" has been brewing for a while, but we're only now seeing a big uptick in interest and implementations. Asking around for the reason, I've heard answers such as "retailers are limiting their investments to things that directly touch the customer," and "in order to feed the backoffice systems, retailers need better and faster sales data." I think another reason might be that retailers want to be ready when the economy rebounds, so taking the time to replace aging systems now is a strategic investment.

The theme of "Complete, Open, Integrated" continued this year, as described by Duncan Angove in this interview that was shot following his retail keynote. He goes on to explain why middleware matters and the advantage it brings to Oracle. Duncan predicts that retailers will "jump the curve" by combining facets of traditional merchandising with those from customer-centric software, like Siebel. Using Web 2.0 concepts to better understand customer demand will become a competitive advantage, and retailers need a strategy in this regard sooner rather than later.

Retail at OpenWorld - Part 1

2009-10-13T23:06:32Z

As Joe Skorupa pointed out in his blog posting on OpenWorld, retail has finally received the spotlight. He's referring to Duncan Angove's presentation during the general session on Monday. Duncan explained how Oracle Retail used middleware to integrate existing products specifically for fashion retailers to support "fast fashion." While the Oracle Retail Integrated Fashion Planning solution has been around for a few months, the Oracle Retail Integrated Inventory Planning solution was just announced today. Both of these solutions have the same key ingredients: business process, analytics, and user experience.

Business Process
Oracle's Retail Reference Model is a set of business process models that capture best practice processes validated by customers, analysts, and partners. It illustrates, at varying levels of detail, the automated and manual steps involved for item induction, assortment execution, replenishment, etc. They show which roles are involved, how applications interact, and where alerts occurs.

Analytics
In retail, there are two sides to analytics. First, retailers must capture and process data so they can detect trends and measure key performance indicators. This is necessary to establish baselines and continuously build better plans. You know this as "business intelligence." Second, science in the form of statistical algorithms are applied to optimize the decisions made, such as promotions, markdowns, and replenishment.

User Experience
No dinner is complete without the ambiance. The business processes are served up with pervasive analytics in a compelling Web 2.0 UI that includes role-based dashboards, application navigation, and collaboration. This is done via our retail specific extensions to Oracle WebCenter which we have branded Oracle Retail Workspace.

I love using the xobni plug-in for Outlook because as I read emails, xobni shows me information about the sender, a history of their conversations and attachments, and even provides me analytics about their email behavior. This information is provided in-context with no additional effort on my part and allows me to more quickly respond to emails. We're going for the same experience with Workspace, hoping to increase productivity for the retail industry. The Integrated Fashion Planning and Integrated Inventory Planning solutions are just the start.