Retail Industry 2019: Planning and Optimization Are Essential

April 20, 2019 | 3 minute read
Diana Gray
Sr. Principal Curriculum Product Manager
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If you’re in the retail business, you already know the importance of planning. Without it, too many retailers fail each year because they do not effectively examine results and plan for the future. 

“Planning helps an organization chart a course for the achievement of its goals. The process begins with reviewing the current operations of the organization and identifying what needs to be improved operationally in the upcoming year. From there, planning involves envisioning the results the organization wants to achieve, and determining the steps necessary to arrive at the intended destination--success, whether that is measured in financial terms, or goals that include being the highest-rated organization in customer satisfaction.”[1]

Some of the challenges retailers often face include:

  • Collecting and analyzing customer data
  • Integrating both direct and online marketing to the customers
  • Wanting to understand customer preferences better
  • Determining how to best satisfy their customers

Oracle Retail Customers

Global leaders like Lenox, Hamley's, and Gap rely on Oracle Retail applications to run their businesses and are achieving solid results.

One Brazilian shoe company attained 30% reduction in inventory levels leveraging best-practice financial planning processes. Plus, the company was able to improve margins and sell through by 81% in a single year.

They accomplished this by leveraging Oracle Retail solutions for optimization and planning.[2]

Online Retail Training Empowers Employees in Their Daily Jobs

Specifically, Oracle Retail solutions give employees a chance to:

  • Develop the skills to use this completely integrated suite of business applications, along with server and storage solutions
  • Learn how to drive profitable growth through seamless cross-channel experiences
  • Manage elasticity, markdowns, and promotional lifts in Item Planning Cloud Service
  • Optimize sell-through and improve planning

When accessing Oracle Retail Learning Subscription: Planning and Optimization training content, your retail planning team can choose from multiple training topics based on the skills they need to learn on that particular day.

Team members can take on demand training that walks them through the pricing analysis process for price optimization, performing “what-if” optimization analysis, managing store clustering, configuring a predictive retail application server solution, and more.

Benefits of Oracle Retail Training for Financial Planners, Item Planners, Pricing Analysts, and More

Training is designed for a variety of job roles within the retail industry. Each course within your subscription focuses on a specific topic to empower retail business leaders and employees to grow with today's challenges.

Access easily digestible, on demand tutorials that deepen your understanding of the pricing analysis process for Regular Price Optimization, as well as Assortment Period Maintenance in Assortment Planning Shared Services. Learn how to configure a Retail Predictive Application Server solution, in addition to other granular topics based on your selected area of interest.

Get a FREE preview of the Oracle Retail Learning Subscription: Planning and Optimization now >

Related Content


[1] https://smallbusiness.chron.com/importance-planning-organization-1137.html

[2] http://www.oracle.com/us/industries/retail/paqueta-retail-planning-info-3672704.pdf

Diana Gray

Sr. Principal Curriculum Product Manager

Diana Gray is a Senior Principal Product Curriculum Manager with Oracle University. She has over 30 years of experience with management and marketing of educational services at Top Fortune 100 companies, and is currently responsible for product marketing Oracle University's product learning portfolio.


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