Cross Talk 2023

Senior Vice President and General Manager Mike Webster welcomes the community to Oracle Retail Cross Talk. Mike set the stage for our focus on evolving the platform, delivering continuous innovation, and deriving continuous insight. The session steps through our focus on three areas with vignettes highlighting the Evolution of the Platform, Continuous Innovation, and Continous Insights. 

Watch this session to understand how Oracle Retail's innovations increase efficiencies, reduce latency, and eliminate costs. Oracle has liberated data and science from a single business process or cloud service to create a common data store. The Oracle Retail Data Store is a single repository where retailers can access inventory, item, and customer across the Platform. Data is no longer constrained to a particular silo. The retail cloud services feed transactional data into the Data Store and draw continuous insight from the Platform leveraging our AI Foundation. The Oracle Retail Data Store can be extended to include retailer data and third-party data.

Hear Billy Murray, VP of Business Solutions, Abercrombie & Fitch Co. and Patty Weinrick, Director of IT, Abercrombie & Fitch Co. discuss how the team worked diligently with Deloitte & Oracle to deploy Merchandise Foundation Cloud Service by January 2023. Abercrombie had previously deployed a heavily customized on-premises version in 2009. To transform the business, the team crafted a progressive transition plan running parallel solutions that talk to each other while modernizing their data, assessing customizations, and driving the adoption of new functionality.

Grant De Waal, Chief Information Officer, Cape Union Mart shares his pricing experience. The Oracle Retail Customer Value team leveraged our platform for modern retail to build a Pricing extension that helps category managers be confident that they have the correct price while achieving their margin and/or marketing objectives. By extending the functionality of Oracle Retail Merchandising Cloud Services, retailers can automate price updates and make dynamic decisions across thousands of products to maximize sales and margins. Listen to this session to learn about the three modules in the Pricing Hub: Price Strategies, Price Modeling and Event Planning, and what is planned for the future.

Replay this fireside chat with retail experts Mary Hodapp, Director, IT Engineering, Casey's General Stores and Rudy Kulas, Managing Director, Deloitte to explore how organizations can find a middle ground to fuel the transformation and build a foundation for growth, while embracing sparks of ingenuity in their retail operations. Retail IT departments are shifting from project to a product mindset and Casey’s is no exception. America's leading convenience chain partnered with Deloitte and Oracle to modernize and transform its business and processes while making this seismic shift.

Dollar General accomplished the unimaginable with an array of Oracle solutions—they established a new store in a new geography in just over eight months with Accenture. The recent go-live was the company’s first expansion outside of North America. Oracle solutions and technology enable the business to expand its assortment, meet local tax and tariff regulations, manage the supply chain, and more. The orchestration of People, Processes, and Technology is critical to the success of a digital transformation. In this session, Rob Massie of Dollar General and Mitchell Mount of Accenture share their collective experience and lessons learned from this fast-tracked success story.

Watch this demonstration of the Oracle Retail Data Store and the power of Oracle Apex by online supermarket Flink. Flink burst on the scene in 2020, offering consumers in Austria, France, Germany, and the Netherlands grocery deliveries in just minutes. The Flink business model ensures its customers can tap their way from aisle to aisle to and get the goods they need. Flink chose Oracle Retail Merchandising and Oracle Fusion Cloud Financials and partnered with Retail Consult to implement in record speed of 7 months. With the systems improved automation and visibility, Flink can better track inventory across their hubs and distribution centers to meet customer expectations for fast, accurate deliveries.

Hear Lucas Rietz, Director of ERP and Processes, Flink discuss why they chose Oracle Retail Merchandising and Oracle Fusion Cloud Financials and partnered with Retail Consult to implement in record speed of 8 months. With the systems improved automation and visibility, Flink can better track inventory across their hubs and distribution centers to meet customer expectations for fast, accurate deliveries. Online supermarket Flink, burst on the scene in 2020, offering consumers in Austria, France, Germany, and the Netherlands grocery deliveries in just minutes.

Hear Alicia Kahn, VP of Planning & Allocation, Hibbett discuss how with the guidance from RetSci, they chose Oracle Retail Assortment Planning Cloud in June 2022 and implemented it by December 2022. And by May 2023, the team deployed Merchandise Financial Planning in just four months. Learn about Alicia’s inclusive rollout approach for fast results, true adoption, and unexpected career development opportunities as a by-product. Athletic-inspired fashion retailer Hibbett Retail delivers cutting-edge footwear and fashion to consumers in 1,144 stores across 36 states.

Hear from Jeremy Hitz, Product Manager, National Functions Systems and Technology, Kaiser Permanente about how the flexible architecture of Oracle Retail Xstore Point of Service enables a seamless member experience, inclusive of distinct capabilities of the pharmacy business. Kaiser Permanente delivers a complete and hassle-free healthcare experience with doctors, specialists, hospitals, and health plans are part of one connected team.

Hear Brent Stern, President, Rogers Enterprise discuss how they implemented Oracle Retail Xstore Point-of-Service, Oracle Retail Customer Engagement Cloud Services, and Oracle Retail Order Broker Cloud Service at its 72 stores with the support of OPN partner BTM Global.

Hear Hemant Pasala, Director IT, Retail Applications, Staples and John Murphy, Store Operations, Staples share their upgrade to Oracle Retail Xstore v21 and their implementation approach. In 2022 the global office retail company Staples shared the details of their Oracle Retail Xstore rollout to the in-store checkout experience in over 1,000 stores. Staples store associates can better serve the consumers the way we work today.

Watch this session with Bill Boezinger, Manager Merchandise Systems and Process Development, The Walt Disney Company and Patty Weinrick, Director of IT, Abercrombie & Fitch Co. as they discuss the benefits of being a part of the Oracle Retail community. By listening to the retail community through our customer advisory boards and primary global consumer research, we can take these valuable learnings to inform our product roadmap decisions. We strive to connect our global community by following market trends, understanding the board room-level conversations, and sharing experiences.

Hear Andrea Deliman, Senior Manager, Assortment Process & Analytics, Ulta Beauty and Justine Kesich, Senior Assortment Analytics Analyst, Ulta Beauty discuss why they chose the highly configurable Oracle Retail Assortment Planning solution to provide ‘beauty for all’ with localized assortments. Assortment Planning will help Ulta Beauty deliver visual merchandising insights, maximize inventory productivity, serve localized demand, and ease merchants’ workloads as they create new items for more than 1,350 stores.

Hear Derek Chaput, Sr. IT Manager, Ulta Beauty and Taral Desai, Senior IT Director Store and Salon Systems, Ulta Beauty discuss how they modernized store operations across 1350+ locations in 50 states by upgrading its Xstore POS with Infosys. This allows the store associate to execute a “Store to Door” journey at the fixed register and mobile experience and the new mobile point of sale creates quicker customer checkouts. Importantly, Ulta Beauty associates’ wealth of knowledge and unbridled enthusiasm amplify customer experiences. Listen to learn how Xstore enriches the customer experience and empowers associates to provide memorable service levels and strengthen guest loyalty.

Hear this fireside chat to learn how to achieve fast and successful results for digital transformation across SaaS Cloud platforms emphasizing scale and talent. Josh Bellendir, Chief Information Officer at WHSNA, shares how Oracle’s AI-backed cloud solutions have helped execute his strategy for the company’s growth and transformation initiatives. WH Smith North America (WHSNA), incorporating Marshall Retail Group, is America’s leading specialty retailer in the airport marketplace. To better manage planning and inventory across its 300+ specialty airport and casino stores across the US and Canada, WHSNA is leveraging Oracle’s retail cloud platform with AI Foundation.

Hear from Hemant Pasala, Director IT, Retail Applications, Staples and Christopher Foster, Director, POS Programs and Operations, Total Wine & More about flexible store layout. Some say technology should be invisible in the customer experience. Still, we know that modern and mobile POS can improve the customer experience through engagement and create flexibility in your store environment. Technology improves an associate's ability to engage and deliver an experience supportive of the physical commerce value proposition. Whether you implement a standard desktop, self-check-out, a thin UI, mobile, or tablet, Oracle Retail Xstore allows you choice, including the payment devices.

Hear from a diverse panel of global retail experts from Cape Union Mart, Helzberg Diamonds, and Waldos Dolar Mart de Mexico. These customers are working closely with Lara Livgard and her team to uncover new ways of working. This interactive Q&A session will explore a variety of engagement styles, examples of delivered project value, and cloud adoption strategies. The Oracle Retail Customer Value team is already conducting engagements among Tier 1 retailers to increase user adoption of new solutions, develop new extensions, and drive additional value. 

Hear from Billy Murray from Abercrombie & Fitch and Rudy Kulas from Deloitte on how today’s technology can be the invisible enabler for retailers to rapidly experiment, explore, and execute in one modern platform. By moving onto a modern cloud-based platform, retail organizations gain a holistic view of customer management, enabling the critical shift to customer-centricity and accelerating innovation at scale.

Watch this session for new capabilities presented by Oracle Retail on Hardware and Payments with Jen Polumbo, Inventory Planning with David Fleischer, Fresh Management with Carla Anderson, and Enabling Innovation with Extensions with Amy Selby.

Watch as Saras Yagnavajhala of Oracle Retail discusses how to algorithmically identify value in data and find new opportunities to leverage AI and ML to bring business value to customers. Retailers can gain a competitive advantage by releasing the data from processes and transactions and applying Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. With innovations like Retail Data Store and the AI Foundation, Oracle has liberated data and science, opening up new possibilities for retailers as we walk towards more use cases of generative AI.

Watch this session for more on Cloud Adoption with Mary Vorus, Performance Monitoring and Benchmarking with Lara Livgard, and Decision Intelligence with Saras Yagnavajhala of Oracle Retail.

Hear Carla Anderson, Senior Cloud Architect, Oracle Retail and Chad Timm, Senior Director - Merchandising Product Strategy/Management, Oracle Retail discuss how our 30 years experience of working with the world's leading grocery retail brands reflects on our platform, helping grocers plan, budget, source, forecast, and allocate to ensure the product is in the right place at the right time. This includes developing private-label products and quality fresh produce options while interacting with millions of customers daily.

Hear David Fleischer, Product Strategy & Management – Retail Analytics and Planning, Oracle Retail and Ryan Somers, Product Strategy – Retail Analytics and Planning, Oracle Retail discuss our latest solutions, enabling retailers to optimize inventory and pricing through the entire lifecycle and automate retail processes - with embedded AL/ML analytics powered by your customer data. Learn the importance of a holistic view of inventory planning, pricing, promotions, markdowns, and offers for consistent execution.

Watch this session to see new innovations on Collect and Receive with Michael Colpitts, Sr. Director, Omnichannel Strategy, Oracle Retail.

Watch as John Gray, Vice President of Solution Development, Oracle Retail and Troy Parent, Vice President, Software Development, Oracle Retail discusses innovations in private endpoint and integration architecture.