Empowered Commerce:
V16 New features in store solutions

The new suite is ready

The newly enhanced Oracle V16 retail suite opens its doors offering better customer engagement and increased mobility. The industry leading merchandizing solution promises to enhance operational excellence with new integrations for smoother operations and seamless online and offline integration.

The new V16 overview

The new suite aims to inspire better customer engagement, simplify business processes from store opening to closing and help use data in a more beneficial way to drive business. The suite is aimed at bridging the gap between customers and retailers both online and offline with seamlessness of connectivity and smarter order execution. Better cash management, faster promotions and increased mobility are some of the advantages of the new suite.

 

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Create Hassle-free Infrastructure

The new V16 suite enables continuous system updates. Database and information backups will be managed through the solution, keeping the business updated, up and running with lesser manual labor and lesser hours spent on updating system and more time in trading. It also supports 24 hour trading.

Smart Cash Management:


Wrapping up for the day is easier with rolling close concept applied to cash registers. Register/store closing activities can be done one by one on cash registers while the trading is still running up front. Effective for always open store operating models, the system takes the closing of cash registers to the background so that businesses can run 24/7 at the front.

Day to day cash management takes a lot of time and manual labor for retailers. At times there are no staff available at the end of the day for cash management tasks and even store associates may have to stay back extra hours to close it. This leads to delays in daily downloads of pricing and promotions, causing transaction details to audit application to also get delayed. The whole store closing process as a result gets delayed. Introducing deferred cash management, integrated in the new suite will give the retailers an option to complete cash management tasks as part of day end activity or configure the system to defer this for a suitable time in future.

UI has been updated for the reporting section as well with new look and feel and reduction in menu option for ease of use.

Tax free enablement:


With direct integration with Fintrax and Global Blue, Oracle Xstore new suite has enabled integration of tax free shopping. This enables tax free shopping for eligible customers without manual form filling. The integration allows the webservices calls to be recognised by customs and excise service for refunds throughout Europe.

 

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Better customer engagement and connectivity

Faster real-time promotions:


Sometimes while a purchase is happening the customer misses out on a real time offer because the register wasn’t updated. This lessens loyalty value and puts store associates in a difficult situation. The new suite has integrated real time promotional cache refresh so that real time offers can be updated manually or automatically without the register or mobile POS needing to be restarted. This will save valuable time and make sure the promotions reach the customers at the right time.

Seamless online-offline experience:


The new suite will enable customers to order better from different physical or online stores and get it delivered to their doorstep. The online stores will allow the flexibility of choosing from an in-store collection and if the coveted product is not visible in the inventory then locate it in another store (Click & Pick).

Staying true to the tradition of commerce anywhere, with the new functional enhancements customer journeys will be more well connected both online and offline. Customers will also be able to review their digital carts in-store and add or remove items (and pay accordingly at the register or online) as per convenience thanks to the integration of the retail extension module (RXM). This also enables customers and store associates to have a better view of products with extended product information and recommendation. Customers get the information they need which makes their choices easier. For example if a customer is looking for a particular type of cereal (low fat, high fiber etc.), it would be easier for the store associate to find a suitable product on the tab by reading the detailed product information. Online, when a customer picks a pack of organic tea they are shown recommendations of a better brand of tea than what they usually get. When they pick the new tea, they are also suggested snacks and biscuits to go with it. Such recommendations increase chances of cross sales and up sales.

Connected apps:


To increase mobility and ease of purchase for customers, the new suite introduces Xstore punch out, which is a framework to support third party mobile applications linking it to the stores. If a customer makes a grocery list on his digital note application like OneNote or Google Keep, it can automatically be updated at the retailer’s system and an order can be placed and checked out online. The customer doesn’t have to step into the shop and stand in long queues.

Locating right:


Retailers get orders from different channels and customers across regions and placing the right address and locating it on the map is extremely important to ensure the product reaches its right recipient. Integration of QAS Experian services helps in verifying addresses by correcting postal codes and street names.

New enhanced commerce anywhere functionality allows the additional feature to facilitate returns and back office tasks like order processing (Pick, Pack, Ship and Collect).

Other enhancements include configuration accelerators that help in speedier implementations for predefined configurations in selected countries. Increase in the number of languages supported by base product and enhanced airside functionality (for airports).

 

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Increased operational excellence

Smooth running, updated operations at the back end is the backbone of business success. Enabling proper customer engagement is not possible without operational excellence. The new retail suite brings in a host of enhancements for back end operational efficiency to make the store closing process more efficient.

Increased mobility with tab integration:


The focus of Oracle Xstore is your customers. To help them with increased mobility Xstore has integrated tablet as a new feature in the v16 suite. Closer to the look and feel of the traditional register, the new addition to the handheld devices will increase the ease of transactions and ability to display offers and products to customers (show more options). Store associates can have a view of the customer profile and purchase/search history (if ecommerce integrated to POS) to serve customers in a more personalized way. It will also give a real time view of inventory making it easier to serve customer requests with existing products and answering queries about unavailable inventory or suggesting the nearby store where he/she can get it. Tab optimization aims to add new experiences and Collaborative Management (OR Store Applications, OR Customer Engagement, OR Xstore) to the existing mobile suite.

Support for IP enablement:


The new enhanced Xstore supports IP address enabled stores. Multiple handheld MPOS devices can share the same store network printer making the shopping experience more mobile for customers. As all the peripherals would be connected to a single network than a device, it would enable the store associates to take print copy of receipts from any point in the store. Even if one printer is out of order or too busy, the store associate can send the billing information to another printer in the store. Customers won’t have to wait around for the billing.

Customers and store associates will have a better view of things with easy to handle devices through enhanced UI with extended and new layouts in both register and tablets.

 

The new enhanced Xstore is a box full of opportunities waiting to be exploited. The right partner with the right expertise and experience in implementation can help retailers create better businesses and a smoother customer journey. Aspire, an Oracle partner with extensive knowledge on retail suite implementation has worked with various retailers understanding their needs and providing the best fit for each business. Putting our experience to work, we provide in depth consultation and the right strategies to propel your business further.

Author: Shreyasee Ghosh, Research Analyst

Practice Head: Chetan Singh, Store Solutions Architect