Vanilla Is The New Black

By Erin Harris, Editor-In-Chief, Cell & Gene
Follow Me On Twitter @ErinHarris_1

Oracle Industry Connect 2015 wrapped recently, and best-of-breed retailers and brands including Nordstrom, ULTA Beauty, Adidas, Lilly Pulitzer, Gap, Charming Charlie, and more presented their paths to omni-channel, or as Mike Webster, senior VP and GM retail and hospitality, put it “evolved omni-channel, as it blends digital and physical, because ‘it’s all retailing.’”

Many of the retail presenters shared that their roads to omni-channel excellence are paved with sustained growth, order optimization, personal engagement, mobility, and vanilla implementations of enterprise systems. In this context, vanilla means implementing an enterprise platform with all or many of Oracle’s applications. This minimizes customizations, and thanks to hosted platforms, retailers don’t have to worry about managing these systems in-house. They’re much faster to roll out, they’re more cost effective than custom jobs, and despite retailers having their own unique business needs, vanilla implementations can meet most of their requirements. We’ve heard about vanilla implementations of the software giant’s enterprise systems before, but this is not your father’s Oracle. Since the MICROS acquisition especially, Oracle has crossed over into hospitality as well as the SMB market to help smaller retailers address their business challenges to better serve the savvier-by-the-day consumer.

Please log in or register below to read the full article.