Abercrombie & Fitch goes live with Oracle Retail Suite

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: Abercrombie & Fitch goes live with Oracle Retail Suite.

As part of its strategic relationship with Oracle, Abercrombie & Fitch has implemented Oracle Retail merchandising and stores applications to support its international expansion plans and long-term growth strategy. The Oracle Retail merchandising and stores applications are being rolled out across all of the leading fashion retailers brands including Abercrombie & Fitch, abercrombie, Hollister, RUEHL and Gilly Hicks.

To support its international expansion strategy, the retailer has adopted a centralised business model and is deploying a single instance of the Oracle Retail Merchandising System across the globe. As part of this effort, Abercrombie & Fitch implemented Oracle Fusion Middleware SOA suite components including the Oracle BPEL Process Manager to orchestrate the data exchanges between the Oracle merchandising environment, its legacy systems and other new systems.

Abercrombie & Fitch has realised immediate value from the Oracle Retail Merchandising System as a result of better data integrity, more efficient and accurate entry and ease of maintenance around the purchase order process. Abercrombie & Fitch is also implementing Oracle Retail Point-of-Service, Oracle Retail Central Office and Oracles PeopleSoft Enterprise Time & Labor across all of its brands to help maximise store profitability as well as to provide the scalable and flexible architecture needed to support the growing demands of the business.

Oracle Retail Point-of-Service is currently live in more than 20 stores and the retailer is rolling it out in all new stores opened across the globe this year. Abercrombie & Fitch expects the Oracle Retail stores application to be deployed at all store locations by the end of next year.Abercrombie & Fitchs implementation of Oracle Retail Point-of-Service includes an on-screen keyboard and a streamlined user experience to support the retailers distinctive in-store experience. The retailer is currently in phase two of its merchandising and stores implementation. This phase will be live in the Fall of 2009 to support the international opening of stores in Milan and Tokyo. The Oracle Retail applications are being implemented and managed on Oracle Enterprise Linux to help provide a more flexible, reliable, and cost effective solution. The retailer has also standardised on Oracle Database 11g.

There is no question that our strategic relationship with Oracle Retail is delivering meaningful value to our business and will take on an increasingly important role as we move forward with our strategy and key growth initiatives, said Kristen Blum, Senior Vice President and CIO, Abercrombie & Fitch. Oracle Retail not only provides us with industry-leading, best practice applications and technology, but they have partnered with us across the board to get maximum value out of the systems as we aggressively drive our business strategy.

Fashion is a fast-paced, challenging retail segment, and smart retailers like Abercrombie & Fitch recognise that the effective use of technology can help them better connect with their customers and create long-term competitive advantage, said Duncan Angove, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Oracle Retail. Abercrombie & Fitch have examined their business and strengthened their competitive position, and they will be well positioned to succeed and thrive as the retail industry overall returns to its dynamic nature.

About Oracle Retail

Oracle is a provider of innovative and comprehensive industry software solutions for retailers -- enabling organisations to serve their customers better by applying insight into daily business decisions for more profitable results. With software that provides supply chain, operations, merchandising, store systems, optimisation as well as enterprise applications and infrastructure software, Oracle partners with the world's leading retail companies, including 20 of the 20 top retailers worldwide, to transform the economics of their businesses.