Wipro launches FLoW by Wipro Retail a solution for franchise and wholesale functionality

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: Wipro launches FLoW by Wipro Retail a solution for franchise and wholesale functionality.

Wipro Retail, an international IT and business services company, has launched FLoW by Wipro Retail an Oracle-based pricing, supply chain and finance management solution specifically for retail franchises and wholesalers, giving them much greater data visibility for faster, more accurate trading.

The technology is a bolt-on solution to the Oracle Retail Merchandising System (RMS) developed as a result of customer demand, and enables users to perform and view wholesaler operations side-by-side with Oracle Retail Suite. This significantly increases visibility and operational efficiency, as users can now see and manage their integrated operations of Retail, Franchise and Wholesale on screen.

The flexibility of the solution means that retail franchises and wholesalers have much control over pricing, fulfilment and billing. Additionally, the solution leverages Oracle RMS functionalities including item creation, transfers, and replenishment whilst being fully aligned with Oracle Retail.

The technology shares with Oracle Retail, the same database, application server, user interface and security, with the same users and roles being accepted on both. However, despite complementing Oracle Retail, the solution ultimately remains independent.  RMS effectively hosts the information, which the technology 'reads' from it with the ability to shape RMS data if need be.

The system architecture connects to Oracle Retail and also the financial system, meaning that customers, price strategies, sales orders, billing, accounting and a wide array of other functions can all be administered via the technology. It is also Roadmap-friendly, meaning that it does not impact on the existing Retail Roadmap.

Mike Davies, Vice President of Wipro Retail, comments: "Historically, Oracle Retail Suite has offered broad functionality for the general retail environment, but not much in the way of franchiser or wholesaler functionality. Having listened to feedback from our clients, it is clear that they wanted the ability to use our solutions for both retail and franchising, and so the solution fully addresses this need and offers a comprehensive retail solution that allows the user to oversee the entire process from beginning to end. Wipro is uniquely placed to provide this level of flexibility because of our deep retail knowledge and experience in working with a wide variety of retail businesses across the globe."