Kohl’s optimizes item and store performance with Oracle Retail solution

Redwood Shores, Calif. --Kohl’s has overhauled its core merchandising, inventory, and pricing operations with the launch of a new Oracle Retail Merchandise Operations Management solution, allowing the retailer to coordinate a unified system of record for inventory to better serve multi-channel customers and to simplify its business user experience.



“Oracle Retail has provided our merchants with more visibility to make informed decisions with better data to optimize performance at the item and store level,” said Janet Schalk, executive VP and CIO, Kohl’s. “Equally important, the Oracle Retail implementation establishes a foundation for future growth and innovation.”



As part of the overhaul, Kohl’s implemented the Oracle Retail Merchandising system and Oracle Retail Price Management to streamline and improve inventory, pricing, and promotions operations that determine how well larger categories and individual items perform both online and at each of Kohl’s more than 1,100 stores nationwide. The implementaion follows Kohl’s deployment of Oracle Commerce.



The Oracle Retail implementation is part of a larger business transformation designed to support the department store company’s ongoing growth and enable marketing and merchandising teams to anticipate customer demand, identify market opportunities, and roll out new products and promotions online and in stores. By managing pricing and promotions from a unified view that delivers accurate, real-time insight from multiple sources, the merchants will gain efficiencies with a more agile promotional pricing process.



Kohl’s is using Oracle Retail to manage pricing for all items on a store-by-store basis and for its e-commerce site, to preserve margins where demand remains high and for clearing and refreshing inventory where needed.



To deliver a real-time view of the many variables influencing item and store performance, Kohl’s has integrated Oracle Retail Merchandising with multiple existing systems.



By leveraging the best practices built into the Oracle Retail refernce model, which is a comprehensive collection of industry-leading processes that guide retail operations, Kohl’s avoided customizations, simplified its merchandising overhaul, and allowed for faster upgrades in the future.



In addition, Kohl’s implemented the Oracle Exadata Database Machine to optimize performance of its retail operations and ensure that merchants have rapid access to the information they need.



The merchandising transformation at Kohl’s represents a key step in the retailer’s long-term strategy: establishing a robust, stable, and scalable foundation for deploying new retail science, optimization, and planning solutions that will help to identify market opportunities and drive profitable growth.



“Consumers require access to their favorite brands 24/7 via nearby stores, their desktop, or using a mobile device, and Kohl’s is moving quickly to deliver that type of personalized and relevant commerce-anywhere experience. By implementing the Oracle Retail family of applications, Kohl’s is establishing a foundation to drive ongoing growth,” said Mike Webster, senior VP and general manager, Oracle Retail.



Moving forward, Kohl’s plans to implement and use the predictive technology embedded in Oracle Retail Merchandise Planning and Optimization to more precisely tailor its selection of items, styles, and sizes to meet customer demand at each store.



The Oracle Retail solutions represent an expansion of Oracle applications already in use at Kohl’s, which include Oracle Commerce, Oracle’s PeopleSoft financial management systems and more.



In 2013, Kohl’s moved its e-commerce operations to Oracle Commerce to deliver nearly 100% availability and support record high sales during the annual shopping spikes that accompany the holidays.



To provide differentiated customer service, Kohl’s also deployed Oracle Service Cloud for web customer service, contact center, and knowledge management. The deployment enables Kohl’s to reduce costs while delivering a compelling customer experience through voice, e-mail, chat, and cobrowsing capabilities that support millions of web interactions per month and more than 2,000 contact center agents.