Morrisons signs up Oracle for IT transformation

Morrisons, the UK’s fourth largest supermarket group, has announced a major partnership with Oracle to help drive a far-reaching overhaul of its IT systems.

Under the agreement, the supermarket chain expects to implement a complete Oracle retail suite of merchandising, planning and stores applications, plus the Oracle E-Business Suite for financials, HR/payroll and manufacturing. It will also roll out Oracle’s Siebel platform for CRM and Oracle Fusion middleware including Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle Identity Management – all underpinned by Oracle databases.

The grocery retailer has said it plans to phase in the Oracle systems over the next five years – much more slowly than the original three-year timetable to overhaul its systems it announced in March last year, when it first confirmed plans for a major capital investment in IT.

The Oracle deal is also departure from its original stated plan to pick and choose best-of-breed systems to support all its core functions.

Gary Barr, the retailer’s IT director, said: “We expect Oracle solutions to meet our needs, offering a breadth of functionality and a level of data that will promote a more accurate assessment of business performance. This will help us to turn information into profitable business decisions.”

The supermarket has not yet confirmed any partner to help it integrate Oracle’s systems with its existing infrastructure, but Retail Week reported last month that the grocer plans to recruit more than 500 IT staff and consultants over the next two years to support its IT transformation programme.

The business transformation plan is reported to be called Project Evolve internally.

Morrisons has more than 114,000 members of staff in stores, factories, distribution centres and head office administrative functions.

The grocer is well-known for managing almost every aspect of its commercial operations in-house, including fresh fruit and vegetables, fresh food, meat processing and transport.

Oracle’s systems will expected to provide Morrisons with the operational functionality required to manage and simplify retail processes around fresh and staple produce throughout the planning process, through the supply chain and into the stores.

Oracle’s Duncan Angove said Morrisons’ verticalled integrated supply chain was “unique and helps them bring a highly differentiated approach to food retailing.”

Source: www.computerworlduk.com

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Oracle Magazine for March/April 2008

Publication covering Oracle products.

This issue feature stories: Moving Forward (on "operating and maintaining legacy systems" using Oracle solutions) and SUPPORT FOR SUPERHEROES (building IT infrastructure of Marvel Entertainment, studio that produced Spider-man and Iron Man).



Oracle Magazine for March/April of 2008
Eng | PDF | 28MB

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Polkomtel Selects Oracle to Enhance Customer Experience

Leading Polish Mobile Provider Selects Oracle's Siebel CRM and Oracle Communications Service Fulfillment Suite to Improve Automation and Customer Experience.

Oracle today announced that Polkomtel, a leading mobile provider in Poland, has selected Oracle's Siebel CRM, Oracle® Communications Order and Service Management, Oracle Communications Service Activation and Oracle Communications Inventory Management to help improve operational efficiency, enhance customer service and enable rapid deployment of next-generation services.

In order to maintain its competitive advantage in Eastern Europe's growing communications industry, Polkomtel is focused on driving innovation, enriching its product offering, improving customer care and increasing operational efficiency. To help meet these goals, Polkomtel will replace its inflexible legacy provisioning systems with an automated mobile provisioning system built on the Oracle Communications Service Fulfillment Suite. In addition, Polkomtel will implement Siebel CRM to manage and track all customer interactions, empowering customer service and sales representatives to provide a more personalized, satisfying customer service experience. Polkomtel expects to achieve improvements in its day-to-day operations that will have a positive impact on operational efficiency as well as increases in average revenue per user (ARPU).

"We chose Oracle's mobile provisioning solution and Siebel CRM due to their rich, out-of-the-box functionality and ability to help us accelerate service delivery and reduce time to revenue," said Konrad Kobylecki, chief operating officer, Polkomtel. "The integration with Siebel CRM will provide additional benefit by helping to further streamline the order-to-fulfillment and issue resolution processes."

"Poland is experiencing extremely high mobile subscriber growth and Polkomtel is at the forefront of innovation and customer service in the region," said David Sharpley, vice president of product marketing and channels, Oracle Communications. "Polkomtel's selection of Oracle's end-to-end and integrated communications application suite will enable Polkomtel to continue its growth with improved efficiency and enhanced customer service."

Siebel CRM enables organizations to transform the customer experience. Siebel CRM delivers comprehensive CRM capabilities, tailored industry solutions, role-based customer intelligence and pre-built integration that provide a highly responsive, fully integrated client view across all channels.

The Oracle Communications Service Fulfillment suite automates the entire provisioning process in an integrated manner including order management, inventory and service activation. Oracle Communications Order and Service Management coordinates the many diverse tasks that make up the end-to-end service fulfillment process, including installing equipment in a point of presence, triggering billing once the service is activated in the network and coordinating processes between engineering and operations. Oracle Communications Service Activation manages the activation of complex services in a flow-through manner across multiple technology domains, reducing deployment costs and significantly increasing agility. Oracle Communications Inventory Management enables tracking of all network resources ranging from physical equipment to network locations and addresses, and supports end-customer services and network technologies.

Source: www.crm2day.com

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