River Island is upping its omnichannel experiences with an invigorated focus on delivery and fulfillment. In being able to do so, the popular U.K. brand has tapped Oracle’s Retail Merchandise Financial Planning system to improve inventory visibility.
“We knew that omnichannel was the future and had to make a strategic move. We partnered with Oracle to get there. A single view of inventory is the key to fulfilling demand and operating more effectively,” said Doug Gardner, chief information officer of River Island. “Through this transformation, we needed to change the way our business worked. People had to come together and properly go through the design of the implementation.”
The partnership aims to achieve a single view of orders and inventory to scale the business appropriately. A popular brand with Millennial and Generation Z shoppers, River Island is charged with responding quickly to shifting trends and fluctuating consumer demands.
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“Sometimes you have to have the courage to level set in the middle of an implementation. You want to get it right because you need a foundation to operate with going forward,” said Gardner. “By implementing Oracle Retail Merchandise Financial Planning correctly, we are now about to evaluate profitability, reduce markdowns and follow a single version of the truth for the whole business.”
Having already deployed Oracle’s retail consulting team to deliver consistent and precise planning to decipher top performing merchandise, this next step aims to get the most popular items from warehouse to doorstep faster – and without sellouts.
“The multichannel shopper spent nearly twice as much as a single channel shopper this fall. River Island took notice of these trends early and shifted their strategies to be more nimble and agile in the face of shifting consumer demands,” said Ray Carlin, senior vice president and general manager of Oracle Retail. “Retail has advanced at an unprecedented pace with an evolution of strictly brick-and-mortar retail to a complex omni-channel world where purchasing online and collecting orders how, where and when one wants has become the standard.”
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