Oracle Edge Products - What are the latest Retail Needs
Most Retailers have by now embraced the Internet's effect on their businesses. Earlier versions used to see Retailers creating a different entitity such as XYZ Online or XYZ.net for their online sales. But with the recent phase of Multi Channel Commerce initiatives Retailers are quickly merging operations for procuring, selling and shipping items across the multiple channels. This meant that the IT applications had to quickly adapt and integrate with each other to serve the growing business needs of a seamless enterprise. Oracle has taken a big step in acquiring or developing solutions to meet this growing need of Retailers! This post describes what these new products are and why they are called Edge!
For a while now Oracle products had a presence in the Core areas of a Retail Enterprise often called ERP. Oracle's strategy is to sorround these applications, be it Oracle eBusiness Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Lawson or even SAP with a host of edge or peripheral applications which integrate with the core ERP but also work as engines of growth. Some of the edge applications are
1. Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) - eg Hyperion Suite
2. Enterise Data management products such as PIM, Customer Hub
3. Oracle Business Intelligence (OBIEE)
4. Oracle Transportation Management
5. Oracle Demand Planning - Demantra Suite.
Each of the above product suite has unique features and has a thing in common too. The commonality being that all of the above need to integrate tightly with the in house ERP system.
Retailers across the board are planning or executing projects in these areas, with the core ERP functionality settling around R12 or PeopleSoft 9.1, these edge areas are where the next generation of functionalities and hence cost savings and increased customer service will come from.
At Infosys we have strong practitioners across the various horizontal edge products and vertical edge products such as
Horizontal apps are OTM, Demantra, Projects (Primavera), Enterprise Asset Managment, Oracle Beehive, Master Data Management, Oracle BI/EPM.
Vertical edge apps are Oracle Retail Merchandising system, Oracle Insurance, Oracle Utilities and Oracle Life Sciences.
As the ERP space settles down, it is a must for every practitioner, implementor or user to grow beyond the ERP functionality and acquire knowlege in atleast one of these growing edge products.
What has been your experience with these Edge products?
