| Oracle® Retail Store Inventory Management Store User Guide Release 16.0 E76179-08 |
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| Oracle® Retail Store Inventory Management Store User Guide Release 16.0 E76179-08 |
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This chapter describes pricing. The following topics are covered:
Overview: Introduction to pricing.
Processing: Description of the pricing type of promotions.
Technical: Integration with Oracle Retail Integration Bus (RIB), web services, batch, and the database structure.
Pricing is an important feature in SIM that supports four key areas:
Price lookup (item detail, history):
Allows for a quick price lookup when customers ask without having to switch applications
Allows for price validation when scanning shelf labels
Allows price history research
Ticket/label printing:
For more information, see Chapter 16, "Printing."
Price change functionality:
This feature is usually used when, for some reason, the current store price requires immediate adjustment. This can occur because the price does not reflect the price in the flier or a nearby competitor has a lower price that the store tries to match.
Variable item types 02 and GS1 databar :
Both of these barcodes have an embedded price that often is used to understand the inventory implications. For more information, see Chapter 6, "Item."
SIM only supports regular price changes, multi-unit pricing, simple promotions, and clearances. SIM does not support complex promotions which are usually conditional and built upon certain thresholds or criteria that need to be met. SIM does however support overlapping simple promotions.
The Price Change functionality allows the user to request a price change to an item at the location. Price changes can be Permanent, Clearance, or Promotional. The corporate system checks the pricing rules and looks for conflicts. If the corporate system approves the price change, it takes effect and labels can be printed. If the corporate system rejects the request, the user can modify and resubmit the request.
All prices are held at the item/location level in SIM.
Multi-unit pricing allows a retailer to define a special permanent price when buying more than a single unit. Multi-unit pricing gives the retailer the ability to sell multiple units of the item at a discounted rate, for example, Multi units = 2, Multi Unit Retail = $9.99, Multi Units UOM = eaches. Buy two units of Item A for $9.99.
SIM subscribes to multi-unit pricing coming from RPM and displays the multi-unit information. SIM does not support multiple levels of multi-unit pricing such as buy an apple for $1, buy 5 pounds of apples for $3, buy 10 pounds for $5.
Many retailers run into competition from a nearby store of another brand. When such a scenario occurs, they have a price war to attract customers to their stores. In such a competitive environment, if one reduces its price, the other will need to perform a price reduction as well. In order to execute more immediate price changes, the retailer may use the price change functionality to change prices in an emergency scenario.
Many retailers use the handheld as a device for a simple price lookup. This is helpful for the customer in the store who needs to know the price of the product.
Price Changes exist under the Inventory Management menu. From the Price Change List screen, the user can filter the records as needed. The user can view, create, and edit Price changes on the Price change Detail screen for a Price change. The user can choose to print tickets and/or shelf edge labels for the price changes.
Following are the types of price changes:
Regular Price Change: A price change that occurs on an item due to a change in the price from the manufacturer could lead to this kind of price change.
Promotion Price Change: A price change that occurs to enhance sales or to attract customers to buy an item. This may lead for some specific number of days.
Clearance Price Change: A price change that is applied to move the product out of store which is sitting on the rack for a long period of time.
Time-based Promotion: A price change that is for specific hours in a day.
Following are the types of overlapping price changes:
If there is a regular price change running on an item and a promotional price change is also applied to it, then in that case, a promotion price change takes precedence over a regular price change and only the promotional price change is applied.
If there is a regular price change running on an item and at the same time there is a clearance also running on that item, then a clearance price change takes precedence over a regular price change and only the clearance is applied.
If there is a promotional price change running on an item and a clearance price change is also running at the same time, a promotional price change is applied over and above the clearance price change.
In a time-based promotion, if an item has multiple promotions running at the same time, then the later one takes precedence; this is decided by the pricing engine in RPM while sending it to SIM. It does not generate tickets or labels as the promotion starts and ends on the same day.
For example, there is a promotion running on an item from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. There is another promotion that is supposed to apply from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Then, in this case, from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., the first promotion would apply and from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., the second promotion would apply and then again from 1:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., the first promotion would apply.
These figures show the price information screens that can be viewed from the SIM PC item Lookup and handheld Item Lookup dialogs.
These screens show the effective date and time of the price change. They also have the ability to display historical prices, but do not display future price changes.
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Note: The price displayed on this screen is not necessarily the item location price from the database, but is rather a value looked up from the pricing tables. |
This figure shows the Price Change List screen. Selecting a price change from the list navigates to the details for that price change. Clicking the Create button also navigates to the Price Change Detail screen to create a Price Change Request. The Filter button navigates to the Price Change Filter screen. Finally, there are Item Tickets and Shelf Labels buttons that send tickets and labels into the ticketing dialog. See Chapter 16, "Printing."
The Price Change Filter screen is accessed by selecting the Filter button on the Price Change List Screen. It is used to search for Price Changes based upon various criteria.
The Price Change Detail screen is accessed by selecting the Create button from the Price Change List screen to create a new SIM price change request. It can also be accessed by clicking a price change on the Price Change List screen. The Price Change Detail screen is only used to create new price change requests or to review price changes existing in SIM.
After the price is submitted, RPM executes its validation rules and lets the SIM user know in real time if the change is approved or not. These validation rules can include, but are not limited to, overlapping promotions restrictions or store change restrictions.
The Price Information dialog can be viewed from Item Lookup on the PC and handheld.
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Note: This is only for looking up current and past prices for an item. |
The Price Change dialog is accessed only from the PC.
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Note: This shows all price changes for past and present, and future. |
Item prices in SIM are initially seeded from the Oracle Retail Merchandise System (RMS) into SIM's item price table as the initial regular prices for items.
Item price changes can come through multiple ways:
Batch Data Files
Retail Integration Bus
Web Services
Once the price changes are coming into SIM, the new prices along with the effective dates are persisted into the ITEM_PRICE table.
The current price is retrieved from the ITEM_PRICE table based at the store time when the user requests the price lookup. If there are multiple price changes occurring for a store item on a specific date, the most recent effective price becomes the store item's current price. The following business objects are used within the application code:
| Business Object | Description |
|---|---|
| ItemPrice | Contains item price detail information about a specific item on the specific date. |
| PriceChange | Contains item price change information for a specific price change type (regular price change, promotion price change and clearance price change). |
| PriceType | Contains the SIM price types. 202 - Regular Price (change), 201 - Promotional Price Change, 200 - Clearance Price. |
| PriceSource | Contains Price source (0 - normal, 1 - store requested price change). |
This section covers integration for pricing.
RIB payloads are used to communicate to external systems through RIB Integration.
| RIB Payload | Description |
|---|---|
| RegPrcChgDesc | RIB payload that contains information about the regular price change. |
| ClrPrcChgDesc | RIB payload that contains information about clearance price change. |
| PromotionDesc | RIB payload that contains information about promotion price change. |
| PrmCnlItemLocDesc | RIB payload that contains information about item location promotion cancelation. |
SIM has two main functions for web services:
Requesting a Price Change from RPM
SIM integrates with Oracle Retail Price Management (RPM) to get the price changes, promotions, and clearance events. This integration happens with the RIB or through batch processes. SIM is also capable of requesting price changes, clearances, or promotions using the PC UI feature. This feature calls the RPM web service to get the price changes completed for the items in the store.
SIM does not calculate specific pricing points based on criteria send. The expectation is that the exact price is provided for all regular, promotion (overlapping or not), and clearance price changes.
When a same date price change is requested by SIM and approved by RPM, SIM updates its internal pricing tables immediately with this information. RPM in turn publishes the price change to the RIB, the batches, and other entities such as RMS and POS that need to be aware of this change. SIM is able to start using the price when printing tickets and labels or when looking up the price for customers due to the direct update after RPM approval.
In case the price is not for the same day, SIM waits for the RIB message or batch process to upload file information.
SIM uses the PriceChangeService SOAP web service to retrieve future retail price from RPM.
The following service operations are supported for this web service:
| Service Operation | Description |
|---|---|
| createPrcChgDesc | SIM calls external system to create price change for a specified price type. |
| deletePrcChgDesc | SIM calls external system to delete price change for a specified price type. |
Looking Up Prices
The SIM price lookup web service is mostly intended for external systems or handheld extensions to SIM to help provide those systems with SIM pricing information. A great use case for this could be the opportunity to provide a price check within SIM.
A custom dialog can be built to scan the price of an item and display the price from the POS system and the current price in SIM. If they do not match, a different web service call can be made to the ticketing architecture to generate a new label. It can also be used to look up tomorrow's price for printing and generating tickets.
SIM supplies a StoreItemPrice SOAP web service. The following service operations are supported for this web service:
| Service Operation | Description |
|---|---|
| lookupItemPriceHeader | Retrieves summary information for store item price. |
| readItemPrice | Retrieves detailed information about a single store item price. |
| lookupItemPriceOnEffectiveDate | Retrieves summary information for a store item price on a specified date. |
SIM uses the PriceInquiryService SOAP web service to retrieve the future retail price from the pricing engine. The following service operations are supported for this web service:
| Service Operation | Description |
|---|---|
| findPricePrcInqCriVo | SIM calls external system to retrieves future retail price header information. |
The following batch jobs are supported:
| Batch Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Bulk Price Regular Batch | This batch updates regular price changes from RPM to SIM. |
| Bulk Price Promotion Batch | This batch updates promotion price changes from RPM to SIM. |
| Bulk Price Clearance Batch | This batch updates clearance price changes from RPM to SIM. |
| Price Change Extract Retry Batch | A batch process also exists for reprocessing failed price change extract processing. This can help reduce the user intervention needed to resolve timing errors. |
| Item Price To History Batch | A batch process that writes the expired item price records into the item price history table. |
The following database tables are used by SIM:
| Table Name | Description |
|---|---|
| ITEM_PRICE | Contains item price records for store item. A given store item may have many item prices with different effective dates if applicable. |
| ITEM_PRICE_HISTORY | Contains archived item price records. |
| PRICE_CHANGE_WORKSHEET | Staging area to hold the price change records. |
| ITEM_PRICE_V | The item price view table contains item price and item detail information combined. |
