Oracle® Retail Item Planning Configured for COE
Release Notes
Release 14.1
E55437-01
December 2014
Oracle Retail Item Planning Configured for COE (IP COE) facilitates the translation of merchandise financial plans into execution level, item driven strategies to be followed throughout the life of a product. It represents the bottom-up planning process, complementing and working in concert with the top-down financial plans. By providing weekly visibility into item performance and financial targets, the item planning process increases the likelihood that merchandising strategies are successfully executed within the financial plan parameters.
Item Planning is part of an overall planning process that involves planning at multiple levels of the product hierarchy. The planning process can be thought of as a continual process where each workbook enhances the following, and prior performance affects plans for future performance. Planning takes input from multiple parties, and communication enhances the process to help drive a financial road map for success. Multiple versions of the plan are created to benchmark success as well as provide insight to opportunities and risk for the in-season period.
In addition to the basic item planning process described above, Item Planning Configured for COE supports in-season markdown optimization, analysis, and execution. This is achieved through batch integration and a real-time service call to the Clearance Optimization Engine (COE). COE represents an effort to open up the markdown optimization engine for use in external applications such as IP COE that need an in-season price recommendation and a forecast that accounts for planned promotions and future markdowns and product life cycle. The IP COE exit strategy process has been configured to load the weekly batch forecasts calculated in COE. Based on this recommended information, the user has the ability to run a what-if scenario to the COE optimization engine. In real time, the user receives a revised forecast. Within IP COE, analysis of the key planning metrics, using both the recommended and revised forecasts, takes place in order to execute the optimal markdown recommendation.
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Note Because IP COE uses the Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server (RPAS) platform, Oracle Retail recommends that you review the Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server Release Notes for fixed and known issues that may affect IP COE. In addition, RPAS 13.3 and later releases have significant technical enhancements related to hierarchy management (such as integer indexing) that have an effect on the configuration and maintenance of IP COE. You must upgrade to key RPAS versions and complete the upgrade process as described in the chapter, "Patch Installation," in the Oracle Retail Item Planning Configured for COE Installation Guide before upgrading to a 14.1 IP COE domain. |
Overview of the Fashion Planning Bundle
The Fashion Planning Bundle is the integration of Item Planning (IP), Item Planning configured for Clearance Optimization Engine (IP-COE), Assortment Planning (AP), Merchandise Financial Planning (MFP), and Size Profile Optimization (SPO) as a full-suite planning solution for fashion retailers.
Hardware and Software Requirements
See the Oracle Retail Item Planning Configured for COE Installation Guide for information about the following:
n Hardware and software requirements
n Oracle Retail application software compatibility information
Integration Note
IP COE 14.1 is integrated with Oracle Retail Clearance Optimization Engine (COE) 14.0.1.
Upgrade Note
While not directly related to Item Planning Configured for COE, the 13.3 release of Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server (RPAS) has undergone a major change to simplify hierarchy administration. Full details of these changes are outlined in the 13.3 Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server Release Notes. Due to these changes, configuration updates have been made to Item Planning Configured for COE, and you will need to perform additional steps to upgrade your Item Planning Configured for COE domain, such as setting dimension sizes. The upgrade to RPAS 13.3 or later releases for this application includes a conversion process in addition to the normal upgrade process. Details are provided in the chapter, "Patch Installation," in the Oracle Retail Item Planning Configured for COE Installation Guide.
Noteworthy Defect Fixes
The following noteworthy defect fixes are included in IP COE 14.1:
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Fixed Issue/Defect |
Defect Number |
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The Gross Margin was calculated based on retail price, which is incorrect for temporary markdowns where the retail price is not changed, but a discount is taken during the sale. It has been changed to use Sales Average Unit Retail instead of Retail Price. |
18975736 |
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build_item.ksh contained hard-coded paths to the web service and wallet. These have been changed to point to example paths that implementers should update. |
19064687 |
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The Gross Margin measures COE Revised Forecasted GM Revised Exit Week (IpWpCoPGRIEEWV) and COE Forecasted GM Forecasted Exit Week (IpWpCoRFGEEWV) had an aggregation method of average_pop. These have been changed to be totaled, not averaged. |
19182177 |
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The COE What-If Price Type measure was editable, but should have been tied to the type of ladder picked in the COE What-If Price Ladder ID measure picklist. To do this, a calc rule was added for COE What-If Price Type (IpWpWiPrTpV) and load/refresh/commit rules for the same measure were removed. The type of measure was changed to real. |
19308370 |
Known Issues
The following table contains known issues that have been identified for the current release:
|
Known Issue/Defect |
Defect Number |
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There is an issue with the calculation for the COE Revised Price % Off Original Price metric. After completing a What-If call in the application, it is expected that the COE Revised Price % Off Original Price metric would calculate. For example, for the WP Original Ticketed Price measure, there is a value of 30. There is a COE Revised Clearance Retail Price value of 25.46. However, the COE Revised % Off Original Price measure is calculating as zero. |
14311258 |
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When the COE What-If Current Inventory U measure is set to 0 on the What If Request screen, the COE Revised Current Inventory U measure is not set to 0. This is fine. However, what the inventory value COE Revised Current Inventory U is set to is not correct. It is expected to be set to BOP total inventory as of the first forecasted week, but instead it takes the EOP inventory of that week. This also causes the COE Revised EOP Inventory U measure on the Forecast Analysis screen to be calculated using the incorrect number. |
14311565 |
Related Documentation
For more information, see the following documents in the Oracle Retail Item Planning Configured for COE Release 14.1 documentation set:
n Oracle Retail Batch Script Architecture Implementation Guide
n Oracle Retail Item Planning Configured for COE Installation Guide
n Oracle Retail Item Planning Configured for COE User Guide for the RPAS Classic Client
n Oracle Retail Item Planning Configured for COE User Guide for the RPAS Fusion Client
n Oracle Retail Item Planning documentation set
For more information about the Fashion Planning Bundle applications, see the following documentation sets:
n Oracle Retail Assortment Planning documentation
n Oracle Retail Item Planning documentation
n Oracle Retail Item Planning Configured for COE documentation
n Oracle Retail Merchandise Financial Planning documentation
n Oracle Retail Size Profile Optimization documentation
For more information about the RPAS Fusion Client, see the documents in the Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server documentation set.
Supplemental Training on My Oracle Support
The following document is available through My Oracle Support. Access My Oracle Support at the following URL:
https://support.oracle.com
Release Readiness Transfer of Information (TOI) Recordings (Doc ID 732026.1)
Online training is available to Oracle supported customers at product release. These online courses provide release-specific product knowledge that enables your functional and technical teams to plan, implement and/or upgrade and support Oracle Retail applications effectively and efficiently. Note that Oracle Retail products with minor updates often do not have an associated TOI.
Previous Releases
For information on previous Oracle Retail Item Planning Configured for COE release enhancements and additional information, refer to the release notes and documentation that accompany the previous release.
Documentation Accessibility
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Access to Oracle Support
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Oracle® Retail Item Planning Configured for COE Release Notes, Release 14.1
E55437-01
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Value-Added Reseller (VAR) Language
Oracle Retail VAR Applications
The following restrictions and provisions only apply to the programs referred to in this section and licensed to you. You acknowledge that the programs may contain third party software (VAR applications) licensed to Oracle. Depending upon your product and its version number, the VAR applications may include:
(i) the MicroStrategy Components developed and licensed by MicroStrategy Services Corporation (MicroStrategy) of McLean, Virginia to Oracle and imbedded in the MicroStrategy for Oracle Retail Data Warehouse and MicroStrategy for Oracle Retail Planning & Optimization applications.
(ii) the Wavelink component developed and licensed by Wavelink Corporation (Wavelink) of Kirkland, Washington, to Oracle and imbedded in Oracle Retail Mobile Store Inventory Management.
(iii) the software component known as Access Via™ licensed by Access Via of Seattle, Washington, and imbedded in Oracle Retail Signs and Oracle Retail Labels and Tags.
(iv) the software component known as Adobe Flex™ licensed by Adobe Systems Incorporated of San Jose, California, and imbedded in Oracle Retail Promotion Planning & Optimization application.
You acknowledge and confirm that Oracle grants you use of only the object code of the VAR Applications. Oracle will not deliver source code to the VAR Applications to you. Notwithstanding any other term or condition of the agreement and this ordering document, you shall not cause or permit alteration of any VAR Applications. For purposes of this section, "alteration" refers to all alterations, translations, upgrades, enhancements, customizations or modifications of all or any portion of the VAR Applications including all reconfigurations, reassembly or reverse assembly, re-engineering or reverse engineering and recompilations or reverse compilations of the VAR Applications or any derivatives of the VAR Applications. You acknowledge that it shall be a breach of the agreement to utilize the relationship, and/or confidential information of the VAR Applications for purposes of competitive discovery.
The VAR Applications contain trade secrets of Oracle and Oracle's licensors and Customer shall not attempt, cause, or permit the alteration, decompilation, reverse engineering, disassembly or other reduction of the VAR Applications to a human perceivable form. Oracle reserves the right to replace, with functional equivalent software, any of the VAR Applications in future releases of the applicable program.