| Oracle® Retail Enterprise Inventory Cloud Service User Guide Release 19.3 F44222-02 |
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| Oracle® Retail Enterprise Inventory Cloud Service User Guide Release 19.3 F44222-02 |
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This chapter provides a functional and technical introduction to the Enterprise Inventory Cloud Service (EICS).
EICS is a cloud service platform helping retailers track discrete store and warehouse inventory across the enterprise. In return this information can be provided to downstream systems for Omni-Channel purposes or even general merchandising.
The platform comes with a desktop-based administration layer, functional oversight and operational components, using browser technology (Oracle JET).
The administration layer allows:
System and store business process configuration
Setup of core data elements like reason codes, context values and tolerances for picking
Configuration of printers
Prioritizing the barcode parser
Scheduling the batches and managing polling timers for the integration layer
Management and scheduling of Product Groups to automate processes like stock counts
Notification setup
Setup of server based translation values
Report Printing
Creation of roles and role user assignments
Translation maintenance
The oversight management UI functions:
Management of UIN discrepancies
Stock Count Authorization
Transaction history lookup
Views on items out of stock, expiring items, new in store, stock counts requiring authorization and shelf out of stock positions.
Item, supplier and container Lookup
The operational components include:
Role user assignment
Batch scheduling and tracking
MPS management
Error log tracking
EICS leverages a host of APIs to allow a retailer to important and export data. The application it leverages is the Retail Integration Cloud Service (RICS), which consists of three integration methods:
Retailer Integration Bus (RIB) for payload integration and continuous streaming between applications
Retail Backbone Service (RSB) for web service integration to import, export and execute inventory business transactions
Bulk Data Integration (BDI) is used to import start-up data
In addition to these integration tools, several batch processes also exist for operational bulk data processing.
EICS does not have an operational transaction execution layer, and counts on the optional mobile UI of the Store Operations Cloud Services (SOCS) to execute store inventory transactions. Some retailers may not want to deploy the SOCS UI because they will be leveraging their own applications.
This section describes the business values of using EICS.
EICS provides an improved customer experience, with accurate, up-to-date inventory positions, customer order execution, and real time accurate stock positions for all stores.
Providing a centralized real-time inventory view is a major challenge for most retailers. EICS supports all store business processes to ensure back-end ordering systems, and customer-facing applications can provide accurate inventory positions. This visibility is delivered through a flexible web service enabled architecture optimized for high-volume querying from order management systems or in-store personal. Real-time inventory has also increased in importance to help with customer order fulfillment and online inventory promise.
A warehouse inventory API allows EICS to also track warehouse inventory to be that one stop shop for enterprise inventory. This API is specifically built in case a merchandise system is not deployed that could provide refined information like channel or future to promise or does not have the ability to expose correct APIs.
EICS allows for cross-location inventory lookup. In the case of an out of stock position. This information can be leveraged by third party systems to more efficiently route customers in a store, or web orders to the correct locations.
The web service architecture and centralized nature of EICS allow for instant up-to-date inventory for all stores. EICS also tracks a variety of different inventory buckets to provide better information and give a better understanding on what is available for sale versus reserved for other purposes.
As part of EICS a retailer also receives JET UI functionality to look up item inventory and attribute information.
EICS is a fully integrated solution with warehouses, stores, and corporate offices. EICS' store processes are considered best in the industry using real time and near real-time integration infrastructure between warehouses, suppliers, stores, corporate, and other third-party applications.
This communication model allows for accurate up-to-date information on transfers, store and warehouse shipments and deliveries, and sales processing for accurate inventory position. Inventory adjustments and results from stock counts are immediately communicated to corporate. Additional integration to support the enterprise is provided to a manifest system for printing labels.
All of this information generates better replenishment results since all information at corporate will be up to date.
In addition, EICS is highly configurable with over 100 configuration options and an additional 200 permissions with the optional use of SOCS. This makes it possible to deploy one instance of EICS across multiple time zones, geographies and different footprint stores reducing the cost to maintain multiple servers and environments..
EICS uses some of the best in the industry in store processes, such as the automatic generation of stock counts. It can integrate Plan-o-gram information and track inventory through the backroom and shop floor.
Detailed receiving from supplier, store, and warehouse and shipping allows retailers to monitor where inventory discrepancies happen with the ability to investigate any issues.
To improve store compliancy, it is possible to schedule standard inventory control transactions like stock counts.
Every inventory change can be tracked down to a specific user and transaction for the change.
Finally, inventory adjustments require a reason that can be specifically assigned to a single user allowing, for example, a sales associate to only move inventory to an unavailable status, while store managers can write off missing inventory.
