| Oracle® Retail Science Cloud Services Release Notes Release 18.0.002 F20606-02 |
|
 Previous |
Release Notes
Release 18.0.002
F20606-02
July 2020
This document highlights the major changes for Release 18.0.002 of Oracle Retail Science Cloud Services.
The Oracle Retail Science Cloud Service combines AI, machine learning, and decision science with data captured from Oracle Retail SaaS applications and third-party data. The unique property of these learning-enabled applications is that they detect trends, learn from results, and increase their accuracy the more they are used, adding massive amounts of contextual data to obtain a clearer picture on what motivates outcomes.
The Oracle Retail Science Cloud Services are comprised of the following Cloud Services:
Oracle Retail Science Platform Cloud Service
Oracle Retail Assortment and Space Optimization Cloud Service
Oracle Retail Promotion and Markdown Optimization Cloud Service
Oracle Retail Offer Optimization Cloud Service
Oracle Retail Inventory Optimization Cloud Service
Oracle Retail Science Platform Cloud Service
The Oracle Retail Science Platform Cloud Service provides retailers with a data science toolkit that supports specific use-cases in planning, operations and execution and can be expanded to support broader retail uses. This includes Advanced Clustering, Customer Segmentation, Demand Transference, and Customer Decision Tree, Affinity Analysis, Attribute Extraction/Binning and Innovation Workbench capabilities, and Profile Science.
Oracle Retail Inventory Optimization Cloud Service
The Oracle Retail Inventory Optimization Cloud Service provides insights into trade-offs between service level and inventory cost and helps retailers set replenishment strategies in terms of safety stock or service level. These data-driven strategies are translated into item-location replenishment policies that are pushed to replenishment systems, such as Oracle Retail Merchandising System (RMS), or any external system to generate and execute orders. To provide full visibility, the replenishment policies are also leveraged within Inventory Optimization to calculate the optimal transfers and purchase orders.
To support strategic inventory optimization throughout the life cycle, Inventory Optimization recommends optimal rebalancing transfers between stores to increase sell-through and avoid markdowns. This type of strategy can be turned off when not applicable (for example, for grocery categories).
Inventory optimization leverages historical sales and inventory, business requirements such as lead time and review schedule, and the demand forecast to generate optimal recommendations throughout the life cycle. The demand forecast takes into account different factors such as demand transference, variation across customer segments, holidays and promotion, and returns (primarily for fashion and hardline categories). Alternatively, demand forecast can be provided through an interface by external forecasting system.
Oracle Retail Assortment and Space Optimization Cloud Service
The Oracle Retail Assortment and Space Optimization Cloud Service is used to determine the optimal selection and arrangement of products within stores by optimizing the product assortment and product placement on a virtual planogram.
Oracle Retail Promotion and Markdown Optimization Cloud Service and Oracle Retail Offer Optimization Cloud Service
The Oracle Retail Promotion and Markdown Optimization Cloud Service and Oracle Retail Offer Optimization Cloud Service reflect the evolution of our price and promotion optimization capabilities into an integrated life-cycle price optimization offering that enables retailers to engage their customers in an omnichannel environment while maximizing profits. The modular approach to offering life cycle pricing for promotions and markdowns separate from targeted offers enables retailers to innovate at the speed of their customer, while also accounting for the maturity of loyalty data necessary for targeted offers. The combined capabilities provide the following benefits to retailers:
Drive optimal promotion and pricing decisions for the entire product life cycle
Engage customers with targeted and contextual offers
Execute consistently, incorporating price and promotion plans, projected receipts, and returns.
Simplify decision-making through high-automation, exception-driven processes and what-if optimizations
Maximize accuracy and scale using artificial intelligence, machine learning, and optimization on Oracle Retail's data science infrastructure
|
Note: With this release, Microsoft Windows 7 is no longer supported. Microsoft Windows 10 is the only supported operating system. |
The following technology is supported:
Operating system:
Microsoft Windows 10 with Microsoft Office 2013
|
Note: Oracle Retail assumes that the retailer has ensured its Operating System has been patched with all applicable Windows updates. |
Web browsers supported on Microsoft Windows 10:
Mozilla Firefox 68+ ESR
Google Chrome (Desktop) 79+
Microsoft Edge 44+
Oracle Retail Science Cloud Service is hosted in the Oracle Cloud with the security features inherent to Oracle technology and a robust data center classification, providing significant uptime. The Oracle Cloud team is responsible for installing, monitoring, patching, and upgrading retail software.
Included in the service is continuous technical support, access to software feature enhancements, hardware upgrades, and disaster recovery. The Cloud Service model helps to free customer IT resources from the need to perform these tasks, giving retailers greater business agility to respond to changing technologies and to perform more value-added tasks focused on business processes and innovation.
Oracle Retail Software Cloud Service is acquired exclusively through a subscription service (SaaS) model. This shifts funding from a capital investment in software to an operational expense. Subscription-based pricing for retail applications offers flexibility and cost effectiveness.
Oracle Retail Inventory Optimization Cloud Service maximizes the productivity of inventory across the entire product life cycle with AI-driven outcomes to achieve business strategies. The solution applies multiple inventory movement levers to address the inventory challenges unique to each stage in the product life cycle. This includes in-season replenishment policies to minimize inventory and late-season inventory re-distributions to avoid markdowns. The AI-driven approaches apply analytics to the customer and transaction to automate the transformation from inventory strategies to operational decisions at the item-location level. Oracle Retail Inventory Optimization Cloud Service provides the following key benefits to the retailer:
Informs replenishment strategies with service-to-inventory trade-offs.
Translates objectives into AI-driven replenishment policies down to the item-location.
Recommends AI-driven inventory redistribution to engage prized customers and avoid markdowns.
Enriches the inventory movement processes with time-phased inventory projections.
Interacts with Offer Optimization science to drive better outcomes through simultaneous manipulation of supply and demand.
The following enhancements are included in this release:
The New Manage Recommendations screen has been added.
Provides the user with the ability to bulk accept or modify recommendations from different runs.
Provides the user with an aggregate summary view of the budgets used for promotions and markdowns.
Provides the user with the ability to send selected recommendations to a price execution system in either Submitted or Approved status. (When the retailer uses RPM, then the recommendations are directly pushed in Submitted or Approved status.)
Strategy Interface has been added that allows the user to send business rules at any merchandise and location level and associate it with a Strategy Set. Batch runs use rules specified in the DEFAULT_SET. Adhoc runs can use any available strategy sets to do a what-if analysis.
Product Groups can now be fed in through an interface. (When retailer uses RMS, the product groups can flow in from RMS to OO.)
An enhancement to the Allocate Budget screen that allows users to let OO optimally determine the budget allocation.
Enhancements to Product inclusion, Exit date, and Eligibility Dates.
Two new visualization reports have been added. The first report (OO Recommendation Summary) allows the user to see the number and type of recommendations by any merchandise/location. In the second report (OO Budget Usage), the user can see the budget used by any merchandise/location combination.
Offer Optimization Forecasting: Bugs in the parameter estimation process. have been fixed. Parameter estimation process is now executed
Parameter review - Elasticity: Review the distribution of elasticity values currently present in the system and the updated values based on new data. Also review the parameter values for all partitions where the change is above a set threshold.
Parameter review - Event lift: Review the distribution of event lift values currently present in the system and the updated values based on new data. Also review the event lift values for all partitions where the change is above a set threshold.
Parameter review - Seasonality correlation: Review the histogram of correlation values between current seasonality curves and the updated seasonality curves. Also review the partitions where the correlation is below certain threshold.
Parameter review - Seasonality curve: Review the current and updated seasonality curves.
Forecast vs Actual comparison - Compare the forecast and actual sales values.
Affinity Analysis
One new report has been added for Affinity Analysis. In the Affinities report, the user can see the visualization of If Then rules along with lift, support, and confidence. In the Product Similarities report, the user can view the product similarities between two particular items.
Demand Transference
One new report has been added to allow the user to view product dissimilarities.
Profiles Science
Integration is now available with RDF and A&IP to provide the size profiles at merchandise and location hierarchy level required by each of these applications.
For more information, see the following documents in the Oracle Retail Science Cloud Services documentation set:
Oracle Retail Science Cloud Services Administration Guide
Oracle Retail Insights Cloud Services Suite /Oracle Retail Science Cloud Services Data Interface
Oracle Retail Science Cloud Services Implementation Guide
Oracle Retail Science Cloud Services User Guide
The following documents are available through My Oracle Support. Access My Oracle Support at the following URL:
https://support.oracle.com
Transfer of Information (TOI) Material (Doc ID 732026.1)
For applicable products, online training is available to Oracle supported customers. 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.
For information about Oracle's commitment to accessibility, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program website at http://www.oracle.com/pls/topic/lookup?ctx=acc&id=docacc.
Access to Oracle Support
Oracle customers that have purchased support have access to electronic support through My Oracle Support. For information, visit http://www.oracle.com/pls/topic/lookup?ctx=acc&id=info or visit http://www.oracle.com/pls/topic/lookup?ctx=acc&id=trs if you are hearing impaired.
Oracle Retail Science Cloud Services Release Notes, Release 18.0.002
F20606-02
Copyright © 2020 Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
This software and related documentation are provided under a license agreement containing restrictions on use and disclosure and are protected by intellectual property laws. Except as expressly permitted in your license agreement or allowed by law, you may not use, copy, reproduce, translate, broadcast, modify, license, transmit, distribute, exhibit, perform, publish, or display any part, in any form, or by any means. Reverse engineering, disassembly, or decompilation of this software, unless required by law for interoperability, is prohibited.
The information contained herein is subject to change without notice and is not warranted to be error-free. If you find any errors, please report them to us in writing.
If this is software or related documentation that is delivered to the U.S. Government or anyone licensing it on behalf of the U.S. Government, then the following notice is applicable:
U.S. GOVERNMENT END USERS: Oracle programs, including any operating system, integrated software, any programs installed on the hardware, and/or documentation, delivered to U.S. Government end users are "commercial computer software" pursuant to the applicable Federal Acquisition Regulation and agency-specific supplemental regulations. As such, use, duplication, disclosure, modification, and adaptation of the programs, including any operating system, integrated software, any programs installed on the hardware, and/or documentation, shall be subject to license terms and license restrictions applicable to the programs. No other rights are granted to the U.S. Government.
This software or hardware is developed for general use in a variety of information management applications. It is not developed or intended for use in any inherently dangerous applications, including applications that may create a risk of personal injury. If you use this software or hardware in dangerous applications, then you shall be responsible to take all appropriate fail-safe, backup, redundancy, and other measures to ensure its safe use. Oracle Corporation and its affiliates disclaim any liability for any damages caused by use of this software or hardware in dangerous applications.
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Intel and Intel Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. AMD, Opteron, the AMD logo, and the AMD Opteron logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group.
This software or hardware and documentation may provide access to or information about content, products, and services from third parties. Oracle Corporation and its affiliates are not responsible for and expressly disclaim all warranties of any kind with respect to third-party content, products, and services unless otherwise set forth in an applicable agreement between you and Oracle. Oracle Corporation and its affiliates will not be responsible for any loss, costs, or damages incurred due to your access to or use of third-party content, products, or services, except as set forth in an applicable agreement between you and Oracle.
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.
