Retail Insights for Applications

Overview

While Retail Insights is a standalone Oracle Retail product, parts of the application are also available to all customers having any Retail Analytics and Planning (RAP) solution. The following applications qualify as a RAP solution in this context:

Merchandise Financial Planning (MFP)
Assortment Planning (AP) and Space Optimization (ASO)
Inventory Planning Optimization (IPO)
Lifecycle Pricing Optimization (LPO)

Subscribing to one or more of these applications will give you the option to use the following components of RI:

Access to a subset of metrics/attributes within the RI metadata (a.k.a. RPD), which will be controlled via OCI IAM groups
Access to any pre-built Data Visualization workbooks which come with RI or any of the other RAP solutions
The ability to create your own workbooks in DV using data stored in RI
The ability to link your DV workbooks to Retail Home dashboards

If you get a full subscription to Retail Insights, then you would additionally have access to many more features:

Reporting on customer and consumer data, including loyalty transactions, customer segments and attributes, and consumer profiles
As-was historical reporting to show your transactional data against prior versions of your merchandise or location hierarchies before reclassifications were applied
Flexible fact interfaces for loading external data that conforms to Retail Insights dimensions
Merchandising data not directly related to other RAP applications, such as deals, stock ledger, stock counts, supplier compliance, and many other areas
Analytics Classic user interface, which allows for creation of more traditional dashboards and formatted reports, scheduling of agents for delivery to email, and formatted Retail Home tile measures

Getting Started

Before you can begin using Retail Insights (RI) to build reports on your business data, there are certain prerequisites that must be completed. The table below summarizes the necessary steps to enable RI within your Retail Analytics and Planning (RAP) environment.

Prerequisite	Description
Aggregated Historical Data	RI uses pre-summarized data at various levels of aggregation such as department-store-week. These tables are typically left empty for a non-RI customer, so you will be expected to populate them with your historical data prior to using any RI reporting. If you have already loaded data into a RAP solution, then refer to the Aggregation Utility in the AIF Operations Guide for details on how to populate these additional data warehouse tables.
Nightly Batch Programs	There are many jobs within the AIF DATA batch schedule in POM that are specifically for RI usage. These jobs may currently be disabled in your environment and you will be expected to enable them before you can use any RI reporting functionality. It will be important to test these programs in your non-production environments first so you can understand their impact on your nightly batch timings and their behavior on your data.
User Setup	RI requires specific user groups be assigned from OCI IAM, as these groups determine what data and functionality the users will have access to. Unauthenticated users will not be able to run reports created with RI data or build reports of their own.
Planning Exports	If you are a planning customer, then you will want to integrate your approved plans or forecast from the planning solutions to RI, this may be disabled in your environment and needs configuration.
Metric Labels	RI supports custom labels for measures and attributes, which are configured using Retail Home. Most retailers want their users to see specific labels in reports.

Aggregated Historical Data

One of the key benefits of Retail Insights is the data warehouse tables which summarize your data at various levels such as department, store, and fiscal week. These tables allow reports which would normally need to consume huge amounts of data to instead return very quickly as the database already has the values you need pre-calculated. For most Retail Analytics and Planning (RAP) customers, these tables will initially be empty as they are not used by applications other than RI. To populate the RI aggregate tables with your existing data, an aggregation utility program has been provided that can take your base transactional data such as sales or inventory and calculate the higher level aggregations.

It is best to run these processes in a non-production environment first as they can take multiple days to execute and you will want to verify that the resulting tables have correctly summarized your data before performing the same steps in your production environment. If you have other ongoing projects for Oracle Retail applications, you may ask your implementation partner to perform these activities for you. For more details on the aggregation utility, refer to the AIF Operations Guide.

Nightly Batch Programs

Retail Insights requires many nightly batch programs to load all of the data tables used in reporting. All of the jobs relating to RI are part of the AIF DATA batch schedule in the Process Orchestration and Monitoring (POM) application. Some of these programs are used across all Retail Analytics and Planning (RAP) applications to load and maintain core foundation data elements, while others are used only for RI reporting. For example, the AIF DATA program for weekly inventory (W_RTL_INV_IT_LC_WK_A_JOB) will likely already be enabled in your RAP environment, but the RI reporting table for subclass inventory (W_RTL_INV_SC_LC_WK_A_JOB) may be disabled. Before you can use RI for reporting, all such jobs in the AIF DATA schedule must be turned on for nightly processing.

Identifying which jobs you must enable in the nightly schedule will depend on the data you are providing as part of your nightly or weekly file uploads, or integrating from the Merchandising Foundation Cloud Services (MFCS). The jobs for RI are named based on the table they operate on, which are in turn named based on the data they contain. If you are providing sales transactions, then you would already be populating the table W_RTL_SLS_TRX_IT_LC_DY_F. For RI reporting, you will want to enable all other jobs in the AIF DATA schedule which contain the same abbreviation “RTL_SLS”. For inventory positions, you will enable jobs having “RTL_INV”, while for inventory receipts you will enable jobs having “RTL_INVRC”, and so on. Just like with the aggregation programs in the previous section, you will want to enable these jobs in your non-production environments first and test their behavior and performance on your dataset before enabling them in your production system.

User Setup

Accessing Retail Insights requires granting users multiple groups within Oracle Identity and Access Management (IAM). Specific to RI usage for the other applications in RAP, there are pre-defined user groups for each solution. These user groups will only have access to the data in RI that is relevant to their role, such as merchandise financial planning users having access to sales, inventory and receipts which are key inputs to the planning process. The table below summarizes the user groups for RI which are intended for use with the other RAP applications.

Group	Description
<tenant_ID>-MFPInsights_JOB	Grants access to data relevant to Merchandise Financial Planning users
<tenant_ID>-APInsights_JOB	Grants access to data relevant to Assortment Planning users
<tenant_ID>-LPOInsights_JOB	Grants access to data relevant to Lifecycle Pricing Optimization users
<tenant_ID>-IPOInsights_JOB	Grants access to data relevant to Inventory Planning Optimization users

As with all RI groups, these groups are prefixed with the tenant ID of the environment where they will be used (e.g. your stage environment might have a tenant ID of 234rnf348fndfgti and so all groups for that RI environment will start with that sequence of characters). In addition to these groups, your users will also need to be granted access to the Analytics application using a group like DVContentAuthor. For more details on user setup, refer to the Oracle Retail OCI IAM Startup Guide.

Planning Exports

For MFP, AP, and IPO-DF customers, your plan data is not automatically available within Retail Insights. The plan results may need to be configured for integration from the planning system to the data warehouse. This involves configurations both in the planning batch and the AIF DATA batch, database settings in RI to specify the plans to be used, and a one-time update to Oracle Analytics after the setup is done. Some of this work may already have been done in the data warehouse if you are using in-season forecasts in MFP or AP. Refer to the RI Implementation Guide chapter on Planning and Flex Fact Configurations as well as the implementation guides for all of your planning solutions for more details.

Metric Labels

Retail Insights measures can be assigned custom labels from Retail Home to display any value you would like to see in reports. Retailers usually want to see their own names for common values like Net Sales Units and Ending On-Hand Inventory, while also marking empty measures with a prefix or “do not use” label. Refer to the RAP Administration Guide chapter on Managing Label Customization for more details.

Once you have modified any labels, there are two steps to applying them:

The batch job W_LOCALIZED_STRING_G_JOB must be enabled in your nightly AIF DATA batch and must run for one night to pull across your changes from Retail Home to RI. You may verify your updated labels in the W_LOCALIZED_STRING_G table in APEX after batch runs.
You will need to raise an SR with Oracle Support requesting that the Oracle Analytics server be restarted to apply your Retail Insights label customizations. Currently label changes are only applied during install, upgrades, or server restarts.

Reporting for Merchandise Financial Planning

A user of Merchandise Financial Planning (MFP) that wants to report on their data in RI will have access to two broad categories of data: historical data that is used as input to the planning process, and financial plans that are output from MFP at the end of the planning process. Historical data will include things such as sales, inventory, and receipts. The plan results will include the merchandise plans, financial targets, and location plans (if used). You may combine data from both categories to compare them side by side, such as a report that shows this year’s sales versus last year and plan.

MFP users will have access to the following list of dimensions in RI:

Folder Name	Purpose
Business Calendar	Report using your primary financial calendar, such as the fiscal week.
Gregorian Calendar	Report using Gregorian calendar attributes such as the month.
Item As-Is	Report on your items and merchandise hierarchy, such as department.
Organization As Is	Report on your locations and organization hierarchy, such as region.
From Organization As Is	Report on the source locations linked with transfer activity, instead of the receiving location.
Retail Transaction Code	Report on certain transactions like adjustments and receipts based on their transaction code.
Retail Type	Report on sales by type, such as regular versus promotion.
Time of Day	Report on sales transactions by the time of day, if times are provided in the data.
Purchase Order	Report on purchase orders using attributes like Not Before Date and OTB EOW Date.

Within these folders, some attributes may not have any data as it will depend on what you are providing into the system. For example, the item dimension includes user-defined attributes (UDAs) that most MFP customers do not use. Some of these folders may not be usable at all for your data, such as the Time of Day dimension when you are only loading weekly sales totals. When you begin using RI reporting, it will be important to determine what data you have available in the data warehouse and supplement that as needed if you require more data to build your reports.

MFP users will also have access to the following list of facts in RI:

Folder Name	Purpose
Intercompany Margin	Report on the margin generated by intercompany transactions (not used in GA solution).
Inventory Adjustment	Report on inventory adjustment transactions such as damaged or wasted goods.
Inventory Position	Report on your inventory positions such as on-hand and in-transit stock units.
Inventory Receipts	Report on inventory receipt transactions such as PO receipts and transfer receipts.
Inventory Reclass	Report on the financial effects of merchandise reclassifications (not used in GA solution).
Inventory Transfer	Report on inventory transfers moving stock between owned locations.
Markdown	Report on the financial effects of price changes such as markdowns.
Purchase On Order	Report on open purchase orders placed with suppliers.
Retailer To Franchise	Report on franchise related activity like franchise sales or markdowns.
Return To Vendor	Report on inventory returned to the vendor (RTVs).
Sales	Report on your sales and return transactions.
Sales Pack	Report on sales of pack items, spread down to be shown on the component items in the pack.
Plan1	Report on the primary merchandise plan from MFP.
Plan2	Report on the merchandise targets from MFP.
Plan3	Report on the location plan from MFP.
Plan4	Report on the location targets from MFP.

Just like with the dimensions, some of these areas may not have any data for you to report on. You might not use RTVs as part of your financial plan, or you may not have any franchise stores. Some sales measures such as manual markup counts or item scan counts will not have data if you only provided what is required for MFP. You will need to do a thorough review of your input data and determine the measures you can use in reporting. For the Plan1 through Plan4 facts, these are the MFP plan outputs which require additional integration batch jobs to be running before they will be available to report on.

Reporting for Assortment Planning

A user of Assortment Planning (AP) that wants to report on their data in RI will have access to two broad categories of data: historical data that is used as input to the planning process, and the item plan that is output from AP at the end of the planning process. Historical data will include things such as sales, inventory, and receipts. The plan results will include the sku-store-week item plan measures. You may combine data from both categories to compare them side by side, such as a report that shows this year’s sales versus last year and plan.

AP users will have access to the following list of dimensions in RI:

Folder Name	Purpose
Business Calendar	Report using your primary financial calendar, such as the fiscal week.
Gregorian Calendar	Report using Gregorian calendar attributes such as the month.
Item As-Is	Report on your items and merchandise hierarchy, such as department.
Organization As Is	Report on your locations and organization hierarchy, such as region.
Clusters As Is	Report on your data by store cluster, if using clusters from AIF.
Retail Transaction Code	Report on certain transactions like adjustments and receipts based on their transaction code.
Retail Type	Report on sales by type, such as regular versus promotion.
Time of Day	Report on sales transactions by the time of day, if times are provided in the data.
Purchase Order	Report on purchase orders using attributes like Not Before Date and OTB EOW Date.

Within these folders, some attributes may not have any data as it will depend on what you are providing into the system. For example, the item dimension includes item supplier attributes that most AP customers do not use. Some of these folders may not be usable at all for your data, such as the Time of Day dimension when you are only loading weekly sales totals. When you begin using RI reporting, it will be important to determine what data you have available in the data warehouse and supplement that as needed if you require more data to build your reports.

AP users will also have access to the following list of facts in RI:

Folder Name	Purpose
Intercompany Margin	Report on the margin generated by intercompany transactions (not used in GA solution).
Inventory Adjustment	Report on inventory adjustment transactions such as damaged or wasted goods.
Inventory Position	Report on your inventory positions such as on-hand and in-transit stock units.
Inventory Receipts	Report on inventory receipt transactions such as PO receipts and transfer receipts.
Inventory Transfer	Report on inventory transfers moving stock between owned locations.
Purchase On Order	Report on open purchase orders placed with suppliers.
Sales	Report on your sales and return transactions.
Sales Pack	Report on sales of pack items, spread down to be shown on the component items in the pack.
Plan5	Report on the item plan from AP.

Just like with the dimensions, some of these areas may not have any data for you to report on. You might not use transfers as part of your item plan, or you may not have any pack sales. Some sales measures such as manual markup counts or item scan counts will not have data if you only provided what is required for AP. You will need to do a thorough review of your input data and determine the measures you can use in reporting. For the Plan5 fact, this is the AP plan output which requires additional integration batch jobs to be running before it will be available to report on.

In addition to the data available in the data warehouse, you may also report on certain outputs from AI Foundation. The AIF data used within AP that will also be available in RI is the size profile ratios and related measures. The size profile data will be available in the following folders:

Folder Name	Purpose
Size Profile Results	Report on the size profile percents generated by AI Foundation.
Size Profile Attr Results	Report on size profile results pre-aggregated by attribute.
Size Profile Data Errors	Report on data errors found in the size profile runs.

The size profile results are available at the lowest levels of sku-store, however the attribute based results are only usable by location as they are pre-summarized on specific attribute values (which are include as an attribute in the folder). The data errors folder is a standalone reporting area to expose validation errors around multiple diff groups within a style.

Reporting for Lifecycle Pricing Optimization

A user of Lifecycle Pricing Optimization (LPO) that wants to report on their data in RI will have access to two broad categories of data: historical data that is used as input to the optimization process, and the price recommendations and metrics that arwe output from LPO at the end of the optimization process. Historical data will include things such as sales, inventory, and receipts. The optimization results include the style-color/price zone/week (or other level) price recommendations, inventory and price input measures that feed into those results, and any validation errors that occurred as part of the optimization runs. At this time, the two datasets are largely separate as they do not share a common set of dimensions (historical data is at sku/store/date while the LPO results are only at style-color/price zone/week). The data may exist in the same DV workbook if needed, but as separate tables and graphs, they cannot be viewed side by side in the same table.

Historical Data Usage

LPO users will have access to the following list of dimensions in RI which may be used specifically with the historical fact data like sales and inventory:

Folder Name	Purpose
Business Calendar	Report using your primary financial calendar, such as the fiscal week.
Gregorian Calendar	Report using Gregorian calendar attributes such as the month.
Item As-Is	Report on your items and merchandise hierarchy, such as department.
Organization As Is	Report on your locations and organization hierarchy, such as region.
Clusters As Is	Report on your historical data aggregated up to the price zone or store cluster level.
Clearances	Report on historical and upcoming clearance markdowns, which will be displayed in the LPO user interface after optimization.
Promotion	Report on historical and ongoing promotions linked with sales transaction activity.
Retail Transaction Code	Report on certain transactions like adjustments and receipts based on their transaction code.
Retail Type	Report on sales by type, such as regular versus promotion.
Time of Day	Report on sales transactions by the time of day, if times are provided in the data.

Within these folders, some attributes may not have any data as it will depend on what you are providing into the system. For example, the item dimension includes user-defined attributes (UDAs) that you may or may not provide. Some of these folders may not be usable at all for your data, such as the Time of Day dimension if you are only loading weekly sales totals. When you begin using RI reporting, it will be important to determine what data you have available in the data warehouse and supplement that as needed if you require more data to build your reports.

LPO users will also have access to the following list of historical facts in RI:

Folder Name	Purpose
Inventory Position	Report on your inventory positions such as on-hand and in-transit stock units.
Inventory Receipts	Report on inventory receipt transactions such as PO receipts and transfer receipts.
Pricing	Report on historical and current item/location prices.
Sales	Report on your sales and return transactions.
Sales Pack	Report on sales of pack items, spread down to be shown on the component items in the pack.
Sales Promotion	Report on sales with one or more promotions and offers applied to the transactions, at the individual promo/offer level of detail. Use in combination with the Promotion dimension.

Just like with the dimensions, some of these areas may not have any data for you to report on. You might not be able to use Sales Promotion measures if you don’t provide sales transactions with promotion identifiers on the transaction lines. Some sales measures such as manual markup counts or item scan counts will not have data if you only provided what is required for LPO. You will need to do a thorough review of your input data and determine the measures you can use in reporting.

LPO Results Data Usage

LPO users will have access to the following list of dimensions in RI specifically for the purpose of reporting on LPO recommendations and related measures. Only these dimensions can be used with LPO data, other dimensions will not return results.

Folder Name	Purpose
Business Calendar	Report using your primary financial calendar, such as the fiscal week. LPO results will only exist at Fiscal Week or above levels. Most LPO data will always be for the current business week only or for the weeks following that (depending on the timeframe of your recommendations).
Clusters As Is	Report on your LPO recommendations at the price zone level.
Price Optimization Product	Report on your LPO recommendations using the LPO product hierarchy, which starts from the recommendation level (style/color or style for example) and can go up to higher levels like department and division.
Regular Price Optimization Product	Report on your LPO regular price recommendations using the LPO reg price product hierarchy, which starts from the recommendation level (sku or style for example) and can go up to higher levels like department and division. The regular and markdown hierarchies are different due to differing base intersections for the results.
Price Optimization Run	Report on your LPO recommendations using the LPO run details such as the Run Name and ID, which can be useful when focusing on a specific run in the LPO user interface that you need to review for issues.

LPO users will also have access to the following list of recommendation results and measures in RI. These must be used only with the previously listed dimensions or as standalone measures (where noted).

Folder Name	Purpose
Price Optimization Actuals	Report on various inputs to the LPO optimization process such as calculated sales measures at the same level as your recommendations (e.g. style-color/price zone/week).
Price Optimization Inventory	Report on stock on-hand data used by the LPO optimization process such as calculated inventory measures at the same level as your recommendations (e.g. style-color/price zone/week).
Price Optimization Price Cost	Report on price and cost data used by the LPO optimization process such as regular and markdown prices at the same level as your recommendations (e.g. style-color/price zone/week).
Price Optimization Recommendations	Report on the price recommendations and associated output measures from the LPO optimization process at your chosen recommendation level (e.g. style-color/price zone/week).
Price Optimization Run Metrics	Report on any other measures associated with individual LPO optimization runs, such as your custom flex attributes data and secondary derived metrics.
Price Optimization Run Alerts	Standalone reporting area for displaying any run alerts and validation errors that occurred during LPO processing.
Price Optimization Run Exports	Standalone reporting area for displaying any export failures or warnings when sending LPO data to Pricing Cloud Service (PCS).
Regular Price Optimization Recommendations	Report on the price recommendations and associated output measures from the LPO regular price optimization process at your chosen recommendation level (e.g. sku/price zone/week).
Regular Price Optimization Run Metrics	Report on any other measures associated with individual LPO regular price optimization runs, such as your custom flex attributes data and secondary derived metrics.
Regular Price Optimization Inventory	Report on stock on-hand data used by the LPO regular price optimization process such as calculated inventory measures at the same level as your recommendations (e.g. sku/price zone/week).
Regular Price Optimization Price Cost	Report on price and cost data used by the LPO regular price optimization process such as current regular prices at the same level as your recommendations (e.g. sku/price zone/week).

Reporting for Inventory Planning Optimization

A user of Inventory Planning Optimization (IPO) that wants to report on their data in RI will have access to historical data that is used as input to the planning and optimization processes plus the sku/store/week forecasts that are output from AI Foundation and Demand Forecasting. Historical data will include things such as sales, inventory, and receipts. The forecasts will include the sku/store/week base demand generated by AI Foundation as well as the final approved sku/store/week forecast which is tagged for export to RI. You may combine data from both categories to compare them side by side, such as a report that shows this year’s sales versus last year and forecast.

IPO users will have access to the following list of dimensions in RI:

Folder Name	Purpose
Business Calendar	Report using your primary financial calendar, such as the fiscal week.
Gregorian Calendar	Report using Gregorian calendar attributes such as the month.
Item As-Is	Report on your items and merchandise hierarchy, such as department.
Organization As Is	Report on your locations and organization hierarchy, such as region.
Product Org Attributes	Report on the item/location replenishment attributes which are being fed into the system from an external source such as Merchandise Foundation Cloud Services (MFCS), such as the replenishment method and last review date.
Retail Transaction Code	Report on certain transactions like adjustments and receipts based on their transaction code.
Retail Type	Report on sales by type, such as regular versus promotion.
Time of Day	Report on sales transactions by the time of day, if times are provided in the data.
Season Phase Planning	Report on historical data aggregated to a season/phase level. IPO Inventory Optimization allows the use of seasons as a way to define time periods for the optimization and you may also use them to report on historical data like sales and inventory.
Supplier	Report on your suppliers and their attributes, such as the supplier lead time and supplier item codes, along with transaction data such as sales and inventory.
Allocation	Report on allocations generated by an upstream system such as Merchandise Foundation Cloud Services (MFCS). To be used only with the Allocation Detail fact.
Promotion	Report on historical and ongoing promotions linked with sales transaction activity. To be used only with the Sales Promotion fact.
Purchase Order	Report on purchase order details using attributes like Not Before Date and OTB EOW Date. To be used only with the Purchase On Order fact.
Shipment	Report on shipments generated by an upstream system such as Merchandise Foundation Cloud Services (MFCS). To be used only with the Shipment Detail fact.
Transfer Status	Report on transfers generated by an upstream system such as Merchandise Foundation Cloud Services (MFCS). To be used only with the Transfer Status Detail fact.

Within these folders, some attributes may not have any data as it will depend on what you are providing into the system. For example, the item dimension includes user-defined attributes (UDAs) that IPO customers may or may not use. Some of these folders may not be usable at all for your data, such as the Time of Day dimension if you are only loading daily sales totals. When you begin using RI reporting, it will be important to determine what data you have available in the data warehouse and supplement that as needed if you require more data to build your reports.

IPO users will also have access to the following list of facts in RI:

Folder Name	Purpose
Inventory Position	Report on your inventory positions such as on-hand and in-transit stock units.
Inventory Receipts	Report on inventory receipt transactions such as PO receipts and transfer receipts.
Inventory Unavailable	Report on the unsellable inventory on-hand data for stock marked unavailable at a location.
Allocation Detail	Report on allocation line item details for allocations generated by an upstream system such as Merchandise Foundation Cloud Services (MFCS).
Shipment Detail	Report on shipment line item details for shipments generated by an upstream system such as Merchandise Foundation Cloud Services (MFCS).
Purchase On Order	Report on purchase order line item details for POs generated by an upstream system such as Merchandise Foundation Cloud Services (MFCS).
Transfer Status Detail	Report on transfer line item details for transfers generated by an upstream system such as Merchandise Foundation Cloud Services (MFCS).
Pricing	Report on historical and current item/location prices.
Sales	Report on your sales and return transactions.
Sales Pack	Report on sales of pack items, spread down to be shown on the component items in the pack.
Sales Promotion	Report on sales with one or more promotions and offers applied to the transactions, at the individual promo/offer level of detail. Use in combination with the Promotion dimension.
Plan Forecast 1	Report on the base demand forecast generated by AI Foundation and sent to Demand Forecasting (DF).
Plan Forecast 2	Report on the final approved forecast tagged in AI Foundation as being used in the export to RI.

Just like with the dimensions, some of these areas may not have any data for you to report on. You might not use allocations as part of your optimizations, or you may not have any promotional sales. Some sales measures such as manual markup counts or item scan counts will not have data if you only provided what is required for IPO. You will need to do a thorough review of your input data and determine the measures you can use in reporting. For the Plan Forecast facts, these are AIF and DF outputs which require additional integration batch jobs to be running before they will be available to report on.