1 Oracle Retail Merchandising Reports

There are three different types of reporting used in Oracle Retail Merchandising, each of which are used for different purposes for a retailer - Dashboards, Contextual Reports, and Business Intelligence (BI) Publisher Reports.

Dashboards are role-based and focus on key areas of a retailer's business most useful and relevant for a user in that role. These reports read real-time data from the Merchandising database to flag action items and work flows that may need a user's attention and provide quick actions for the user to resolve issues. This includes issues such as approving one or more purchase orders, or viewing details for an in-context transaction to review details and take additional actions.

The reports displayed in the dashboards are customizable. System administrators can remove a report from a dashboard or add a new report depending on business requirements. See the Merchandising Customizations and Extensions Guide for more about how to customize dashboards.

Contextual BI reports provide additional information to the user, while in an application screen, to assist in decision making. These reports are displayed in the contextual pane of selected Merchandising screens based on specific contextual parameters passed from the screen. System administrators can remove reports from the contextual pane or add a new report by utilizing these contextual parameters. See the Merchandising Customizations and Extensions Guide to know more about how to customize contextual reports.

BI Publisher reports are operational reports used for specific functional purposes, as required. Often, for these types of reports, the information in the report needs to be shared with other parties, such as the report of purchase order details that can be sent to a supplier when placing an order. These reports are available using Oracle BI Publisher and accessed from the Merchandising main task bar under Reports, based on a user's privileges.