1 Introduction

Oracle Retail Supply Chain Collaboration Cloud Service enables retailers to collaborate directly with their suppliers for preselection and ongoing evaluation of sites, production facilities, and items, and to accomplish streamlined merchandising operations, leveraging data provided by partners through a single portal with a common navigation. Oracle Retail Supply Chain Collaboration Cloud Service is composed of the following modules:

Supplier Evaluation

Supports the on-boarding, evaluation, and management of Merchandising suppliers, enabling assessment and governance of ethical, environmental, safety, and quality performance, automatically scoring and grading suppliers, and items against multiple business disciplines for actionable insight.

Functions incorporate supplier self-certification survey, item assessment, audit and action management, process management, and incident alert notifications.

Retail Supply Chain Hub

Improves collaboration between retailers and suppliers with a platform to share information integrated in the Oracle Retail suite, increasing order and fulfillment efficiency and accuracy and reducing supply chain disruption and risk through direct collaboration on merchandising operations.

Functions include supplier self-configuration and enabling collaboration on item, cost and price management, deals, inventory and sales, payments, purchase orders, customer orders, and appointments.

For more details, see the Oracle Retail Supply Chain Collaboration Cloud Service Integration User Guide and the Oracle Retail Supply Chain Hub User Guide.

Key Features

Key features of the Supplier Evaluation module include:

  • Supplier - enables the identification, selection, and approval of suppliers.
  • Product - supports the development and assessment of products.
  • Process - supports the development of process briefs, plans, and workflow management.
  • Library - enables the publication, receipt, and acceptance of policies, guidelines, and key working documents.
  • Reports - provides a reporting tool for reporting across the system, using standard templates and custom reports.

Key features of the Retail Supply Chain Hub (SCH) module include:

  • Appointments - allows suppliers to view the available appointments in warehouses. Suppliers can also book or cancel their appointments for Purchase Order (PO) shipments or Return to Vendor (RTV).
  • Cost Changes Management - allows suppliers to propose cost changes for items. Retailers can review, request amendments, and ultimately approve the change request, which sends it to the Merchandising Foundation Cloud Service (MFCS) for execution.
  • Customer Orders Management - allows suppliers to have visibility to drop ship customer orders, where the supplier ships directly to the customer. It also provides an option for creating a single purchase order/invoice across multiple customer orders to simplify processing for suppliers. Allows suppliers to suggest substitutes and create invoices for the order.
  • Deals Management - provides the ability to collaborate with suppliers on the creation of vendor deals. This includes the ability to review deals created by suppliers, suggest new deals to a supplier, as well as share deal performance.
  • Financial Control - provides suppliers visibility to payments made and documents submitted for payment.
  • Inventory and Sales - provides suppliers with information on recent sales, and current inventory positions for items. This is especially important for a vendor managed inventory to provide the supplier with information needed for re-ordering.
  • Items Management - allows suppliers to upload their item catalog and collaborate with users as they decide which items to carry in their assortment. Once attributes are completed and the item is approved in SCH, it is sent to MFCS. Also allows collaboration with suppliers throughout an item’s lifecycle, such as when it is being discontinued.
  • Procure To Pay - contains three modules: purchase orders, shipments, and invoices. Supports collaborating with suppliers in these areas by allowing suppliers to upload / create orders, acknowledge or suggest changes, download the order, upload / create Advance Shipment Notices (ASNs), and upload / create documents.
  • Quality Control - provides a framework for configuring rules to determine which suppliers and products require quality control review on receipt. It also provides the framework to record the results of the review and the ability to take action, such as creating an RTV, inventory adjustment, and so on. Integration to MFCS allows for the execution of these actions.
  • Retail Price - allows suppliers to propose price changes or simple promotions. Retailers can review the proposals and on approval, they will be sent to the Oracle Retail Pricing Cloud Service for execution.
  • Supplier Penalties - allows Retailers to automatically generate penalties to Suppliers based on configurable rules based on late/early shipments, QC failure, and PO Cancellation as well as manually entered Penalties and Custom Designed Rules for additional penalties.

Functional Overview

Register

The workspace environment enables retailers to invite their suppliers to register their corporate and facility details, and enroll users and contacts across all locations.

The synchronization of user accounts provides a single point of account creation, enablement, and site allocation. Oracle Identity Access Management (IAM) is utilized for single sign-on. Links provide direct access between the corresponding user accounts. Supplier administrators are able to manage the accounts of their users.

Certifications

Users are given the ability to register and upload certified evidence, validation, and conformance showing that the facilities meet the industry standards, specific declaration, and/or the criteria set by the certification body.

Assessments

The solution enables users to create or utilize pre-defined assessments to measure a supplier and their supply chain against different standards. Each assessment can be configured and scored according to the standard, policy, or retailer-defined needs. Each assessment is scored independently, enabling standard evaluation, and contributing to an overall performance score.

Audits

Audits provide the ability to define, schedule, and conduct on-site facility audits and visits, collaborate on non-conformances, monitor and workflow corrective actions, and determine an overall conformance score. Options include uploading third-party industry audit reports, capturing and monitoring non-conformance, and utilizing full checklist capabilities.

Governance

Policies, standards, training material, processes, guidelines, and regulations can be published into a centralized environment defined for both internal users and external suppliers. Each document can be tracked for readership and acceptance, ensuring due diligence and governance.

Change

The adoption of new policies, standards, and regulations can be communicated and tracked. The solution includes the capability to publish questionnaires or alerts to ensure and measure adoption and understanding. The workspace includes news and urgent action notifications to visibly inform all applicable users of changes, expectations, and activities.

Process

Critical stage-gate processes can be designed and created to ensure that all appropriate steps, activities, and measurements have been completed during registration, re-evaluation, new policy, and ongoing performance.

Performance

Overall performance dashboards enable monitoring each assessment, audit, certification, and adoption against each supplier, facility, and supply chain. Scores can then be aggregated by a supplier, category, standard, and policy.

Post Release Tasks

Refer to the Retail Supply Chain Collaboration Cloud Service user guides for information on post release setup and configuration tasks, including the following key documents:

  • Oracle Retail Identity Management for OCI IAM Startup Guide
  • Oracle Retail Supply Chain Collaboration Cloud Service Security Guide
  • Oracle Retail Supply Chain Collaboration Cloud Service Service Administrator Action List
  • Oracle Retail Supply Chain Collaboration Cloud Service Administration Guide
  • Oracle Retail Supply Chain Collaboration Cloud Service Implementation Guide
  • Oracle Retail Supply Chain Collaboration Cloud Service Integration User Guide
  • Oracle Retail Supply Chain Hub User Guide
  • Oracle Retail Home Application Usage Guide

Primary tasks will include the configuration and enablement of:

  • User accounts and their permissions.
  • System parameter settings and glossary contents.
  • Integration with MFCS.
  • External Systems and their permissions for access to APIs.
  • Any overrides to the default system text for custom terminology or language translations.