JD Sports Selects Oracle(R) Retail Applications to Help Drive ...

PR Newswire (press release) - New York,NY,USA
UK Sports Fashion & Casual Wear Retailer to Optimize Inventory Management
and Enhance Visibility into Merchandise Performance REDWOOD SHORES, Calif.,

UK Sports Fashion & Casual Wear Retailer to Optimize Inventory Management
and Enhance Visibility into Merchandise Performance

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., April 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- JD Sports, a
leading specialty retailer of sports fashion and casual wear, has selected
Oracle(R) Retail applications to help drive sales and enhance profitability
through better management of merchandising and planning processes across
its 360 stores in the UK and Ireland, Oracle announced today.
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20020718/ORCLLOGO )
The Oracle Retail project is part of JD Sports' larger strategy to
create a standard set of best practice planning processes that will support
the development and growth of the business. Previously, the retailer was
using systems that lacked the scalability and efficiency to manage growing
inventory levels and were unable to provide timely insight into how well
merchandise was performing. This was having a negative impact on overall
profitability and making it difficult for the retailer to maximize gross
margin dollars.
"We saw a real opportunity to become highly agile in our responses to
customer demands through improved planning and forecasting," said Brian
Small, Group Finance Director of the John David Group. "It was important to
improve visibility across all channels, so we wanted the ability to plan
seasonal stock targets at category level to manage both top-down and
bottom-up planning. We wanted to improve sales and profit density in stores
through more accurate management of markdowns and reduced stock levels. We
quickly identified Oracle Retail as a strategic, scalable planning system
which best met our requirements for a quick deployment, delivering rapid
value and allowing us to adopt a best practice model for planning that will
help us to deliver a consistent high-quality shopping experience to our
customers."
JD Sports plans to use a phased approach for rolling out the Oracle
Retail applications to its business. In the first phase, the retailer will
develop a standard set of best practice planning and forecasting processes
based around the Oracle Retail Merchandise Financial Planning application
aimed at improving management visibility into information about sales
performance. The retailer expects to complete first phase implementation
this year and as a result will be able to generate more accurate forecasts
of consumer demand in order to make strategic decisions around what to buy.
The second phase of the project, scheduled for early 2008, will deliver
the implementation of Oracle Retail Category Management to enable JD Sports
to implement best practice around range and assortment planning. More
effective assortment planning should contribute to a reduction in stock
levels and markdowns, further maximizing profits.
Small continued, "We are extremely focused on implementing best
practices wherever possible. Oracle Retail's credentials with the likes of
Tesco and the John Lewis Partnership clearly demonstrate how JD Sports can
benefit from their experience. In addition, we have been working with a
training partner to help ensure that our staff is maximizing the full value
of our investment from the outset."
"We are committed to supporting JD Sports in its aim to drive business
forward and deliver a consistent, high-level shopping experience to its
customers," said Tarik Taman, Vice President of EMEA, Oracle Retail.
"Retailers are continuing to become more aware of the impact that IT
systems can have on the bottom line and how implementing strategic
processes can drive corporate growth and build competitive advantage."
About Oracle Retail
Oracle is the number one provider of innovative and comprehensive
industry software solutions for retailers -- enabling organizations to
serve their customers better by applying insight into daily business
decisions for more profitable results. With software that provides supply
chain, operations, merchandising, store systems, optimization and
information technology solutions, Oracle partners with the world's leading
retail companies, including 17 of the top 20 retailers worldwide, to
transform the economics of their businesses.
About Oracle
Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) is the world's largest enterprise software
company. For more information about Oracle, visit our Web site at
http://www.oracle.com .
Trademarks
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.