UK fashion retailer River Island has deployed a financial planning tool in a move that will align planning practices across the group’s business models.
The Retail Merchandise Financial Planning solution from Oracle will also help it better evaluate profitability, reduce markdowns and support its omnichannel growth and digital transformation.
The retailer operates more than 320 stores across the UK and Ireland and internationally throughout Asia, the Middle East and Europe. With a global footprint and multiple web, franchise and wholesale operations River Island says it required new tools to make more accurate and impactful inventory decisions.
Its continued growth in the UK and internationally also needed a single view of order and inventory to scale business.
“We knew that omnichannel was the future and had to make a strategic move,” says Doug Gardner, chief information officer, River Island. “We partnered with Oracle to get there. A single view of inventory is the key to fulfilling demand and operating more effectively. Through this transformation, we needed to change the way our business worked. People had to come together and properly go through the design of the implementation.”
The company says it has established more-consistent and accurate planning processes to better understand how merchandise was performing across channels.
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By GlobalData“Sometimes you have to have the courage to level set in the middle of an implementation. You want to get it right because you need a foundation to operate with going forward,” adds Gardner. “By implementing Oracle Retail Merchandise Financial Planning correctly, we are now about to evaluate profitability, reduce markdowns and follow a single version of the truth for the whole business.”
