Oracle Advances Safer, More Transparent Retail Supply Chain

Smarter software gives consumers peace of mind on the goods they buy and retailers the agility to resolve product issues quickly

The retail industry is more complex than ever. Not only are consumers looking for high-quality goods at fair prices, but they also want assurance that their purchases are safe and ethically sourced. That requires retailers to maintain transparency across their global supply chain networks. With new advancements in reporting and analytics and continued extension of integrations, Oracle Retail Brand Compliance Management Cloud Serviceis helping retailers monitor the integrity of their materials and end products, to improve customer experiences and protect their brands.

Oracle Retail Brand Compliance is specifically designed to enable retailers, restaurants, food service providers and manufacturers to source, develop, track and market products. As products are developed, the solution audits and manages all aspects of the process, creating accurate and certified labeling detail against local regulatory and industry policies. As such, brands can rapidly and nimbly respond to and rectify product and industry incidents.

In 2016, a multistate listeria outbreak in the U.S. impacted several name brand grocery chains. Tainted frozen vegetables and fruits sourced from one plant were included in approximately 358 consumer products sold under 42 separate brands. Using Oracle Retail Brand Compliance, one well-known grocer was able to quickly pull SKUs, identify where impacted product was being sold and communicate with customers, mitigating the situation, and protecting its shoppers.

“Delivering on your brand promise today is as much about quality and trust as it is about cost,” said Jeff Warren, vice president of strategy and solution management, Oracle Retail. “Customers expect retailers to know everything about the items they purchase, whether this is information on availability, ingredients or the manufacturing process. They expect transparency and greater access to information, in real time. The biggest names in grocery rely on Oracle Retail Brand Compliance to meet these expectations while protecting their customers and brands.”

Driving Compliance and Safety Across the Retail Supply Chain

Oracle Retail Brand Compliance is one of the world’s most widely adopted brand management solutions, representing two-thirds of all private label compliance and technical portals in use today. The offering provides a single point of authentication of all audits, accreditations and certificates. With it, common data sets are entered once and shared amongst the community to report on quality, environment, freshness and sustainability metrics and track the movement of products to drive risk assessment and rapid response to incidents. Today, the Oracle Retail Brand Compliance community represents more than 250,000 suppliers offering 750,000 consumer products.

With new enhancements to the offering, retail supply chain professionals will be able to more easily provide transparency of product information across partners and channels, with enhanced:

• KPI dashboards that deliver key insights, business intelligence and operational reporting on supply chain and product analysis.
• Consumer product compositions to enable in-store formulations, labeling and digital dietary advice.
• API integrations with key Oracle applications.

“For retailers, having full visibility across their entire supply chains is a game-changer. It can mean the difference between minutes or weeks when responding to incidents, tracking and removing contaminated food from store shelves and notifying consumers. Brand damage aside, that can mean the difference between life and death,” noted Paul Woodward, senior director of Oracle Retail supply chain solutions.