Megamart benefits as Oracle strengthens retail presence
By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 08 July 2009, 02:40 IST   |    10 Comments
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Megamart benefits as Oracle strengthens retail presence
Bangalore: Indian retail market, which is expected to touch $637 billion by 2015, has become a huge attraction for the IT biggies including the software giant Oracle. The software firm, which concentrates on the retail segment through its Bangalore center, has chanced upon another retail brand, Megamart. The tie-up has proved beneficial for the retail firm in terms of increase in production and warehouse to shop performance. Oracle already has tie ups with companies like Aditya Birla Retail (More) and Shopper's Stop to thrive on the retail market demand. Megamart had invested in Oracle Retail applications in 2008 and went live with the first phase in April this year. In this first phase, IBM has helped Megamart successfully implement the Oracle Retail applications to integrate with Megamart's existing financial and point of sale applications. "Oracle Retail applications implemented at Arvind Mills are being used by leading retailer all over the world. These applications have been designed drawing from global retail best practices and will offer benefit of high scalability to Arvind's business operations," said Mukesh Mathur, Retail Sales Director, Oracle India. According to Spring Research, IT revenue from the Indian retail segment were $253 million in 2006 and is expected to grow to $1.07 billion by 2010, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 44 percent. "Given the current economic scenario, this IT initiative is a big boost for our retail business, in terms of improving our operational efficiencies and service to our stores and thus ultimately our customers," said J Suresh, CEO, Arvind Brands and Retail. He feels that IT is one of the key elements that will support their retail growth and expansion. With collaboration from our IT partners; Oracle and IBM, Megamart is already experiencing significant benefits in retail operations. Even though it is too early for Megamart to report the profits attained due to phase one, they have listed many benefits they have achieved so far. This includes upto 45 percent more stock keeping units being processed in 20 percent less time. Also, there has been 25 percent improvement in picking and order fulfillment efficiencies. Megamart claims that these applications have helped them attain a 100 percent control over time and quantity during order receipt process. Oracle has also helped Megamart increase the productivity of the warehouse, ensuring that Megamart customer are able to find the brands, styles and sizes they are seeking. According to Suresh few years back when they compared themselves with global retailers they were shocked to see where they stand. It was clear that they will have to use technology to help them grow. They needed inventory management and a one stop solution for all its application. They zeroed in on Oracle as it had experience in international retail and they claimed that 20 of the top 20 global retailers run oracle. IBM had already implemented Oracle application at many places, so it was easier for Megamart to select them to implement these applications. In the second phase, Megamart will implement the planning, allocation and analytics modules of Oracle retail, along with other things like optimizing the benefits of phase one. Megamart plans to go live with phase two by the end of this year. Megamart so far has around 130 stores small stores and five large format stores.

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