A respected retail visionary who served as chief strategy officer at Retek, Angove now runs Oracle's Retail.

A Perfect Storm
Angove began his talk with a wide–ranging survey of today's retail industry, which he argues is undergoing a transformation that is both rapid and profound.

More than in any other industry, retailers are being forced to retool the way they do business from the ground up, thanks largely to evolving technologies that continue to change the way people purchase retail goods and services.

The internet, for example, has raised service expectations, while also driving down prices. At the same time, both consumer choice and market segmentation continue to proliferate. Brand loyalty—once a sure path to profitability—is now harder to win and maintain.

Beyond Operations: Driving Intimacy and Innovation
Even in difficult times, retailers have managed to increase shareholder value either by expansion—more or larger stores—or by achieving operational excellence.

And what about those previously dreaded exceptions? Value–chain practitioners say, "Bring them on." "Once you become very sensitive to changes that take place in the marketplace, you can immediately adapt your business processes accordingly," Slade says.

However, current conditions aren't favorable to either of these options, according to Angove. First, markets are increasingly saturated. And after years of focusing on operational efficiency, it is increasingly challenging to squeeze marginal returns from operations and supply chains that are already very lean.

In response, Angove proposes two alternate paths for creating value: customer intimacy and innovation in products and services.

"Service, quality, consistency, convenience and selection—the fundamental keys to retail success in the past—are no longer enough to ensure consumer loyalty and sustain leadership," says Angove. "Customers now require these fundamentals plus personalized solutions and differentiating products that create an emotional connection with the retailer."

Oracle promotes exactly this kind of intimacy with everything from advanced tools for localized assortments to a much deeper understanding of consumers via Oracle's Customer Data Hub, according to Angove.

Innovation—new channels and formats, new products and services, highly targeted geographical expansion—inherently involves risk. But Angove argues that the right technological foundation can mitigate that risk even as it speeds time to value.

"The lack of fresh, creative ideas is not the problem," says Angove. "Rather, it's a lack of process and systems flexibility, which in turn prevents nimble execution."

The answer, according to Angove: prebuilt processes that leverage and extend current assets while moving toward Web 2.0 technologies. The result: context–aware interactive environments across a single, multichannel platform.

Here again, says Angove, Oracle is ahead of the curve.

"Our agile architecture enables retailers to quickly and efficiently introduce new concepts in their business," he says.