Building a Seamless
Retail System
Continued
“We work today to have the right inventory at the right store at the right time for more than 12,000 stores. We go to every single store that we do business with and try to manage what's being sold, how it's being sold, at what speed it's being sold, whether we have to move the merchandise to another store, and other considerations,” says Paez. “We do it all today—we just believe we can do it better with Oracle Retail. Oracle Retail is helping us to have the inventory at the right stores at the right time.”
As it continues its rollout, Perry Ellis expects to be able to use Oracle Pricing to obtain a significant return on investment (ROI) by enabling closer collaboration with its customers and enabling it to identify which products should be marked down by what percentages. It's all part of a process enabling Perry Ellis to respond to its consumers more quickly.
“The ultimate goal of anybody within the value chain is to become demand driven—meaning, driven by a better understanding of what the consumers want and ultimately being able to translate that effectively into action and fulfilling the demand,” says AMR's Garf.
Agility in Changing Times
Lean economic times can disrupt profitability and make it more difficult for organizations to grow. But Perry Ellis has weathered the changes remarkably well, profiting while others have floundered. One reason is Perry Ellis' approach to technology.
For Perry Ellis, good technology and a strong technology vision are a critical part of its success, but Paez and other Perry Ellis executives know that technology is simply an enabler. At the end of the day, their success won't be defined by deploying a particular technology but by what its consumers see and feel when they shop for clothes. By using the right technologies in the right way, Perry Ellis can enable its wholesale partners and its retail stores to proactively respond to changing fashion trends while building its brand and moving more products.
As an IT leader, Paez knows he needs to be able to respond quickly to business changes. That's why his Oracle infrastructure is so important. “One of the keys to all the things that happened quickly and the reason I'm able to execute and take pride in our department and tell our managers that whatever their question, we can always answer it, is because all of our IT infrastructure is built on an Oracle database,” says Paez. “That's why we can easily talk across applications without going through the trouble of importing and exporting data or taking extra steps.”
For Perry Ellis, helping its wholesale partners and retail stores keep one step ahead of fashion trends and consumer desires comes down to having an agile IT infrastructure to support rapidly changing market conditions.
“From our sales order system down to our warehouse to our e-commerce system, they're all running under an Oracle database,” says Paez. “It's what gives us flexibility and the agility to move fast.”
And in the fashion world, moving fast makes all the
difference.
For More Information
Oracle Retail
Oracle E-Business Suite
David A. Kelly is a freelance writer based in Massachusetts.
