Oracle Unveils Oracle(r) Workforce Scheduling for Retail and Hospitality Industries

New Application Helps Customer-Facing Organizations Reduce Costs, Maximize Labor Resources and Increase Customer Satisfaction

CHICAGO, HR TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE 04-OCT-2006 Oracle today introduced Oracle(r) Workforce Scheduling, a comprehensive offering that helps organizations accurately forecast and schedule workers to meet both customer service and cost objectives. Based upon the functionality Oracle obtained through its acquisition of TempoSoft’s intellectual property, Oracle Workforce Scheduling expands Oracle’s human capital management (HCM) footprint and enables companies in the retail and hospitality industries to optimize schedules and meet forecasted workload demand.

“Controlling labor hours and managing costs are the biggest problems facing labor-intensive operations across a wide range of sectors,” said Oracle Vice President HCM Strategy Gretchen Alarcon. “Oracle Workforce Scheduling helps address these challenges by enabling companies to create precise staffing plans, improve the quality of customer service and impact the bottom line.”

Optimized Workforce Management
A competitive advantage for many successful organizations is the ability to leverage the most skilled and appropriate people at the right time. Optimized staffing schedules can impact customer satisfaction, drive sales and reduce operating costs. Additionally, through insight into annual, seasonal and daily demand patterns, managers can reach business and operational objectives and realize significant cost savings.

Oracle Workforce Scheduling helps reduce the required time to produce a typical, weekly labor schedule from several days to minutes, providing managers with more time to spend with customers. The ability to create staffing schedules based upon peak periods can lead to increased customer satisfaction - from shorter lines at checkout to a better overall experience. Organizations benefit from the ability to track key performance indicators that provide visibility into the status of revenue, scheduling and staff productivity.

Leveraging powerful mathematical modeling, Oracle Workforce Scheduling maximizes compliance with human resources and workload requirements while helping to decrease the time associated with developing staff schedules. Forecast and demand planning features incorporate a statistical analysis engine to forecast daily and weekly business demand. The system automatically converts these forecasts into activity-based workloads. Oracle Workforce Scheduling leverages an integration server, which deploys XML-based communication to other systems, enabling the synchronization of data such as human resources information, budgets, point-of-sale, forecasts and work schedules.

“An important addition to our suite of Human Capital Management solutions, Oracle Workforce Scheduling offers tangible benefits to current Oracle customers, further cementing our leadership in the HCM software market,” said Alarcon.

In response to Oracle’s acquisition of TempoSoft, AMR Research published the following: “The former France-based workforce management software vendor complements Oracle’s Time and Labor and PeopleSoft’s HCM products, which are all aimed at creating more efficient employee lifecycle management. The intent is also to closely align demand forecasts derived from merchandise planning, markdowns, logistics, and such, with specific needs for store labor from TempoSoft. This critical integration point will distinguish Oracle from its competition.” The report was published in August 2006 and titled, “An In Depth Look at Oracle’s Retail Strategy: Don’t Call it ERP.”

Oracle Workforce Scheduling is currently available and sold as a stand-alone product. Subsequent releases are scheduled to include integration with Oracle’s applications offerings and to extend functionality to other sectors such as retail branch banking, call centers, healthcare and others.

Customers looking for more information on Oracle Applications are encouraged to attend one of the 1000 events that are being held around the world as part of Oracle Applications World Tour. These events are designed to communicate the Oracle Application strategy, product roadmaps and Applications Unlimited, long-term plans to provide continued enhancements to current Oracle Applications beyond the delivery of Oracle Fusion Applications in 2008. Please visit the World Tour website for more information, at http://www.oracle.com/worldtour

About Oracle
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world’s largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com

# # #

Trademarks
Oracle, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Siebel are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

This announcement is provided to you solely for information purposes, is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. Many factors can materially affect Oracle’s product development plans and the nature and timing of future product releases. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described remains at the sole discretion of Oracle. This information may not be incorporated into any contractual agreement with Oracle or its subsidiaries or affiliates. Oracle specifically disclaims any liability with respect to this information.

Contact Information

Jessica Epple

Oracle

Contact via E-mail