Magnet Stores Select Oracle Retail To Support Aggressive Expansion Plans

Oracle Retail Will Help Magnet Stores Capture and Analyse Consumer Buying Patterns, Forecast Inventory Turnover and Streamline Supply Chain.

MUMBAI, India.-HomeCare Retail Marts Pvt Ltd (HomeCare), owner of the large format Magnet stores, has selected Oracle Retail applications (Oracle Retail) to support its aggressive expansion plans over the next three years. The company will implement the Oracle Retail applications across its existing and future stores, offices and warehouse locations in India. Zensar Technologies - a certified partner in the Oracle PartnerNetwork - will implement Oracle Retail at HomeCare.

“We aim to set up more than 200 new stores of varying sizes across India over the next three years,” said Mr. Ashok Maheswari, managing director, HomeCare Retail Pvt Ltd. “Oracle Retail applications will help us roll out a dynamic, standardized and integrated IT infrastructure, resulting in greater efficiencies in our storefront operations as well as better supply chain and vendor management.”

HomeCare plans to invest more than INR 3000 million over the next three years to set up Magnet and other branded stores in several Indian cities. The retailer will set up supercentres, hypermarkets, supermarkets and specialty chain stores with a fully integrated supply chain, which will include captive organic food farms. The company was looking for a retail software solution that could support the current operations using global retail best practices as well as scale-up to support all future expansion plans. HomeCare chose Oracle Retail after assessing competitive offerings, including software from SAP.

“Increasing affluence and urbanisation of the Indian population is driving rapid growth in retail. Both established domestic players and entrepreneurial new entrants are gearing up to capture the India retail dollar and the winners will be those who adopt globally proven, scaleable business models. Oracle Retail is uniquely positioned to deliver on the needs of HomeCare today, with the flexibility to meet their future needs”, said Mr. Ronan Gilhawley, Asia Pacific vice president for Oracle Retail. “We are pleased that HomeCare have invested to secure their future growth through our merchandising platform, joining the group of more than 1,900 global retail leaders who use Oracle applications to run their business critical processes”.

According to a research conducted by HomeCare in 2006 in Western India, the buying pattern of consumers (with an average purchase basket size of 16-18 items) differ up to 40 per cent in two stores that are located eight kilometres apart. As a result of this finding, HomeCare’s retail stores are located in clusters of three or four stores where one large stores is the hub and two or three smaller stores are clustered around it, all located within a six kilometre radius. All stores in a cluster share a common supply chain. Oracle Retail will help these clustered Magnet stores capture consumer buying patterns in their respective localities, analyse these, create inventory forecasts and generate automatic templates for purchase orders along with a distribution list in each store cluster.

HomeCare will implement Oracle Retail Merchandising System, Oracle Retail Store Inventory Management, Oracle Retail Sales Audit, Oracle Retail Invoice Matching, Oracle Retail Price Management, Warehouse Management, Allocation, and Retail Data Warehouse from the Oracle Retail Suite.