Creating core retail platform to support future growth and performance

Morrisons, the UK's fourth largest supermarket group, has entered into a strategic relationship with Oracle to help drive increased operational flexibility across the business and strengthen the company's foundation for future growth.

Morrisons has purchased a prototype Oracle footprint that includes a complete Oracle Retail suite of merchandising, planning and stores applications; the Oracle E-Business Suite for financials, HR/payroll and manufacturing; Oracle's Siebel CRM; Oracle Fusion Middleware including Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle Identity Management; and Oracle Database.

The grocery retailer plans to implement the Oracle products over the next five years to help enable its business transformation programme and provide a world-class shopping experience for customers in its 375 stores across the UK. This marks an important step in Morrisons' strategy to remain competitive and drive sustainable growth.

"Morrisons requires proven, world-class retail systems to achieve our business requirements for profitable growth today and in the future," said Gary Barr, IT Director at Morrisons. "We expect Oracle solutions to meet our needs, offering a breadth of functionality and a level of data that will promote a more accurate assessment of business performance. This will help us to turn information into profitable business decisions and deliver an enhanced experience to the 9 million customers that walk through our doors each week."

The agreement with Oracle marks a clear decision by Morrisons not to develop its systems in-house after identifying that its existing systems could not effectively support the company's plans for growth. Oracle quickly became the platform of choice because of its high-end retail specific applications, leading infrastructure software and integrated capabilities across a broad range of business activities.

Employing more than 114,000 members of staff in stores, factories, distribution centres and head office administrative functions, Morrisons manages almost every aspect of its commercial operation in-house, including fresh fruit and vegetables, fresh food, meat processing and transport. This intimacy with the source of its goods and the logistics around transportation from its temperature controlled warehouses and packing plants to stores nationwide creates a considerable challenge in terms of managing the supply chain from end-to-end.

Oracle will help provide Morrisons with the considerable operational functionality required to manage and simplify retail processes around fresh and staple produce throughout the planning process, through the supply chain and into the stores. Oracle applications underpin many of the world's largest global retailers and this supported the decision to select an Oracle platform and establish a common framework, while providing the capabilities to deliver an optimum balance between local and national decision-making.

"Morrisons' vertically integrated supply chain is unique and helps them bring a highly differentiated approach to food retailing," said Duncan Angove, General Manager and Senior Vice President, Oracle Retail. "We are committed to supporting their long-term strategy for profitable growth and helping them deliver a world-class shopping experience for customers. Morrisons selection of a prototype Oracle footprint provides compelling evidence that our strategy of expanding beyond ERP and providing high-end industry specific software is working and that we are winning in retail."