Topshop and Topman : (c) 2012 Image credit By Mtaylor848 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsInfor has announced that Arcadia has selected Infor CloudSuite Financials & Supply Management. Arcadia currently owns several well known retail brands including Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Evans, Miss Selfridge, Topshop and Topman. It has 1170 stores in 36 countries and ships to 107 countries using its online websites. They won the deal in a competitive tender that no doubt included Oracle.

Blow to Oracle

Following a review by Turnstone in 2012 Arcadia selected Oracle in 2014 to replace its retail platform for further international growth. There is little indication that the implementation of Oracle Retail Merchandising Operations Management, Oracle Retail Merchandise Planning and Optimisation, and Oracle Commerce has been completed. It is now three years later and Oracle hasn’t issued any press release that ET could find. Arcadia has moved its retail technology forward over the last three years though. They implemented an in store online retail experience using Red Ant technology

Oracle might have expected to place Oracle Fusion Financials at the heart of Arcadia to supply the global organisation. Instead Infor has won the deal possibly helped with some aggressive implementation timescales. The solution is targeted with a go live date of 2018 for 25,000 users. That number seems high, and would infer that every employee at Arcadia will use the Infor solution.

Perhaps it is about the people

What is clear is that Infor won the deal helped by the personal relationships establish by its Retail team when they worked at Oracle. Jason Berry, VP EMEA at Infor was instrumental in winning the original deal for Oracle in 2014. Ian Grabiner, CEO, Arcadia commented: “Our relationship with the team at Infor was key to our selection, as it is crucial that we work with companies which truly understand the complex demands of fashion retail.

Berry was brought on board at Infor by Corey Tolefson, Senior Vice President & General Manager at Infor who heads up the retail division and was also at Oracle in 2014.

The project will see Arcadia replace several legacy solutions across its estate. Grabiner added: “As we continue to evolve as a business, it is paramount that our systems keep pace. Through our deployment of Infor CloudSuite Financials we anticipate significant time savings, reductions in errors and superior insights which will give us greater agility. This will help to propel our business expansion, as well as give us much slicker, more flexible reporting which is crucial in the fast-paced retail industry.”

What does this mean

For Infor this is another big win for its Retail team. Earlier in the year they won a deal at Chausport, the French subsidiary of Sports Direct. That company had previously halted an Oracle Retail implementation. Infor Retail are ending the year on a high. They are continuing to win business from under the nose of Oracle although Oracle has had its own successes, with Wyevale for example. What will be interesting is to see how these systems overlap.

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