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Today’s business environment demands that retailers have operational flexibility and agility. Hyper competition is raising the stakes on what it takes to keep customers coming back. Opportunities to grow must be acted upon quickly. Retailers must have the ability to quickly implement the new-generation planning and supply chain best practices that are needed to thrive. Retailers also require the ability to craft and rapidly implement processes that are unique to their business.
The i2 Solution: i2 Agile Business Process Platform—Retail
i2 Agile Business Process Platform—Retail is based on a unique service-oriented architecture (SOA) that includes a layer of technology services and a business process workflow engine. The platform is business process management (BPM) compliant and interoperates with legacy, ERP, and other enterprise architectures. This architecture enables retailers to rapidly implement, at a lower cost and with less risk, new-generation advanced planning and supply chain processes that are tailored to specific business needs—enabling them to quickly react to changing demands. The Agile Business Process Platform also enables retailers to get more out of investments already made in other systems.
Capabilities of the i2 Agile Business Process Platform—Retail can include:
i2 Agile Business Process Platform—Retail has capabilities that enable agility and flexibility for retailers, and is preconfigured to support a retail data model. Features of this breakthrough architecture include:
- Business Process Execution:
Developers can leverage i2 Business Process Execution to model various business elements such as orders, items, inventory, and locations. These models are then manipulated with the Business Process Execution transaction engine using retail-specific business rules and workflows. The result is a comprehensive view of the underlying process that can allow developers to quickly and easily create workable, cost-efficient business solutions.
- Common Infrastructure Services
i2 Common Infrastructure Services, a services-based architecture, enables retailers to integrate i2 new-generation planning and supply chain solutions and enterprise applications. As a cost-effective alternative to a complete system replacement, this tool allows retailers to integrate while leveraging existing systems.
- Master Data Management
i2 Master Data Management is designed to create a single enterprise thesaurus that can ensure data is consistently described, used, and stored within the retail enterprise. With Master Data Management retailers can: aggregate, standardize, and provide easy access to item and supplier information from multiple sources—a necessary pre-requisite to implementing new-generation supply chain strategies that demand unprecedented levels of collaboration with partners.
- Performance Manager
i2 Performance Manager is designed to create a multi-perspective view of planning and supply chain processes, and enables retailers to perform drill-down, root-cause analysis of specific issues. With Performance Manager, retailers can understand how their planning and supply chain processes are performing, and quickly react to business needs.
Benefits of the i2 Agile Business Process Platform can include:
- Enabling rapid and low-cost implementation of best practice planning and supply chain processes
- Providing the ability to implement planning and supply chain processes that are tailored to the unique needs of the retailer
- Enabling quick and easy integration with supply chain partners
- Enabling enhanced and advanced visibility into operational metrics
- Providing a single, trusted data thesaurus across the enterprise with secure access and visibility into data across multiple systems
- Enhancing and extending the life of existing investments in planning and supply chain applications
- Reducing the time, costs, risks, and maintenance associated with operating planning and supply chain applications
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