At last week’s NRF Big Show in New York, Oracle unveiled the latest version of Xstore Point of Service to help retailers energise their operations and in-store engagement.

The cloud application has been redesigned on a new architecture and features an intuitive user interface and workflows that fuel efficiency and support connected retail journeys for retailers of all sizes. With it, staff can carry out day-to-day transactions and activities with dashboards that quickly show customers’ past purchase history and worklists to guide actions such as preparing buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS) orders.

Xstore is built on a containerised architecture supported by the security and performance of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI, www.oracle.com/cloud) and the data processing power and automation of Oracle Autonomous Database (www.oracle.com/autonomous-database). These enhancements make it easier and more cost effective for retailers to deploy, update and securely build capabilities on top of the open, extensible Xstore platform.

Providing flexible choices in deployment models, including public cloud, multicloud, on-premises and now OCI Roving Edge Infrastructure (www.oracle.com/cloud/roving-edge-infrastructure), Xstore can be delivered as a mobile experience on iOS or Android-based tablets or other handheld options, as well as on a desktop.

“Point of service systems are at the epicentre of in-store operations, and Oracle just made Xstore, one of the world’s most used and trusted retail PoS platforms, even more functional and effective from its architecture through to its intuitive workflows,” said Paul Woodward, vice president of retail at Oracle. “Now, retailers have the agility and security to support evolving customer journeys, move inventory from anywhere, and adhere to regional requirements while delivering great experiences to both their customers and staff.”

The redesigned Xstore is the latest innovation in the Oracle Retail Suite (www.oracle.com/retail). Retailers can connect journeys from planning through to fulfilment to harmonise processes across their operations, delivering better insights, outcomes, and experiences for every user.

As retail customer journeys expand, so do the responsibilities of retail staff. The intuitive dashboards and workflows in Oracle Retail Xstore reflect this evolution and empower staff with the information they need to deliver more impactful, personalised customer interactions with little training. From anywhere in the store, staff can quickly pull up a customer’s transaction history, as well as relevant offers and rewards, to suggest potential next purchases based on each customer’s past preferences and complete transactions.

In tandem, shop assistants can view inventory from across channels and arrange for items to be shipped or picked up at another store to help ensure a customer can get the item they came for while moving merchandise more effectively.

When not supporting customers, staff are prompted with individualised dashboards that guide them on next-step actions such as a new order that needs to be prepped for shipping or in-store pick up or tasks such as managing price adjustments. The capabilities of Retail Xstore also extend to store managers who now have a holistic view into the fulfilment of orders, ensuring customers get the products they ordered in a timely manner.

With OCI and OCI Container Instances (www.oracle.com/cloud/cloud-native/container-instances), retailers can speed implementations and updates as well as build and connect their own containerised apps into the Xstore platform without the cost or hassle of managing any servers. In addition to providing enhanced security and the ability to deploy containers across numerous cloud environments, this model provides accelerated performance that can handle demanding, high-throughput retail transaction requirements.

In addition, retailers operating in wifi-constrained environments have the option to leverage OCI Roving Edge Infrastructure to accelerate their Xstore deployment outside of a data centre. These ruggedised devices deliver cloud computing, storage, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning services at the edge of networks and in disconnected or inhibited locations, allowing faster processing and analysis closer to the data source.

Already running in 95 countries, Xstore features out-of-the-box translation in 13 languages, localisation formatting, support for multiple currencies, and functionalities that help retailers meet unique regional regulations and requirements to stay compliant.