Service-Oriented Architecture In the Retail Sector
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Today’s retailer faces a daunting business environment. As consumer spending slows down and credit markets pull back, retailers need to gear up to respond and continue to thrive. Costs and productivity are an always-present concern in the retail segment. New low-price, international and online competitors are challenging for a share of the consumer’s wallet. Retailers must react quicker than ever to the changing demands of consumers who expect service, innovation and quality to be delivered at competitive prices across a growing array of channels.
Unfortunately, retailers currently rely on information technology (IT) architectures that are outdated, brittle and incapable of supporting the evolving process needs of an agile retail enterprise. Most struggle to gather and understand key sales and customer data. They spend an inordinate amount of time and money customizing the applications needed to meet today’s more numerous and complex retail processes.
To solve these challenges, retailers need an IT architecture that is flexible and resilient and can quickly and cost-effectively deploy very specific process solutions. That is why astute retailers are now evaluating and deploying SOA capabilities. SOA is a business- and process-driven approach to delivering IT capabilities using common services to perform basic business functions. In an SOA, software modules deliver the services needed to meet specific business needs. Those flexible services can be developed by, and interchanged among, various vendors – and then integrated and shared across business units and environments. Retailers can leverage this approach to simplify maintenance and drive reuse, all while reducing both the cost and complexity of achieving specific process requirements.
By leveraging shared services across applications and activities, SOA allows retailers to squeeze cost, complexity, duplicate functions and customization out of their operations.
In this viewpoint paper, EDS describes a process-oriented, opportunity-driven approach to the implementation of SOA in the retail environment. This phased, results-oriented approach allows companies to create services that respond flexibly to changes in consumer demand, product design and supply-chain operations. This approach encourages companies to start small, to generate efficiencies and revenues from specific process improvements, and then to extend the shared benefits of SOA as new opportunities arise.