DUBLIN, Ireland, Nov. 14, 2006 -- Arnotts, Ireland's oldest and largest department store, has gone live with its Oracle(R) Retail platform to support its corporate expansion plans and the development of its Henry Street store in Dublin. Following a successful pilot implementation within two departments, the Oracle Retail merchandising, supply chain and stores solutions have helped to transform inventory management processes, reduce stock levels in the store and warehouse, and improve pricing management.

The redevelopment of the Henry Street site, incorporating the 300,000 square foot department store and adjoining buildings, is aimed at securing the long-term future of Ireland's largest independent department store retailer with a 1 million square foot city-centre complex. Project Merlin, involving the implementation of a new ERP system and best practice solutions, is part of Arnotts' plans for the 300 year-old site, which also includes the training of its 800 staff to manage the new infrastructure and retail processes.

Paul Dickson, Director of Information Systems at Arnotts explained, "If you want business benefits and improved efficiencies, you have to change your business to reflect the process, not the other way round. The Arnotts board has a genuine desire to improve the business. It is not necessarily all about cost cutting, it's about implementing efficiencies and best practice that will take us forward, giving us the capabilities to be more agile in our decision-making. We needed a technology provider that understood best practice in retail and could deliver a proven integrated retail footprint with the potential for a quick ROI. This would enable us to aggressively expand our business, whist at the same time minimise the risk that can often be associated with major infrastructural business change initiatives. Oracle provided the best partnership opportunity for our business with its proven track record in department store retailing."

The new system, which is fully integrated with Arnotts' Oracle Financials solution, provides management with detailed, item-level reporting promoting a more accurate assessment of the business performance and helps turn information into profitable business decisions. For instance, Arnotts is now achieving efficient and rapid item-level stock counts using radio frequency technology, enabling real-time tracking of stock losses across the store; while greater insight in invoice matching has already delivered a 10 percent improvement in accuracy.

In addition, the Oracle Retail system allows Arnotts to align in-store stock offering with customer demand, in order to drive better in-season and fresh inventory management and allocation throughout the store. This allows Arnotts to be more creative around promotional and pricing activity, while optimising its use of retail space.

Tarik Taman, Vice President EMEA at Oracle Retail, stated, "Our customers want to focus on building and growing their core business, not spend time developing IT systems and processes to better manage their businesses, which is why forward-thinking retailers turn to Oracle Retail. With an unmatched track record among the world's major department stores including Galerie Lafayette, Selfridges, Nordstrom and Federated Department Stores, our solutions enable customers to manage the biggest technology challenge -- managing the massive volumes of data and turning this into real-time valuable information to help improve the business."

The Arnotts implementation was a significant milestone for Oracle Fusion Middleware software. Oracle Financials were integrated with Oracle Retail using Oracle BPEL Process Manager, which provided the necessary flexibility to build the integration with minimal changes to the core Financial and Retail systems. Utilising Oracle's technical expertise and acting as an intelligent courier of messages between the two systems, Oracle BPEL Process Manager ensures information from different parts of Arnotts' business is seamlessly updated and accessible by both the Oracle Financial and Oracle Retail solutions, while ensuring data integrity is maintained.

Arnotts expects the full rollout of the Oracle Retail solution throughout the entire organisation to be completed by autumn 2007.

About Arnotts

Arnotts is Ireland's oldest department store. As a result of extension and redevelopment, it is also Ireland's largest department store with a selling area of 280,000 square feet. Its present size sees it ranked in the top five stores in Britain and Ireland. Arnotts is at the heart of Dublin city centre shopping and continues to offer leading & unrivalled sales densities to brands & services. It is an Irish icon and remains Ireland's most popular department store. Arnotts today is a department store of choice offering a comprehensive selection of merchandise from fashion to furniture, footwear to sportswear, and kitchenware to audio visual equipment.

About Oracle Retail

Oracle partners with the world's leading retail companies to transform the economics of their business. From supply chain, operations, merchandising, store systems, optimization and information technology solutions, Oracle Retail is the single source for innovative and comprehensive industry solutions -- enabling organizations to serve their customers better by applying insight into daily business decisions for more profitable results.

About Oracle

Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) is the world's largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com.

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