Software company Oracle has snatched the number one rank in retail in RIS News’ 2006 Software LeaderBoard. The RIS Software LeaderBoard compares software companies serving the retail industry in a head-to-head ranking that is based largely on retailer evaluations. Oracle’s leadership position was earned as a result of the breadth and depth of its retail offerings, customer satisfaction, and total annual sales in the retail segment.
In order to rate Customer Satisfaction, RIS News invited high-level retail executives with significant retail experience and IT responsibility to cast votes on the software companies with which they are working. These votes were then aggregated by an independent research firm to generate a score for each vendor that was added to their scores in the Retail Concentration and Revenue Factor categories. Oracle was the only vendor to register a perfect score for both Retail Concentration and Revenue Factor in the 2006 Software LeaderBoard and overall was more than a point higher than the winner last year.
An annual survey, the vast majority of the Software LeaderBoard criteria remain constant from year to year. One change that was instituted this year was to slightly raise the dollar levels in the Revenue Factor breakdown in order to account for the merger and acquisition activity that has been prevalent in the space in recent years.
"Right now Oracle is emerging as one of very few leaders in terms of third-party software solution providers for the retailing industry," said Bob Buchanan, head of the Retail Analysts Group at A.G. Edwards. "This is an industry that has so clearly made the investment in and embraced technology as a means of driving goods turnover and profit growth against the backdrop of tougher to get square footage growth. Nordstrom, American Eagle and Tween Brands are some of the individual retailing winners that have applied Oracle solutions and are surely benefiting from them in my view."