Uber and Oracle Launch a Groundbreaking Retail Delivery Service

In a groundbreaking collaboration, Uber and Oracle are set to revolutionize the world of commerce. Their strategic partnership will make it possible for thousands of merchants and other brands that use Oracle Retail applications to ship and receive products effortlessly by allowing them to use the Uber Direct on-demand delivery platform.

Oracle clients can now easily implement on-demand delivery services connected straight with their e-commerce site. With a new service called Collect and Receive, customers can easily manage their point-of-sale, procurement, customer relationship management, merchandising, inventory planning, distribution, and restocking. Retailers may now simply ship a wide range of products, directly to or from customers at any time and location of their choosing. Additionally, they can accomplish this without outsourcing such procedures to an outside company. Which allows them to maintain authority, control costs, and monitor their transactions throughout the whole sales cycle.

“We know retail processes. We know the placement of inventory and distribution standards,” notes Patrick Bohannon, Oracle Retail vice president. “So it’s only natural that we join forces with Uber to close this gap, this blind spot, in the supply chain.”

According to Bohannon, Collect and Receive reinvents retail sales. As a continuous interaction with the customer, with delivery, returns, and exchanges occurring on a regular basis.

Disruption in the Retail World

“This solution is going to become highly disruptive in retail distribution,” he says. “Tens of thousands of stores just in the US are managed by Oracle Retail. Considering those numbers, it makes for a pretty powerful relationship.”

At Oracle CloudWorld on September 19, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi stated that one of his company’s most interesting new efforts is Collect and Receive, during a main stage discussion with Oracle CEO Safra Catz.

Khosrowshahi emphasized that Uber Direct could be easily integrated with local businesses using Oracle Retail systems for on-demand delivery and returns. Customers can quickly make returns using the Oracle technology in combination with Uber’s logistics. A courier will simply pick up the items and return them to the business.

Although 3,500 brands now use Uber Direct for goods delivery, Khosrowshahi stated at the event that “we want that same delight to come to every single local retailer. We have taken that logistics ecosystem, separated it from our mainline stack, and we’re providing it to retailers around the world.” This partnership was born after a seven-year-long agreement. During which Uber started migrating some of their most important workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

Khosrowshahi highlighted that Oracle Cloud will be the only platform for their technology expansion going forward. In order to achieve scalable growth while preserving stable beneficial unit economics, this strategic step has been made. Eventually in the future, Oracle will play a major role in their transition for profitable expansion.

Beneficial Partnership

As head of enterprise business development for Uber, Buck Teal argues that the company’s partnership with Oracle, which was based on OCI, created the right context for both companies to be very open with each other. That allowed them to explore and experiment much faster than in a traditional context. Teal also claims that Collect and Receive offers a range of features that shops have not had access to in the past. Furthermore, he explained that it allowed them to partner with retailers around their actual inventory control. Which gave them additional flexibility around customer experience, as well as cost control and store operations.

According to Teal, this is how the changing alliance allows Uber to develop into an all-inclusive transportation network that can “support every trip on the planet,” whether it entails transporting people, goods, or both.

Khosrowshahi pointed to the company’s continuous innovation with Uber. Finally, he hinted at new future delivery and transportation services like relocating staff or goods between locations. Oracle is a major technological partner in these developments, which aims to improve retail operations efficiency drastically.

Vaiva Zdanoviciute