Friday, November 6, 2009

Ingredients of a Comprehensive Retail Suite for SMBs

To achieve success in today’s retail industry, retailers that are small to midsize businesses (SMBs) need to effectively meet their customers’ needs on time, with the right price, in the right quantity—and at the right place, with the right promotions. All of these things can be very overwhelming for a retailer. To get them, retailers require tools that support effective and precise operations. In this volatile global economy, every retailer is trying to beat the competition and win over the customer base. The winners in this race are the retailers that can provide customers the supreme (winning) combination of product, price, and customer service, and do it without affecting profitability. For a retailer to make gains over its competition, it should incorporate one of the best business solutions created by experts in the retail software industry. Retailers need solutions that have capabilities to help them serve their customers better than their competition, and that don’t cost them an arm and a leg to do it. As retail operations are becoming as complex as its supply chain, retailers are not only trying to stay competitive, but also face challenges of short product life cycles, sudden changes in product demand, and new evolutions in technology.

Retail operations consist of more than just one store, but large chains of stores with numerous amount of inventory and thousands of pricing decisions to be made with ease and flexibility. Retail management software needs to have numerous modules that can help retail operations be more efficient and lucrative. A comprehensive solution for the retailer’s specific industry—i.e., food, consumer goods, apparel, etc.—is beneficial for success.

Bringing all operations under one comprehensive system will facilitate retail organizations to make decisions based on actual information about the product’s position, price, and market trends. As well, retail organizations will be able to locate and move products in a leaner way, by which they will be reducing product cost and delays in delivery to the customer.

It’s all fine and dandy to think of having complete retail management software, but the question arises: what should this software include? TEC’s research analysts are currently developing a comprehensive new retail research Evaluation Center. Our main objective is to leave no stone unturned within the retail industry. But TEC analysts don’t want to create a monstrous and unwieldy number of solution requirements either for SMB retailers to deal with. In our retail research Evaluation Center, only the requirements needed by retail organizations will be included. TEC analysts will make sure not to exclude anything critical for retail operations and the achievement of their objectives. Within our research Evaluation Center, retail organizations and retail software providers will be able to match up with each other, just like an e-harmony dating service, in which individual needs are matched with potential qualified prospects meeting the predefined criteria.

So now the question is: what do retail organizations need to look at when buying a “reasonably” comprehensive retail software suite or package?

Here’s a list of the modules SMB retail organizations need in a retail software suite.

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