Why Retail ERP Software Matters?
Managing the constantly moving stock, differently priced products, discounted goods, tailored loyalty rules, and high numbers of staff with manual methods, especially when dealing with multi-location stores, is often subject to human error. This leads to discontent among customers and even business losses.
Therefore, your need for powerful retail ERP software in 2021 becomes inevitable. It is a completely integrated system that allows you to manage all core aspects of your business. Its main goal is to automate and simplify your retail processes while providing transparency and alignment across the departments.
Thus, the retail software facilitates quick movement of information and flawless workflows, allowing you to make well-informed decisions and bring the best possible outcomes to your business.
The Top Nine Features of a Retail ERP System in 2021
Getting all the benefits of ERP in retail industry is subject to the presence of exclusive features. Without them, the system might be able to manage certain areas of your business, but in the long-term, as your requirements change, implementation effort is going to far outweigh the benefits.
With that in mind, here is the list of features that ERP used in retail stores must-have.
Workflow automation
In the retail business, customers always look for a consistent shopping experience. Therefore, as a retailer, you need to keep track of their transactions and eliminate the delays in response due to the lack of insights.
Retail ERP system makes the process easy. The application enables advanced workflow automation to track and consolidates store-wide information into one single platform. Because of this, you would be able to gain instant reports into your sales orders, warehouse inventory levels, customer requirements, and other relevant information to make better business decisions.
Use the data to offer personalized service to your customers and ultimately strengthen your relationships with them to generate more sales.
Multi-location inventory tracker
The ERP for retail industry must essentially include an inventory management feature as the functionality would help you maintain balanced stock levels in your warehouses and avoid the crisis that might arise due to overstocking or under-stocking of goods.
By having a streamlined and automated inventory management process, you would be benefited from real-time visibility into your stock movements, frequent cycle counts, clarity on margins, and accessibility of sales reports. This would allow you to identify and make effective purchasing decisions to support the quick replenishment of your top-selling goods while phasing out of low-selling products quickly and easily.
Product management
Store display has a major role in increasing or decreasing your sales. The right product mix at your retail outlets lets your customers easily find and buy what they want. This results in more satisfied buyers and loyal customers with an increase in returning visits.
A tailored retail ERP system helps you to identify the buying trends at your stores. Thus, the system enables you to achieve the flexibility needed to create and manage appropriate product mix at all your store outlets, based on the product sizes, colors, season, and other variants that your customers might be interested in.
Integrated with CRM tool
Customer satisfaction is the key to your retail business success. A dedicated customer management module in the retail ERP system would help you overcome customer-related challenges and provide you with the necessary support in managing modern customer relationships.
The system gives you a unique ability to collect and access customers’ order history and interactions. Using this information, you are able to gain more clarity about your valuable shoppers, engage them in a consistent and truly personalized manner to strengthen relationships with them, and generate more sales.
Returns management
Return is a crucial retail process. It allows you to bring products into the warehouse stock after they are sold for reselling, or when they are damaged in transit or are faulty. Further, these products are placed in the quarantine location for the quality check to review or completely write them off, as needed.
This is a complex procedure and so needs a specialist retail ERP system that is flexible enough to support you in managing the returns for each request.
Loyalty programs management
Recognizing loyal customers and providing them with personalized services is critical for generating continuous sales and initiating up-selling or cross-selling.
Modern retail software enables effective loyalty program management. The system allows you to create tailor programs for different loyal customers while keeping track of the promotional schemes and their outcomes in line with your retail practices. The special shopping benefits are likely to lure your existing customers to increase their purchase rate and help you earn more referrals.
Pricing and discounts management
Pricing and discount management, when done manually, is an arduous task and often leaves scope for errors. You need a retail ERP system with pricing and discount management features to automate the process and provide you with much-needed relief from the chaos.
The right ERP solution would eliminate the pricing errors, improve your team’s productivity and keep your customers satisfied.
Procurement and supplier management
Setting accurate procurement rules ensures your risk of a stock-out is at its lowest.
A good retail ERP software offers a centralized system to manage supplier setups and based on the requisition, ensures that goods are procured on time. The system also allows you to follow a standardized purchase approvals process across various levels, making it simpler to invite suppliers for quotations, compare them, and finalize the deals with the best price quotes.
POS integrated
Your customers look for quick order processing and ease of payments. For this, your ERP system needs to comprise an integrated point of sales (POS) terminal to help you expand the payment capabilities, enable billing accuracy, and increase the efficiency of your employees. All these can be achieved through the system’s intuitive UI.
Shortlisting the Right Retail ERP System
Keeping control over an array of day-to-day retail activities can be a real hurdle without the right ERP software. Although finding the perfect system is tricky, our team of ERP consultants can assist you in your search for finding the best ERP for retail.
We are one of the trusted providers of business management software offering the best ERP software for retail in India that is designed with a myriad of necessary features to support you in managing every retail operation more proficiently.
