Building an efficient retail store is a lot of hard work. There is so much work going on all at the same time. From POS (point of sale), inventory management, sales channel management, vendor management to CRM (customer relationship management), there is so much to be tamed in the retail store madness. This makes retail management software critical for the success of stores. Efficient retail management supports all your retail processes end-to-end, providing real-time contextual information to its users. What follows is a superlative end consumer experience. The problem? Finding a partner that delivers performance is tricky. After all, even after setup, if you have your inventory everywhere, chances are your retail store is nowhere. So, the million-dollar question is how to overcome it?
You need to be strategic when deciding your software. This is precisely what we are going to discuss in this post.
Here, we demystify the top five retail management software and the process to identify the tools that are your business’s ideal partners.
5 software to scale your retail store in 2021
The core reason why your tools fail to deliver your business needs is relatively simple. With the oversaturated software market of retail management, choosing the best match for your business is often an ordeal. After all, almost every other tools offer the same features and claim to deliver the same delivery.
So to be sure, there are two things you can do any day. First, look at the overall review for the software in review sites like G2 and Quora. Secondly, map the features of your considerations with your real-time needs and see if they support scalability. You will land up with the right tool before you know.
However, here is a smarter way. We did all the hard work for you and have curated the top 5 retail software for your business to scale in 2021.
Inventory management
Inventory resides at the heart of every retail store. Done right, it can create the most optimal sales automation process. But if you fail to make precise forecasts about your inventory requirements, either of two things can happen. You lose money on the table, or you end up wasting your inventory because of surplus stock.
An efficient retail management tool enables you to design a customized inventory lifecycle unique to your business. No matter what the task is, be it printing labels, tracking orders, or fulfillment metrics, your complete logistics can rely on this powerful automation. But not every software has its inventory capabilities alike.
Our recommendation is iQmetrix.
When it comes to inventory management, iQmetrix is unbeatable. Powered by cloud computing, the software brings advanced inventory management solutions capable of supporting even complex multi-location retail stores. With its unique global inventory tools, all your inventory can be managed from a single dashboard. You can track the real-time location of an item whenever you want. But it does not stop delivering value there.
It integrates powerful capabilities of mobile POS (point of sale), CRM (customer relationship management), HR, marketing, biometric security, integrated payment processing, bringing the best shopping experience for buyers.
Employee and vendor management
The workforce is one of the critical success metrics of a retail store. As they say, teamwork is the dream work. However, developing and sustaining a high-performance team is more complicated than it seems.
There are so many variables that need to be counted: training, skill, efficiency, focus, collaboration, and communication capabilities, and whatnot. But an effective employee and vendor management software can help you keep your team motivated at all times.
An ideal vendor and employee management tool would cater to end-to-end employee management needs. Whether your requirement is onboarding, controlled database access, or retention, the software can ensure high engagement levels for your employee at work. They act like the real-time knowledge base for your employees to make quality decisions quickly. But that is not all. It supports all employee retention policies and investments that you deploy in your system. However, finding such software is not always easy.
For instance, if your software does not support integration facilities with employee perk programs like the Perkbox benefits scheme, then it might not be the best retail management software you could invest in.
Our recommendation is ChainDrive.
This omnichannel RMS software has a unique capability to monitor employee productivity and engagement in your complete retail operations. Just like the customer analysis reports, you have a single dashboard to track and optimize your employee performance. The best part? It enables smart employee engagement integrations with engagement tools. You can create your own KPI (key performance indicator) sheet for optimum results. But that is not all the tool has to offer. Its automation features are recommendable as well.
Customer relationship management (CRM)
Your customers are the blood-pumping organ of your retail business. This means no matter what you do, the end goal is always is customer satisfaction. This makes customer relationship management a critical area of your retail business success. Done right, you not only improve the LTV (lifetime value) of your customer but can create more sales opportunities with the same customer. CRM software ensures you can cater to this need and design a superior customer experience, no matter what.
An ideal CRM software does both the tasks, generates high-quality leads, and maintains a strong relationship with the existing customer base. It has the capabilities to create personalized offers and services for your audience and customers based on their brand interactions and past purchases. But, not all retail management software has cutting-edge CRM solutions.
Springboard is our top pick.
Designed to boost retail operations, Springboard RMS (retail management solutions) is a beast when it comes to detailed consumer data. You can segment your customer base analytics by geography, date, and time. You can even dig deeper based on transaction frequency and purchase orders category. This simplifies the complex process of personalized offers and marketing messages.
What follows is more conversions and sales. Its customer quick review dashboard makes it super easy to look into each consumer account dirt simple. But it does not stop there. The software boasts robust integration capabilities with significant marketing and sales platforms and enables tracking real-time traffic and conversion metrics. The best part?
This tool is comprehensive. Although its USP (unique selling point) lies in its CRM, it has powerful capabilities like POS, inventory, order management, and advanced reporting features.
POS (point of sale)
In today’s complex business world, your potential buyer can be anywhere. Keeping your sales open at all times is an essential step towards robust sales. This is exactly where POS software comes in handy.
An ideal POS system can effectively improve your operations and sales from a single integrated system. It can merge all the ends of operation: payments, accounts, and customers for the fastest and smoothest transaction. It also helps you trace areas in your business where you can optimize costs and improve your profit margins. But the problem is finding a POS system that is high-performance yet user-friendly takes a significant amount of research and product trials.
But to lower down your toil, we bring you one of the market leaders of 2021, NetSuite.
Combining the power of the cloud and an integrated POS and order management system, NetSuite RMS brings sheer performance. Transforming the in-store experience for omnichannel transactions, the software brings the best of both worlds. No matter how you perform your business, be it retail or e-commerce, your sales pipelines are robust. The best part?
Its mobile access facilities make remote work easy. But the software does not stop adding value to your system there. It possesses powerful inventory and vendor management capabilities, order tracking, real-time business analytics, and finance tracking.
Customer analytics
Real-time customer data is the oil that keeps your business running. Without understanding what your customers want, crafting personalized offers and fulfilling demands is always guesswork. This makes analytics so critical in the overall growth of your sales and revenue. Having an RMS solution that is a champion of analytics is always desirable.
An ideal analytics solution here would not only collect valuable data but deliver actionable insights for improving your business operations. It is flexible enough to give you a comprehensive overview and keyhole sneak peeks simultaneously. This way, you can use the data to create personalized and exclusive offers for your customers and gain insights on how to transform your business for scalability. But, finding such an analytics-heavy RMS tool is time-consuming.
Our top pick for you is Flame Analytics.
Thanks to Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI), Flame Analytics helps in a complete transformation of physical spaces. With Flame Analytics, you can now easily:
- Understand your visitors’ behavior
- Measure the performance of the venue
- Connect with your clients
- Create and deliver memorable and unique experiences
Our next recommendation is LS Nav. Pioneering consumer analytics, this tool ensures you have every data and information to make critical business decisions. Its advanced reporting and analysis make inventory management, auto-replenishment tools, and price and campaign management easy to take action on the fetched data. What’s more, it’s multi-level user interface makes cross-selling and upselling easy.
Conclusion
Your retail store success depends significantly upon the choice of tools, but that is not the end game. Sure, the above tools and tips can alleviate the complexities of running the store. But to witness momentum, you need more than high-performance tools.
With the above retail store management tools, you need strategic planning, human resources, and execution. The devices are only a means to declutter your space to improve efficiency and productive work. This means everything depends on the heart of your business operations, your audience.
Understanding your customer’s most significant pain points and frustrations will give you insights to develop creative solutions for problems that your customers face during brand interactions or purchases. To do this, you need to keep your feedback loop open all the time.
What’s more, your customers can guide you to the tools that are the best match for your business needs.
So now, when you have a comprehensive idea of how and which tools are your retail store’s strategic growth partner, there is just one question to answer — when are you deploying them in your retail store?
Author bio
Atreyee Chowdhury works full-time as an Instructional Designer and is passionate about writing. She has helped many small and medium-scale businesses achieve their content marketing goals with her carefully crafted content that is both informative and engaging. She lives in Bangalore, India with her husband and parents. She loves to read, experiment with different cuisines, travel, and explore the latest content marketing and L&D trends in her free time. You can reach her on Linkedin or write to her at atreyee.c@gmail.com to discuss your content marketing requirements.
