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Merchandising software helps retailers plan and execute merchandise operations, including deciding which items to stock, where to stock them, when to promote them and how to price them. It eliminates the guesswork that retailers have been conducting for years, often based on subjective experience and formulas in Excel spreadsheets. Core features for merchandising systems include pricing engines that help retailers price items based on competitors’ prices, gross profit margins, demand, past sales performance and vendor incentives. Systems also help retailers recognize where given items sell best and under what conditions. Analytical tools help retailers see the impact of their decisions to better plan future merchandising strategies.
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MultiFlex RMS General Merchandise is a cloud-based retail management solution for single and multi-location retail stores. Key features include point of sale management, accounting, inventory, staff management, CRM and marketing. ...Read more
RetailSTAR POS Software by CAM is an on-premise POS solution for specialty retail shops such as clothing stores, shoe stores, sporting goods retailers, gift and hobby shops, and health food stores. RetailSTAR targets small to mids...Read more
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The NCR Counterpoint solution includes an e-mail marketing tool, integrated e-commerce, mobile alerting, built-in gift card and customer loyalty programs and hardware specifically designed for the retail environment. The NCR ...Read more
ProphetLine is an on-premise point of sale (POS) solution that caters to small and midsize businesses across industries such as footwear and apparel, electronics and appliances, furniture and home decor, sporting goods, general me...Read more
Founded in 1986, the retail software suite from Cybex includes point of sale, inventory management, distribution and replenishment, warehouse management, CRM, and e-commerce. The Cybex Enterprise Retail Suite focuses on infor...Read more
VAI’s is an independent software developer and the author of S2K Enterprise, an award winning cloud-based ERP solution utilized by customers operating across the distribution, manufacturing, specialty retail, and service sectors, ...Read more
OneStep by Business Control Systems is an on-premise point-of-sale (POS) solution that caters to brick and mortar retailers and provides the functionalities to process transactions, control inventory and purchases and more. The so...Read more
RetailEdge is an on-premise, retail POS solution designed for small and midsize businesses. It offers mobile POS, multi-location support, website integration, credit card processing and gift card management functionalities within ...Read more
Aptos is a provider of cloud-based retail management solutions, offering small and midsize retailers tools to manage their business operations and customer engagements. Their solutions are suitable for wide range of retail busines...Read more
GoldTech Retail Manager is a retail management and point of sale system designed for small and midsize retail businesses. It offers inventory management, work order management, purchasing, receiving and CRM within a suite. The pro...Read more
ChainDrive is an omni-channel retail management solution designed for retailers, e-tailers, and wholesalers. The solution is designed for apparel, footwear, sporting goods, jewelry, home goods, department store and specialty retai...Read more
RB Pool and Spa Software completely manages retail and service with PCs, tablets, smartphones and laptops. With the consolidation of retail and service into a single system, regardless of your business size, you'll see an immediat...Read more
Cegid provides cloud-based retail software to fashion and luxury, beauty, as well as specialty retailers. The system is built on a single, centralized database that is shared across all channels and updated in real time with custo...Read more
Maplewave is a provider of retail management software solution and professional services for telecommunications, pharmacy and retail industry. Key features include video chat, queue management, appointment manager, digital marketi...Read more
Jesta I.S. is a leading supplier of integrated software solutions for midsize and large retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers specializing in branded goods, apparel, footwear, hard goods and specialty industries. Jesta's c...Read more
RealTime POS is a hybrid (offered as cloud service or on-premise), point of sale and retail management system that serves a variety of both hard and soft good retail segments, including apparel, sporting goods, home décor, jewelry...Read more
4,000+ customers in 45 countries are running iVend Retail by CitiXsys Americas Inc., an integrated suite of applications that delivers sales and operational tools for stores including e-commerce, mobility and more....Read more
The retail merchandising software market has become increasingly complex over the past decade. Large ERP vendors and retail specialists have blurred the lines between inventory management, merchandising and supply chain management, making the merchandising market appear much more complex than it really is.
In order to help you navigate your software purchase, we've written this buyer’s guide to help you understand the market and know where to begin your research.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
What Is Merchandising Software?
Deployment Strategies
Benefits and Potential Issues
Market Trends to Understand
The Merchandising Vendor Landscape
Small and mid-sized retailers can learn a lesson that tier-one retailers have learned the hard way: merchandise planning can and should be a precise science. If not, poor merchandise decisions will usually lead to lost profits. On the most basic level, merchandising software helps retailers plan and execute merchandise operations, including deciding which items to stock, where to stock them, when to promote them and how to price them. It eliminates the guesswork that retailers have been conducting for years, often based on subjective experience and formulas in Excel spreadsheets.
Core features for merchandising systems include pricing engines that help retailers price items based on competitors’ prices, gross profit margins, demand, past sales performance and vendor incentives. Systems also help retailers recognize where given items sell best and under what conditions. Analytical tools help retailers see the impact of their decisions to better plan future merchandising strategies.
Buyers of merchandise management software will essentially have two options: implement a best-of-breed package or a complete retail suite. Best-of-breed buyers will enjoy being able to purchase a merchandising system that exactly matches their needs, while they will face the challenge of integrating it with their existing applications. Integrated suite buyers will like having one, integrated system, while they will face a larger spend and a potentially more complex implementation. The decision will be based largely on retailers’ existing applications, their immediate needs, and their budgets.
Properly implemented merchandise management systems should yield a number of benefits that impact multiple aspects of the enterprise. The most common benefits include the following:
Optimized inventory. Robust analytical tools offer insight into key merchandise decisions, such as: Which items sell the best at which locations? What are the sales rates of items in different seasons? Which inventory mixes and item pairings lead to increased cross-sales? Being able to answer these questions intelligently enables retailers to have the right quantities items on sale at the right time. Cross sales are key sources of profit margin growth as well.
Increased revenue. Due to a better understanding of consumer demand, retailers should be able to maximize revenue by increasing sales of hot-selling items and preventing overstocks of items that move slowly. Integrated item pricing engines help staff price and discount items to leverage buying trends and inventory levels.
Improved efficiency and productivity of staff. Employees in supply chain and merchandising departments should find that formal solutions save them time from performing redundant tasks in Excel and other programs. Having all efforts centralized leads to less wasted time and more effective employees, allowing them them to focus on productive tasks that improve the company.
Improved customer service. Retailers can expect to keep customers happy and keep them returning when they find what they are looking for at the right time. They will also spend less time trying to help find customers out-of-stock or back-ordered items, saving time and reducing buyer frustration.
As with all technology implementations, there are a few potential issues to consider when comparing solutions for retail merchandising. The most common concerns we hear about are related to ease of use and costs. This first risk is a risk common to most enterprise IT implementations. IT purchasers should ensure that the system is not overly complex and should not try to save costs by reducing training. Proper training is essential to merchandise systems and improper training is a large contributor to failed implementations. Like most enterprise systems with robust analytical tools, merchandise systems can be very expensive, but the costs of not having a formal system are very high. Retailers should pay close attention to revenue and profit margin growth after implementing merchandising software to gauge their overall return on investment (ROI). Most enterprise retailers should find that a properly implemented system will lead to a positive ROI.
Various trends impact the retail merchandising solutions market. The primary trends include the following:
The retail merchandising market becomes much less cluttered when buyers approach it with their respective deployment strategies in mind.
Buyers interested in... | Should evaluate these systems |
Vendors who offer merchandising only on a best-of-breed basis | JDA |
Vendors who offer merchandising on a best-of-breed basis AND as part of an integrated suite | SAP, Epicor, Jesta Vision |
Vendors who offer merchandising only as part of an integrated retail suite | Celerant, Cybex |