When you manufacture a product, or a range of products, the focus is immediately on getting them to the consumer as rapidly as possible. From you to your distributor network to the retailers, it’s simply primary and secondary sales occurring. The real challenge lies in the offtakes, where consumers visit stores to buy from retailers and your game needs to be on point here to ensure your products get sold in time and in range.
The challenges of general trade (GT) are different from those in modern trade (MT) but both require technology to overcome them. In GT, upselling or cross selling to retailers, building relationships, and ensuring product visibility in the store are major challenges that brands encounter. While in MT, footfall conversion coupled with stock availability and visibility of products are challenges that brands would want to resolve.
The first thing to take care of in this regard is to leverage technology to manage your retail partners and also to make life easier for them. As technology provides an edge that manual processes and human efforts cannot, it is the best option brands have to deal with the above mentioned challenges. From intelligent CuesBot product suggestions to auto scheme application to online ordering options to efficient planogram compliance to live-monitoring of deliveries and returns, to credit notes and more – technology is a gift for brands and retailers.
And that’s precisely why we bring you this list of the best options around. So that you can make an intelligent decision.
Top Retail Management Software For You
1. BeatRoute
BeatRoute is a goal-driven sales enablement platform that allows brands to run their retail operations more efficiently. It covers a variety of industries such as FMCG, Consumer Goods, Building Materials, and Manufacturing. Instead of mere automation, BeatRoute goes further; it utilises its goal-driven sales technology to enable brands to define their business goals within the system and guides their retail sales teams and channel partners to achieve those goals on the ground.
For general trade or GT, BeatRoute provides intuitive and intelligent workflows for store onboarding, beat planning, route optimization, order execution with trade schemes, visual merchandising, and feedback collection.
For modern trade or MT, BeatRoute provides workflows to ensure planogram and share of shelf compliance, prevent stock outages, and improve the productivity of merchandisers and product promoters stationed at retail stores.
As a collaborative platform, BeatRoute enables everyone from brands to channel partners and retailers to use and benefit from its components.
BeatRoute’s platform provides:
- Modularity
- Scalability
- Offline support
- All-round customer support
Founded: 2014
Free trial/demo availability: Free demo
2. Pepperi
Pepperi unifies retail audits, execution and order placement. It is a powerful retail software that focuses on user-friendliness to minimise stock outages, and to manage assets efficiently. Pepperi creates store audits, manages merchandising, and operates as a native app on iOS or Android with online-offline functionality. It also uses field data to analyse a retailer’s compliance, incentives, and available product range. Pepperi’s mobile CRM stores and displays information such as visit records, reports, order history, etc.
Founded: 2012
Free trial/demo availability: Free demo
3. Quant
Quant retail management software provides a lot of useful features for retailers like giving them the ability to combine space management and planograms with built-in task management, reporting, and automatic replenishment. Quant is a comprehensive solution that facilitates excellent communication, leading to a more seamless process. Features include floor planning, category management, and automatic ordering.
Founded: 2003
Free trial/demo availability: Free demo
4. Heartland
Heartland allows retailers to run ecommerce store operations as efficiently as a brick and mortar store by synching inventory, sales, and customer data to the point of sales (POS). It provides users the capability to generate custom fields and grids for inventory tracking and also create accurate reports for insights into stock availability. Users can integrate with Heartland’s native add-ons or tech partners such as ecommerce providers, email marketing, and customer loyalty programs.
Founded: 1997
Free trial/demo availability: No
5. SimpliField
SimpliField is touted as the first fully integrated mobile platform for retail operations, internal communications and advanced performance analytics. By bringing these features together, SimpliField promotes efficiency and adaptability for a better customer experience. Brands are able to utilise relevant KPIs so that all users are aligned to their goals. For example, the dashboard can be customised to show only relevant data and meet a variety of systems and regional requirements.
Additionally, there is the option to share interactive posts with videos, pictures and documents that further encourage interaction. For process improvement, customer feedback is readily visible, enabling efficient merchandising decisions.
Features include:
- Task Management
- Training
- Visit scheduling
- Activity Tracking
Founded: 2013
Free trial/demo availability: Free demo
6. Aptos
Aptos promotes traditional POS activities, supported by offline resiliency without the need for servers. They provide a simplistic, yet contemporary UI that can be up and running for retailers in a very short time. Retailers can change modes seamlessly between self-checkout and attendant checkout. Features include real-time monitoring of inventory, smart ordering and routing, and effective store fulfilment integration.
Aptos provides end to end order processing over a single cloud based OMS; all tasks from sales to shipments to logistics and more are carried out within the same OMS.
Founded: 1972
Free trial/demo availability: Free demo
7. Oracle ERP
Oracle comes with a set of crucial retail solutions that reveal current and future consumer needs, helping retailers shape their strategies. Personalised marketing experiences build consumer trust and in turn, profitability.
To elaborate, Oracle ERP is beneficial to retail operations as it can manage inventory, customers, track sales performance, and create financial reports.
With Oracle ERP, you get:
- The capability for managing inventory, stock movement, optimization of inventory as per demand forecasts
- A point of sale system where retailers can manage orders, transactions, and track consumer data in real-time
- A CRM module with which can monitor and track consumer interactions, manage their data, and analyse consumer behaviour. This is great for forecasting trends and boosting consumer loyalty.
- A number of financial management tools for retailers to manage their accounting, budgeting, and financial reporting.
Founded: 2012
Free trial/demo availability: Free demo
8. Microsoft Dynamics ERP
Microsoft Dynamics is focused on retail store operations and provides omnichannel sales, performance analytics, payment management, fraud prevention, and a non-complicated, low-code platform for ease of use. To prevent overstocking or stock outages, Microsoft Dynamics offers real-time inventory tracking and automated re-stocking.
With a central repository for consumer data, retailers can manage profiles, purchase history, and loyalty programs. Microsoft Dynamics also enables retailers to sell through different channels, such as physical stores and ecommerce, which allows them to reach more consumers and enhance sales. With a plethora of reporting and analytics tools, retailers get access to sales insights and inventory to greatly optimise retail operations.
Founded: 2016
Free trial/demo availability: No
Make The Right Call…
Choosing the right retail management software is more than important; it’s an absolute criticality to brands and retailers. Retail management software improves throughput, informs on stock availability, helps with returns, and analyses customer/consumer data to elevate business performance. With the variety of options available, you need to be mindful about which software product is best suited to your enterprise.
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FAQ
- What is retail management software?
Retail management software is technology that enables a brand to improve the retailer’s experience, loyalty, and ultimately, sales, through applications dedicated to inventory management, customer relationship management, rewards, ordering and more.
- What are the types of retail management software?
Retail management software functionality can be but is not limited to:
- Enterprise resource planning (ERP)
Allows different departments to work in tandem, store information via configurable interfaces, and drive effective communication.
- Inventory management
Allows for a clear view of your existing stock and also what you have projected as stock for the future.
- Customer resource management or CRM
Capable of connecting consumer profiles across online and offline stores and even generate specially personalised offers and digital receipts.
- Retail maintenance
Helps to easily identify in-store problems and schedule maintenance visits promptly.
- What are the benefits of retail management software?
- Enabling Order Management
Retail management software allows general trade retailers to place their orders online, without depending on sales reps. This makes the experience easier for the retailer and gives them complete control over ordering which often leads to bigger order baskets and even range selling.
- Ensuring Stock Availability
Online ordering on a retail management software can give retailers visibility on distributor stock for more informed ordering and boost chances of range selling.
- Offering Visibility into the Order Status
Retailers are able to track their dispatched orders after order placement. This allows them to reach out to brands or distributors in case of delays.
- Running B2B Reward Program
Retailers are able to view their loyalty points and redemption history on modern retail management software. This keeps them incentivised as such visibility pushes them to perform better and sell your product over your competitor’s products.
- Managing Returns
Bad or unsealed products are inevitable at some point for retailers. A retail management software allows easy returns and feedback management to ensure quick returns, replacements, credit notes, and tracking.
- Promoting products and targeted schemes
A retailer app makes it easy for brands to promote product launches, share product ranges, and communicate lucrative schemes to retailers.
- What should you look for in retail management software?
An ideal retail management software would:
- Enable customers to check inventory anytime from anywhere for convenience
- Help apply rewards for retailers and keep a record of points earned and points redeemed
- Suggest product recommendations, potentially enhancing sales
- Be easy to use as it would ensure that everyone, irrespective of technical prowess, would benefit from the software
- Provide easy integration capabilities across a variety of tools or apps to ensure familiarity and efficiency
