Managing a retail business in today’s competitive environment requires the right mix of people, processes and technology, all of which must work together in order for the retail machine to run smoothly.
By linking all aspects of a multi-channel, multi-location retail business—including ecommerce, point of sale (POS), order management, marketing inventory, financials and customer service—NetSuite’s cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform helps companies streamline their processes, increase their efficiencies and improve their profitability.
These “wins” are all critical in a world where retailers have been riding out the Covid-19 pandemic at the local, national and global level. “2021 was a year of adjustments in which the economy slowly recovered from the outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic, a year that many believed would mean a return to normalcy,” Global Trade points out in 5 Key Retail Industry Trends for 2022. “But the new Omicron variant rocked the world once again as a fresh reminder that, no, Covid has not gone away yet.”
In the article, Tiendeo’s Alfredo Pérez highlights the key retail trends and tools that he expects to emerge in 2022. He sees an increased focus on ecommerce and digital channels; more social shopping; and a race to put the customer experience above all else as just some of the top trends that will reign this year.
“The main challenge facing retailers today is to identify the right time and channels to engage with both potential and repeat customers in order to offer them a seamless and frictionless shopping experience,” Pérez tells Global Trade. Knowing this, retailers are developing multi-touch strategies that give consumers alternatives and conversion points when shopping via mobile, web, ecommerce or in physical stores.
Supporting an Omni-Channel Experience
As retailers work to meet their customers’ ever-changing demands while adapting to the evolving business environment—and within the context of labor shortages and supply chain disruptions—they need unified business systems that can run their multifaceted operations. Those that rely on individual applications, spreadsheets and manual processes have faced steep challenges during the pandemic and will continue to encounter these obstacles in the coming years.
To keep their retail machines running smoothly, more companies are turning to NetSuite and implementation experts like ERP Success Partners, which together deliver a complete technology solution for online and offline retailers. Using application programming interfaces and ERP Success Partners’ expertise, retailers can also connect many of their existing software programs directly into NetSuite, thus reducing implementation and training times.
SuiteSuccess Drives Fast Results
With a deep understanding of retail businesses and the many challenges they face, NetSuite developed a SuiteSuccess implementation methodology that helps retailers get up and running on the ERP quickly and efficiently. With SuiteSuccess, retailers get the benefit of NetSuite’s experience in the industry and an agile and phased approach that transforms businesses and drives results.
SuiteSuccess delivers hundreds of pre-built reports and value-driven dashboards developed from years of real-world use by thousands of people in similar roles in retail. Once in place, NetSuite gives retailers a single view of their customers, orders, items and inventory. In some cases, NetSuite has helped retailers improve their gross margins by 2-5 percent.
“NetSuite empowers retailers to deliver on those expectations with an end-to-end solution and single commerce cloud platform that combines ecommerce, POS and order management with back office systems,” the software provider points out.
“Whether you are a retailer with multiple channels, brands or business models, selling across multiple regions and countries,” it continues, “NetSuite enables you to manage your entire business unified with a single cloud system, available anytime, anywhere.”
Responding to Customer Demands
By automating navigation across various omni-channels, facilitating the data sharing across multiple different systems and supporting multi-country/multi-currency business expansion, NetSuite helps companies make well-informed, on-the-spot decisions that lead to the best possible outcomes.
“The current retail environment is set up for retailers to respond directly and quickly to customer demands,” SelectHub points out in in Role of ERP in Retail, “whether it’s customer service through a social media platform or sending an automated notification when a package is delivered.”
