The retail sector has always been a busy, evolving place where new challenges and opportunities are waiting right around the next corner. When the global pandemic sent everyone home to work, shop and live, retailers had to pivot quickly to the virtual sales and distribution environment. Some were ready and others were not.
Fortunately, most retailers successfully endured the uncertainty and are now seeking new ways to streamline their operations in the midst of a labor shortage, continued supply chain disruptions and other external challenges.
“The economic outlook for much of the world looks set to be a rocky path over the next year, and retail has traditionally been among the first industries to feel the bumps in the road. This is likely to cause further headaches for bricks ‘n’ mortar retailers that are still in the process of recovering from the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic,” Bernard Marr writes in Forbes. “But it’s also challenging online e-tailers to continue to innovate, to ensure that customers’ more limited disposable income continues to flow in their direction.”
Right now, for example, many of them are dealing with a period of high inflation where the costs of everything from groceries and clothing to luxury goods are getting more expensive. Concurrently, supply chain disruption is negatively impacting operations as stocks run low, encouraging some retailers to push prices up even further.
For help, more retailers are turning to technology to address their current issues and begin planning for future scale and success. “Leverage the power and potential of technology to provide customers with new and exciting ways to browse, buy and save,” Marr writes. “Both online and offline, retailers are turning to technology in a number of innovative ways.”
Here’s What NetSuite Offers Growing Retailers
NetSuite Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) can help retailers unify their operations on a single platform, take full advantage of automation and tie together the disparate pieces of technology—most of which don’t share data with one another—that they’ve historically relied on.
The retailer that was running on a mix of different applications, spreadsheets and email (for data sharing), for example, sees instantaneous benefits when its inventory management, customer relationship management, e-commerce platform, point of sale and other applications are available on a single platform and sharing one single source of truth.
NetSuite helps retail companies deliver the ideal customer experience across all channels with a single platform. It enables real-time global inventory and order management, thus allowing retailers to create a “buy-, return- and fulfill from anywhere” experience. This is exactly the experience that today’s customers are looking for, and NetSuite helps retailers deliver it.
Some of the key capabilities that retailers get when they work with ERP Success Partners to implement NetSuite include (but aren’t limited to):
- Real-time financials and accounting. Know your numbers across all store locations, marketplaces and ecommerce with a proven financial management system that helps you to understand profitability and grow your business.
- Better insights. Gain real-time access to the financial and operational performance of your retail business.
- Operational improvements. Automate transaction flow and reduce manual data entry to eliminate errors and improve time to value.
- Easier risk and compliance management. Maintain compliance with applicable accounting standards while establishing control and enabling audit trails.
- An in-store point of sale (POS) that transforms the in-store experience. Your sales associates will be able to engage with customers anywhere in the store with a mobile POS device that helps you accelerate the transaction process, while delivering personalized customer service.
- Cross-channel fulfillment. Offer shoppers a combination of cross-channel order and fulfillment options, like buy online pickup in store or buy online return in store, so they can choose from where they order, receive and return products.
- A consistent and relevant customer experience. With NetSuite Customer Relationship Management (CRM), retailers can give everyone who interfaces with customers—sales, support and service—access to real-time customer data such as preferences, transactions and interactions to enable them to provide consistent service experiences across touchpoints.
- Improved inventory management. Simplify the management of your inventory and supplier relationships, optimize the use of your inventory, reduce handling cost, optimize cash flow, and deliver products to your customers when and where they want them.
- Streamlined order management. Ensure consistent, efficient order management across all channels and fulfillment options throughout the order lifecycle, enabling retailers to deliver on customer expectations and boost profits.
- Integrate e-commerce and financial activity. Since NetSuite unifies e-commerce with your back-office systems, you have a single source of customer, order and inventory data to power your website and provide a more relevant and engaging online experience.
NetSuite is ideal for the retail industry for many different reasons. As customers push for more personalization, choices and buying options, retailers will need robust, modern technology platforms that can help them continue delivering on their promises. NetSuite also helps companies address their challenges, deal with complexities like supply chain constraints and build stronger company loyalty in a sector that’s known for its highly-competitive nature.
Isn’t it time you jumped into NetSuite to get a complete view of and control over your growing retail business? ERP Success Partners is standing by, ready to help you make that move.
