Retail automation software is Nervous-System of Retail Business. It provides the following benefits such as
- Inventory Control
- Purchase
- Bar-coding
- Sales (POS)
- Purchase & Sales Returns
- Repackaging and Warehousing etc.
- Stock Transfer
- Financial Accounting
- Physical Stock Verification and Adjustment
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Management Information System (MIS)
- Chain Store Management (Multilocation) Etc.
Retail Software implementations vary in their features, ease of installation, syntax, and semantics.
The purpose of this article is to give an overview of a fare Retail Software and see how it's worth. It is not trivial to switch from one Retail Software to the other, because this will usually require translating all of information to the new one.
Thus, choosing a Retail Software requires some care, taking possible future developments into account. This article will hopefully help you make that choice if the need arises.
Evaluation Criteria : Buying point-of-sale (POS) software is complex process. These are some of the point the Retailer should consider before buying a POS software.
1. Open Hardware : The software should run on any type of hardware . You have to be careful about choosing a proprietary based technology. Hardware is generally PC based and the software should support any PC.
2. Interface Capability : In old days, for most retailers, POS was a category of software that is chosen separately from back-office and other in-store systems. But today its extremely important that most of the different systems should be inbuilt.
3. Flexibility : Flexibility means being able to respond to business requirements on the fly. Flexibility means a retailer can adapt the software at their head office and then instantly download changes to the stores so that the store systems are updated in minutes rather than months.
4. Operating System : Although DOS and the various desktop versions of Windows are still frequently found at the point-of-sale, Windows 2000 and XP seems to be widely regarded by retailers as the operating platform of the future. The momentum behind XP as the operating system of choice for POS has been building.
Because of its higher levels of stability and security, XP is penetrating the store level both at the POS and the in-store processor much more strongly than the desktop versions of Windows
In short , the system should be a windows based and should support 2000 and XP.
5. Scalability :You never know what can happen in a retail business. A new format may be developed, or a merger or acquisition may take place, changing the strategic direction of an entire company overnight. It's important to be prepared, and to have a POS system that can scale to accommodate the very largest or the very smallest of stores. A good retail software should be modular. It should grow with you.
6. International Operations: The age of the global economy is here. Many retailers are expanding internationally, while others are preparing to do so. A retailer's POS system should not be an obstacle to this kind of expansion – it should be able to handle multiple currencies, languages, and local functional requirements.
7. Multiple Classes of Retailing : POS software should be able to accommodate different classes of retailing. The applications should run in multiple retail environments varying in format, size, volume, product assortment, and promotional structure.
8. Off-the-Shelf Usability : For the vast majority of retailers, it's a much better idea to buy off-the-shelf POS software than try to develop home-grown systems. Buying off-the-shelf software offers substantial cost benefits, since the software vendor is able to distribute the development costs over multiple clients. Vendors can also typically do a better job with support.
But that doesn't mean retailers should be satisfied with a "one-size-fits-all" solution. A packaged software product should be easily customizable by the retailer, without the need to alter internal source code.
9. Vendor Reliability : Buying POS software is no time for experimentation. A retailer should choose a vendor with a proven track record of installations and a large enough organization to be credible. A retailer should also want to have confidence that the vendor will be around for the long haul, and that it will be able to respond to needs quickly and provide custom development services when necessary.
"Future vision" is another important aspect of long-term vendor reliability – the ability to anticipate development needs in advance of their becoming critical. A good POS software vendor should demonstrate enough "future vision" to have already committed substantial resources to support new forms of technology such as web based reporting and data synchronization.
10. Ongoing Upgrades : A good POS software vendor should be continually enhancing its product, driven both by its expertise in how it sees the marketplace unfolding and by customer requests. When a POS software vendor does this, the result is significant advantages to its retail customers.
11. and the most important thing : EASY TO USE : so that you save money on the training and implementation. You save huge money on manpower and employee turnover can be handled easily.
