What Types of Software Can Optimize Your Retail Business?
Posted on 8th Mar 2021
Technology has certainly become influential in the retail industry over the last decade, and its influence keeps growing. eMarketer projects that the total retail market will reach nearly $28 trillion by 2020.
If you want to run a successful retail business today, you have to connect with your customers when and how they want. As technology touches every stage of your customers’ buying journey, it’s vital to choose the right retail software solution for your company.
In this article, we talk about the main types of retail software that can help to provide a seamless and consistent customer shopping experience. Let’s consider each of them in detail.
Ecommerce software
Ecommerce software allows a business to sell products and services online. Whenever you buy or sell something over the internet, you’re involved in ecommerce. Ecommerce software enables online store owners to add and remove products, fulfil orders, process payments, and so on. Examples of ecommerce software include Shopify and 3dcart.
Types of ecommerce software
On-premise. You need to install on-premise software on a local server or computer that will be managed by a team that handles manual updates, fixes problems, and so on.
Software as a service. This solution is more hands-off because all updates, new features, and patches are applied automatically. A SaaS solution allows you full customization and flexibility with quick launch for a low cost.
Benefits of ecommerce software
Quickly start your online business. Most ecommerce software provides an easy-to-use website builder for creating online stores, including pre-built templates. All you need to do is put your store elements in place, add product descriptions, prices, and images, and set up a shopping cart and you’re ready to sell online.
Global market for your products. With ecommerce software, you can reach anyone anytime from any location.
Open 24/7. One of the biggest advantages of ecommerce is that your store is available 24 hours a day. With ecommerce software you aren’t restricted by the work schedule of your employees or your physical location. An ecommerce system provides total automation so you don’t need to constantly monitor your store.
Cost efficiency. Unlike a physical store, ecommerce software doesn’t require you to rent expensive space in a prime location and employ sales staff. All you need to do is pay monthly for an ecommerce system that reduces your expenses and maximizes profits.
Quality customer service. Ecommerce software offers customers a quality online shopping experience. Your customers can easily select products, place orders, and pay with a convenient online payment system.
Key features of ecommerce software
Product catalog. The product catalog shows your customers the products you’re selling. Your online catalog should contain product information such as product names, descriptions, images, and prices. Your product catalog must be designed to attract your customers.
Search. This feature makes it easy for customers to find products. Ecommerce software provides the opportunity to list, categorize, and update products and provide product descriptions.
Ordering system. To allow customers to make purchases, you need an ordering system. An ordering system lets customers add products to their cart, calculates the total, and collects shipping addresses, billing addresses, payment information, and other information as part of the ordering process.
Shopping cart. This feature allows customers to put products they want to purchase in one place. A shopping cart provides information about delivery methods and payment and, of course, allows customers to submit orders. It’s important to note that a shopping cart should detect the difference between a completed and abandoned sale.
Inventory management. This feature allows sellers to manage every product in inventory, categorizing products by department, class, vendor, location, fabric, season, color, or any other attribute a seller defines.
Customer management. The seller-customer relationship may continue after an order is fulfilled. Sometimes sellers need to process requests for exchanges or returns. To improve this experience, a company should demonstrate perfect customer service. A customer management feature helps manage customers by gathering and storing information such as customer name, email or phone number, shipping address, and order history.
Payment processing. Without this feature, customers can’t purchase products. You can integrate online payment services, payment gateways, and seller account providers to provide secure and reliable payments.
Integrations. Integrations allow you to handle different tasks including email marketing, accounting, payment processing, and order fulfillment. Integration with various business apps and third-party platforms allows you to do all of the above within a single piece of software.
Who can benefit from ecommerce software?
Ecommerce software is a good choice for retailers, sellers, and merchants who are seeking to gain an edge in a highly competitive market.
Unsurprisingly, the majority of ecommerce software users are in the retail industry. However, 25 percent of users are in other industries such as food services, hospitality, and business services.
An ecommerce platform provides online businesses with tons of benefits. Ecommerce software saves time, money, and effort while providing customers with first-rate service. It simplifies and automates every selling process for your online business.
Inventory control software
Inventory control software is a system that handles all aspects of managing a company’s inventory: tracking, managing, and organizing product sales, material purchases, and other production processes. Inventory management software often works with barcodes, radio-frequency identification (RFID), and wireless tracking technology to support inventory tracking and control. Zoho Inventory and Logiwa are good examples of inventory control software solutions.
Benefits of inventory control software
Thorough planning and product stock predictions. Inventory management software allows companies to plan ahead since the system can track product status and extract historical information to forecast company sales.
Timely delivery. One of the key benefits of inventory management software is that it can prevent delivery delays. A software solution even enables customers to see the status of their orders and track order movement.
More satisfied customers. Thanks to personal service and precise answers at any time, customers will be more satisfied with your service and approach. For example, with an inventory control system, your customers can track order status.
Key features of inventory control software
Inventory control allows you to track inventory and stock with automatically updated stock levels each time a sale is made.
Order management allows you to synchronize orders with inventory and receive sales reports in real time.
Inventory optimization allows you to keep the right amount of stock at any given time. Inventory optimization helps to optimize a company’s internal operations thanks to automated demand forecasting.
An accounting system automates invoicing and provides greater visibility over costs and profits with multi-currency pricing and more.
Sales reports provide deep insights for making better business decisions. This feature allows you to generate sales history and order reports by channel, customer, location, product, and so on.
Barcode inventory management allows you to scan barcodes of items and watch the fields get auto-populated every time you create an invoice or sales or purchase order.
Order fulfillment lets you automate and fulfill a large volume of orders at lower costs. For better visibility, order fulfillment solutions allow you to integrate processes, locations, and channels.
Batch and expiry tracking provide better product traceability, thus helping to maintain better customer relationships and improve business workflows.
Inventory reports give real-time insights into stock movement.
Price lists allow you to manage custom price lists in different currencies and for various customer types, product categories, time zones, and so on.
Who can benefit from inventory control software?
In today’s business environment, even small and mid-sized businesses have come to rely on automated inventory management systems. Inventory control software is becoming essential in wholesale, retail, service delivery, and other industries by helping companies track their products and distribute them to all interested customers. For firms operating in industries that feature high volume turnover of raw materials or finished products, tracking systems have become a key component of business strategies focused on increasing productivity and maintaining competitiveness.
By: Anastasia Z.