The world of retail is ever-shifting to meet new challenges and demands, so finding the right retail order management systems is vital in helping you stay ahead of the competition.
Flexible and accessible retail management systems
Vardells Retail Management System, RetailConnect, is purpose-built to offer an easy-to-use and flexible system that can be adapted to any sector within the retail industry. It is designed to allow a real-time and customisable ecosystem that users can access to view, edit and manage information across all of their stores from one location. Ecommerce systems can also benefit from RetailConnect, allowing users to quickly and easily review purchases and manage orders.
Features
Retail Connect has a range of features that can help industries and professionals within the retail industry make quick and easy decisions across a range of modules.
Retail Order Management:
Order Management is one of the most important elements in retail, and plays a huge part in not only making sure your customer receives their products but also how your business is regarded. Mistakes made through retail order management can affect your reputation deeply, which is why we provide a range of order management features to help you stay on top of any issues:
- Suggested order generation based on chosen parameters
- Automatically generate orders based on stock minimums
- Online order amendment and submission
- Single order across multiple stores
- Create stock orders quickly by scanning barcodes and uploading
- Full audit trail and reports
Inventory Management:
Understanding the movement of your inventory is necessary for running a successful warehouse and retail business. Our Warehouse Connect and Retail Connect systems allow you to monitor your inventory from any location, providing you with accurate stock data to make informed decisions.
- Stock checks/takes
- Transfers
- Adjustments
- Write-offs
Reports & Analytics:
If you don’t understand how your business is performing, it can be very difficult to continue making gains. Vardells overcomes this by offering easy-to-create and follow reports, using real-time analytical data.
- Visual presentation of performance measures
- Identify and correct negative trends
- Measure efficiencies/inefficiencies
- Generate detailed reports showing new trends
- More informed decisions
- Align strategies and organisational goals
Products & Pricing:
Pricing products by groups or branches can be incredibly challenging, but very effective when done properly. Vardells allows businesses to make branch and group pricing decisions with ease, so all you need to do is follow the data provided through detailed reports.
- Branch pricing
- Group pricing
- Reporting
Forecast & Demand Planning:
Forecasting is one of the most important and difficult challenges a business can undertake. If you forecast incorrectly, you could be left with large amounts of stock that you are unable to shift as it falls out of demand. At Vardells, we make forecasting and demand planning as straightforward as possible, so you make predictions based on year-on-year and month-on-month trends and data.
Sourcing & Purchasing:
It’s vital that sourcing goods is as straightforward as possible, so you can spend less time focused on which supplier offers the best deal, and more time focused on building your business. Vardells’ intuitive design allows users to review suppliers and the latest prices from a single location, so they can quickly and easily make a decision. From there, purchasing is just as easy, with all the purchasing information available in real-time from a single screen.
Allocation & Replenishment:
Allocation and replenishment can be completed rapidly through Vardells’ highly accessible solutions, which allow you to review each of your shopfronts from any location. From there, it’s as easy as picking your supplier, and allowing automated allocation and replenishment processes to take over. These automated processes can naturally be adapted to your needs, so you can make changes at any time.
Integrate
Vardells offer an integration service bespoke to your business. This means our experienced software engineers will take your current ERP and eCommerce systems and integrate the powerful features of Retail Connect into them. This is a great way to make the most of new and current systems while streamlining our operations. If you would like to integrate your systems with Retail Connect, get in touch with our team today, or learn more on our integration page.
Benefits to different job roles
Managing Director
Large retail businesses have a lot of ground to cover, and Managing Directors are required to make decisions quickly. They also need to ensure that their teams can utilise each piece of software to its fullest, so they can work quickly and efficiently to complete orders and re-allocate stock.
As well as being open and easy to use for staff on the ground, Retail Connect is designed to help Managing Directors in a host of ways:
- Straightforward and easy-to-follow reporting is available to help Managing Directors take decisive action across their stores
- Retail Connect emphasises accessibility and ease of use, so teams will be able to utilise it to its full potential without the need for excessive and expensive training
- View current business performance through customisable KPI dashboards, allowing you and other senior managers to converge and discuss future targeting
- Follow audit trails to their conclusion through a fully realised auditing process
- Access the full suite completely remotely, allowing you to review the individual stores or the business as a whole from any location at any time
Operations Director
Managing the stock operations for a host of retail outlets can be a challenge, especially when your system doesn’t function at a real-time capacity, or your reporting data is inaccurate.
Vardells’ retail management system is fully equipped to help Operations Directors make the most of their time and resources through a range of powerful features:
- Stock levels are updated in real-time across all stores through the use of a barcode scanner system. This means your warehouse and in-store teams can continue to work effectively with the knowledge that as the stock goes out, the count will remain as accurate as possible.
- Teams also won’t have to key in information for each piece of stock that arrives. Once again, simple barcode scanning will help each staff member understand what stock has arrived and the different elements that make up that stock, allowing for easy arrangement in shopfronts.
- Forecasting has never been more straightforward with Retail Connect. Input your suppliers and keep up to date with their operations from a single location.
- Utilise the experience of our software team to further integrate your systems with your app, or other sites like Amazon.
- Update your retail management system as and when your operations demand, so your workflows aren’t bloated unnecessarily.
Finance Manager
Finance Managers have the difficult task of keeping track of expenses and ensuring the payments and invoices are tracked and easy to follow up on. A lack of software integration can mean that Finance Managers and their teams are doubling their workload by inputting the same information twice.
Retail Connect works with accounting software to help Finance Managers and their teams efficiently and effectively manage accounts across all stores:
- Automate processes so e-commerce and store sales are automatically accounted for in ERP and other financial pieces of software
- Easily track and monitor outstanding payments and invoices to ensure full reconciliation.
- Allocate revenue to individual stores and gain a deeper understanding of store performance, allowing for effective reporting.
Warehouse Manager
Warehouse Managers need their teams to be able to work efficiently, and require an effective internal infrastructure to ensure that stock levels are maintained. Having a good understanding of when inbound goods are due is also vital to maintaining a strong warehouse workflow.
Retail Connect is designed to work seamlessly with warehouses and can have truly impressive benefits, such as:
- Allowing Warehouse Managers to have an overview of stock, counted in real-time, through the implementation of Vardells barcode scanning system implemented alongside Retail Connect and/or Warehouse Connect
- Offering functionality to manage inbound and outbound goods with ease, so you can prepare your warehouse staff for stock arrivals and order shipping
- Alerting you to low stocks, and automatically replenishing that stock if ordered to. This can be especially useful for stock on repeat orders.
- Working alongside couriers so that you can choose the right courier for your shipment.
- Accessing a wider business dashboard, allows you to see stock that has been allocated for shipment, or is being held until payment is received.
Warehouse Managers would also benefit from implementing Warehouse Connect – our retail warehouse management system – which can integrate seamlessly with Retail Connect and other ERP and eCommerce functions. Warehouse Connect allows you to implement a fresh warehouse infrastructure built on automation and hardware, instead of physically counting stock.
Sales and Marketing Manager
Sales and Marketing teams have the persistent task of making sure their brand is being seen, and their strategies are in alignment. This can be difficult though, when outdated solutions don’t allow the two teams full access to the information required to make effective data-driven decisions that persuade customers to use and invest in your products.
Our systems allow Sales and Marketing teams the opportunity to fully sync strategies while allowing for a range of other tools and benefits:
- Manage your sales and marketing data from anywhere at any time. This means your sales team can quickly grasp new promotions and implement them within stores.
- Add layers of security, so only specific team members can give the all-clear on new promotions or promotional prices. This simple feature prevents human error and can help prevent any issues before sales are made, especially within e-commerce.
- EPOS Connect can work independently or alongside Retail Connect to allow users the ability to apply bundle vouchers, time-limited offers, discounts and more.
- Loyalty cards and point integration can be fully utilised, providing customers with helpful ways to save money and keep them coming back to your brand.
- It is easy to manage retail orders through Vardells systems allowing Sales and Marketing Managers to offer refunds and feedback to the customer on the progress of their order.
Store Manager
Store Managers frequently run into issues where stock and promotions are due because they lack systems to easily track new deliveries and quickly receive updates on promotions. They also play a large role in managing store footfall but may struggle in helping customers make a purchase with outdated systems.
Vardells provides for store managers up and down the country through Retail Connect and EPOS Connect by offering a number of helpful features:
- Store Managers can enjoy the benefits of new hardware through EPOS Connect, which allows customers to quickly and easily complete a sale before carrying on. This solution offers the opportunity for more customers to make purchases, increasing your daily revenue.
- Keeping up with promotions can be difficult if they are communicated ineffectively. Store Managers can use EPOS Connect to gain a deeper understanding of what promotions are currently on, and as such make the most of that specific promotion.
- Through the wider dashboard, Store Managers can see stock counts throughout stores, so they can quickly and easily request stock where needed.
- With various integrations, Managers can utilise Click and Collect to offer out-of-store hours and provide a greater and quicker service to customers.
FAQs
What is Order Management in Retail?
Order management in retail is the process of completing a transaction between a business and a customer. In general, order management begins from the moment the order is placed to the moment the customer receives that order, although it may continue further if the customer is unhappy with their purchase.
Effective order management is essential to any retail business. Poor order management can lead to customer dissatisfaction, and lead to issues in processing and shipping if a customer request is not recognised once the order is placed.
What are the 3 steps of order processing?
The three steps to the order management process are:
Step 1 – Receive the customer’s order. This may be done online or in-store.
Step 2 – Fulfil the order. If made through ecommerce, this could involve using the customer’s address to ship directly to them. In a store setting, this is as simple as completing the transaction once the product has been scanned.
Step 3 – Post-sales process. This can involve a number of things, but in general, it involves handling any issues that the customer may have with the product, and dealing with returns or refunds if necessary. It may also involve customer satisfaction follow-up. Asking the customer to review their experience adds to your overall brand image, and is also useful in helping you to improve your processes or training.
What is an example of retail management?
Retail management is all about managing the experience that the customer receives. If you mainly focus on ecommerce sales, this could involve making sure your website is easy to navigate, and purchases can be made with minimal interruption.
In a shopfront setting, this involves laying out the store in a clear way, helping customers find what they need before making a quick and easy purchase. It may also involve customer service, and helping to make sure your customer leaves the store satisfied with their experience.
What is a retail order management system?
Order management systems (or OMS) in retail refer to tools that help ecommerce and retail businesses keep track of orders, as well as stock and inventory, and fulfilment. Some systems also allow businesses to monitor processes and people too, as well as suppliers and partners.
Learn more about Vardells solutions
To learn more about our retail order management software, Retail Connect, view our blogs on Real-time data, POS & Stock Management and Insight and Vision today.
EPOS Connect and Warehouse Connect can also help your business thrive through a range of functions to help improve processes both in stores and warehouses. View our blogs on The Benefits of Real-Time Data Reporting and How EPOS Systems Can Improve Employee Management to see how these solutions can benefit you.
Download our Free Guide
We’ve prepared a free guide to help you understand what solution might be best for your warehouse operations. Download your guide today.
Arrange a demo today
Get in touch today to discuss how we can help you, and what services we can provide to help streamline your workflows. We can also arrange a demo for you, so you can see the power of Vardells systems for yourself.