ERP for Retail: What You Should Know & Important Features to Look for

If you are planning to install an Enterprise Resource Planning software in your business, you must choose the best software for yourself. It is a fact that no one business operates the exact same way as the other business. Hence, if something works perfectly well for your competition it will not necessarily make wonders for you. You have to find your own way and need to choose an ERP solution that will help you grow and stay competitive. Let us find out some of the features that your ERP system must offer you and how to choose such software.

Important Features Your ERP Must Have.

Multichannel

The Retail Industry has changed throughout the years and this trend is going to continue as long as there are progress and advancements in technology. One vital concept used in retail today is multichannel. This is a new way of doing business for many retailers. In the multichannel business system, retailers focus on offering hassle-free shopping experiences to customers irrespective of the channel or platforms they use to buy retailer’s offerings. Hence, it is crucial that the ERP software you choose is compatible to manage all the sales channels you use. It should be able to do everything from downloading orders, making invoices, monitoring inventory levels, and updating every platform with the relevant data. 

Integrated CRM

Almost every ERP software in Dubai comes with in-built CRM features as a standard setting. And it is crucial. Customer is the king and always will be.  CRM software helps you understand their buying habits, trends, purchase history, preferences, etc. Using this data your business can interact with customers through special offers or customized discounts, etc. This helps cater to your customer base and visitors with a positive personalized experience.

Hence, it is important that whenever you choose an ERP system for your business, you ensure that the system offers you CRM features too. 

As a smart retail business, you should not miss any chance of walking in your customer’s shoes and check if the business flow and work culture (or in the case of inline platform U/UX of the web/app) is robust enough to meet customer demands.

Integrated Warehouse Management

There are many warehouse management systems in the market, however, you must go with the one that can efficiently integrate with your ERP system.

To give an example, whenever you count inventory levels the system must update the count across the sales channels and export the data to the finance department for reports automatically. Whenever you are receiving any inventory, it must get reflected in the system immediately.

Integrated Bookkeeping

Some ERP software in the market does not allow you to integrate bookkeeping and accounting systems. This means businesses have to maintain these records separately in other system cresting data silos and limiting business’s ability to have real-time access to comprehensive business data. Once, it is recommended to install an ERP solution that offers you a combined solution. 

Integrated POS

Point of Sale software is more than just a cash register. ERP must help in exporting and sharing all the relevant data to in-store staff, such as customer purchase history, buying patterns, product availability, and product details, etc. And to make this happen, your POS and ERO should interact with each other.

You might feel that finding the right ERP for your business is tricky, however with thorough research, you are most likely to come across a few of the best ERP vendors in the market. You can also customize the ERP solution as per your needs by keeping only those features that are necessary. 

Make sure you ask every little doubt, conduct a demo, take the opinion of the business stakeholder and those who are going to be the end-users of the ERP, etc in order to choose the perfect ERP for your business.