Introduction

With the transformation of the scenario from the population mostly scattered in a large number of small villages and few town to that of a few big cities with very high density, the life style of the people have changed. The life is now not so easy going but is now faced with the challenges of getting the maximum out of the minimum. Today people don’t find it convenient to move to different places to have different needs satisfied. So is the case with their shopping needs. As they don’t have enough time to visit different shops they turn to a place were shopping is convenient and all needs are satisfied under one roof. That is why shopping malls and convenient stores are increasing by the month in almost every city and the customers are leaving behind the across the street shops behind them in favour of malls.

These malls are rapidly growing in numbers and in requirements. More and more is expected from the business as the number in a particular city of the same owner and that of the competitors rapidly increases. Faced with multidimensional issues like people management, customer management, merchandise management, accounts management, assets management, operations intelligence, performance management etc, today a mall cannot work just on the standards set by grocers or petty shop owners. They have their own problem and own solution. A robust and integrated computerized system is the answer to most of the problems faced by a chain of shops.

Subsystems

RetailMate by Strategic Alliance is such an answer to the many problems of a mall or a chain of malls. RetailMate covers various aspects of the retail business and has different subsystems to cater to the problems of the retail industry as stated below:

Purchase Management

Purchase management is the main stay of the business and RetailMate has one of the best purchase management system provided which covers the entire purchase management life cycle from merchandise request on depletion, request escalation to higher stores or request transfers to other stores, request conversion to purchase order request and finally generation of the Purchase order. It has integrated into it various purchase schemes and discounts management. It allows for centralized or decentralized PO generation with a single or multipoint delivery schedules.

Supply Chain Management

With dwindling margin between the MRP and DP, it is only the supply chain management which differentiates a good business from a bad one. RetailMate provides comprehensive supply chain management facilities whereat the supplier can logon to the portal and check the purchase orders or can update the status of his supplies. Internally to the business also each dispatch of merchandise can be tracked and efficiently managed with the dispatch and receipt modules of the supply chain management resulting into very low pilferage and loss. The suppliers can even check the status of their bills and payments online. RetailMate allows merchandise to be tracked and transferred on a single unit, batch or any custom defined group.

Sales Management

Sales is what the retail business is all about, better the sales management better is the result of the business. Sales management is effectively covered by various modules of the system like Point of Sale Terminal, Sales Promotion Scheme Management, Discounts Management, Delivery Slips generation, etc. The Point of Sales Terminal Screen of RetailMate is developed based on a thorough articulation-response time study so as to give the optimum output on a counter with maximum customer turnout. Not only has RetailMate the capability to manage sales but also to manage sales person at it also includes Sales Force Automation.

Demand Chain Management

Today’s businesses are really customer centric and hence businesses go to a length to satisfy the needs of the customers. RetailMate also posses Demand Chain Management modules where by customer can lodge their orders for home delivery of the goods sitting in their drawing rooms and then can trace the same. They can interact with the business and show their likes and dislikes regarding their demands.

Inventory Management

RetailMate supports comprehensive Inventory Management in many ways. The most modern concept of rolling inventory checking is also supported so as to have always near perfect figures of the stock. It offers various reports having business intelligence for the decision support like XYZ Analysis, ABC Analysis, FSN Analysis, VED Analysis, etc. out of which any can be used which fits to the nature of the business.

Account Receivables/ Account Payables

Integration is the name of the game, when it comes to manage a modern day business and RetailMate goes a step further in this direction by providing a highly integrated accounting system in which most of the task of an accountant is automatically taken care of. Its very easy for RetailMate to receive/pay money not only by the standard means of cash, cheque or credit card but also by coupons, gift vouchers, tickets, etc. The accounting system of RetailMate supports multi-tiered accounting at business level, region level, site level and department level, whereat various statement up to the level of balance sheet can be independently drawn for any of this unit.

Human Resources Management

The most important factor of any business which plays the critical role in the success or failure is the Human Resources. RetailMate makes it very easy to bring in and implement processes aligned and streamlined with the mission and objectives of the business. It provides a platform to measure the operational effiecient of each and every individual of the organization based on the scorecards. Various modules like time keeping, salary disbursement, employee borrowings, etc. are inbuilt into the human resource management systems.

Customer Relationship Management

Customer to any business is the king as per the modern business but customer is god as per Hindu sayings. A happy customer makes a happy business. RetailMate provides enough tools to create a happy customer and retain him for a longer duration. Essentially it helps retailers identify, acquire, activate, serve and retain the most profitable customers.

Office Automation System

RetailMate sports an inbuilt document management system where by any paper entering into the business can be converted to eform and can be cataloged and archived, which can then be later on searched for and retrieved based on various parameters. This is one of the greatest performance boosting tool of the whole suit as it save a lot of time spent on managing business in a very big enterprise environment.

Salient Features

Today on the market there may be many software solutions catering the retail market but what makes RetailMate an unique solution is the keyword integrated amongst other salient features described below

• Hierarchical Retail Chain: A business can have multiple stores horizontally as well as vertically classified into various custom level like central , regional, site stores and then into divisions and departments.
• Decentralised and Multilevel Accounting: RetailMate’s accounting system is one of the most modern and versatile one where by financial transaction and accounting statements upto the level of balance sheet can be drawn for a business unit at any width and depth by treating each and every unit as a cost/budget center
• Unique Item Tracking: Each an every unit of a given SKU is coded uniquely so as to track it independently and unambiguously so as to minimize pilferage.
• Granular Item Life Cycle: RetailMate Tracks each uniquely coded piece of any sku through it various state of life cycle. An item may have upto 45 different statuses during its lifecycle.
• Granular Process Authorisation: RetailMate not only supports module or form level authorization for security reasons but it also supports business process authorization so that a person can only work within his permitted limites. This includes limits of Purchase orders that can be drawn within a given time frame, discounts that can be offered on sales, etc.
• Item Batch Management: Batching of item into smaller custom defined units is possible and the same can be tracked during its life cycle.
• In-Depth Categorisation of Products: SKUs can be classified into various categories upto infinite depth and breadth to suit a business’s requirement and needs as no limit is put to the same.
• Product Attribute Definitions: All the SKUs can be defined to have various custom attributes like color, taste, style, fragrance, model no., etc. and hence allowing the business to do a greater study of the consumer patterns.
• Product Storage Space Relationship: RetailMate not only does support the macro level distinction of places as the site of the store but within the store it also differentiates one rack from another as it gathers and uses the knowledge of rooms, areas, racks and shelves, based on the dss reports of which better planograms can be created.
• Quality Assurance Built into Lifecycle: Qualtity Assurance is built into the life cycle of the business processes so as to comply with the requirement of ISO-9000:2000 and hence it is guaranteed that the process are of a higher quality. Customer Segmentation : Divide and Conquer is the policy. RetailMate allows adding custom dimensions for segmentation of the customer and then analysing business under that given scenario.
• Effective Sales Promotion Tools: RetailMate encompasses various tools to boost the sales by implementing various technologies like customized and targeted emailing, sms, pamphlets, etc.
• Highly Integrated: Each and every subsystem of RetailMate is highly integrated like the pieces of the a jigsaw and this offers the benefits of the perfect synergy working for the business.
• Performance Accounting: Performance management of processes and the people is yet another salient feature of RetailMate using which a business and its processes can be fine tuned to the last grain.
• Business Scorecards: This is one of the tools to measure the performance of process and people and they are integrated into the desktops of the executive so as to give them upto the minute update of the business. They are customizable to suit the need of a particular executive depending upon its job fuction.
• Key Performance Indicators: Various key performance factors for a retail industry are already identified and fed into the RetailMate database so that a business can start using them and the scorecards from day one.
• DSS for Reordering: RetailMate provides DSS for reordering not only based on the knowledge of the Julian Calendar, but can also be configured to consider the effects of events based on other calendars like the Hijri Calendar, the Hindu Calendar, etc. and doing Consumption Prediction based on that.
• Automatic Process Control: The process controls are built into the system and its audit can be very easily done. This minimizes the supervision requirements and also the chances of circumventing the inbuilt processes. The approach of audit is that of proactive audit in which the events and evidences of audit are automatilcally offered to the concerned authorities.
• Single Sign On System: The system is designed to have a tight integration with Microsoft Active Directory and supports single sign on by the way of relying on the active directory to authenticate the users.

The list of the salient features of RetailMate is quite long and the above given are only the few of its features. RetailMate provides almost all the tools of the trade required to management and run a business of chain of retail shops in the most effective, efficient and productive manner. Hence it is rightly called a Comprehensive Retailing Solution.