Can your software platform improve sales and profits?

Long gone is the time when a retailer only required a point-of-sale (POS) solution to run the store. The retail industry is ever-evolving, where value-adds at till-point as well as in the operation at large, are proving to be essential to ensure that efficiency and ultimately profitability, is maintained.

A case study

An interesting case study is presented by a South African company, Arch Retail Systems, which implemented their Enterprise management solution at a client which had lost significant market share and turnover. This prominent group consists of 56 retail and wholesale outlets trading in groceries and liquor. Some of the issues affecting its performance were uncompetitive pricing on some product lines as well as frequent out-of-stocks on key lines while being grossly overstocked on non-movers.

The company, using the Enterprise solution, developed a margin and replenishment strategy to price certain lines more competitively and minimise out-of-stock and overstocked situations. The results are shown below:


Note: All monetary values are in South African Rand.

The result

The net effect of this management strategy implemented via the Enterprise software platform, resulted in a 16.1 per cent increase in turnover and a resultant 14.7 per cent growth in cash profits. This marked improvement came at a sacrifice of only 0.1 per cent drop in GP percentage.

According to David Geldenhuys, the Cape Town based Marketing Executive for Arch, “The case study highlights the importance of central management of margins, sales prices and campaigns. The three-tier strategy that was implemented comprised of a margin, stock and buying plan. It allowed the stores to price more aggressively without materially sacrificing margin and simultaneously minimising the out-of-stock situation”.

Integrated retail management solutions

Arch is part of a growing trend in retail software, providing clients with end-to-end functionality. Thus, state of the art retail analytics is combined with software modules catering for every activity including integrated accounting software. The Arch suite of products includes:

Thus, a retailer can administer their business using a single fully integrated platform which includes powerful business intelligence (comprehensive analytic capabilities). Whether a single store or large group, the platform allows the retailer to control the business via a cloud-based platform administered from a dashboard on a tablet or similar. Thus, the retailer can access real time data on trading activity wherever he or she is located. In-store server and safe-mode functionality ensures high system availability. Furthermore, the hosting of Arch in the cloud ensures high system accessibility. 

To find out more about the Arch Software platform, click here.

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