the cio's guide to selecting software for international retail by raymark
DESCRIPTION
With international borders increasingly blurred as e-commerce and mobile commerce become part of consumers’ everyday lives, more and more retailers are looking to expand their brick-and-mortar operations into new global markets. Be it by mergers and acquisitions, partnerships, franchises or strategic entry, penetrating new countries and continents can be a risky endeavor with potential for great rewards. New markets present new opportunities and new challenges. When local economic conditions are unfavorable to retail growth, retailers need to expand their horizons to new markets. Local markets become saturated with competition, so to avoid plateauing and continue growing, entering new global markets eventually becomes a consideration for many successful retailers. In order to quickly penetrate new markets, some retailers adopt local retail software that works in some markets and not others, resulting in a jumble of disparate solutions that can be difficult to manage and that don’t offer centralized visibility of critical retail data.TRANSCRIPT
The CIO’s Guide to Selecting Software for International Retail
01 | The CIO’s Guide to Selecting Software for International Retail
With international borders increasingly blurred as e-commerce and mobile commerce be-come part of consumers’ everyday lives, more and more retailers are looking to expand their brick-and-mortar operations into new global markets. Be it by mergers and acquisitions, partnerships, franchises or strategic entry, penetrating new countries and continents can be a risky endeavor with potential for great rewards.
New markets present new opportunities and new challenges. When local economic condi-tions are unfavorable to retail growth, retailers
need to expand their horizons to new markets. Local markets become saturated with competi-tion, so to avoid plateauing and continue grow-ing, entering new global markets eventually becomes a consideration for many successful retailers.
In order to quickly penetrate new markets, some retailers adopt local retail software that works in some markets and not others, result-ing in a jumble of disparate solutions that can be difficult to manage and that don’t offer cen-tralized visibility of critical retail data.
The CIO’s Guideto Selecting Software for International Retail
Copyright 2014 Raymark Xpert Business Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Challenges of Operating Disparate International Retail Systems
1. Added costs of software licenses, hosting and maintenance.
2. Additional IT resources needed to manage disparate systems and databases.
4. Added costs for integration.
3. Lack of real-time visibility into inventory and sales, resulting in uninformed purchase and allocation decisions.
4. Added risk of error or fraud.
5. Poorer customer service due to lack of centralized inventory visibility.
6. Lack of centralized reporting.
7. Reduced productivity due to dupli-cate entry of data.
02 | The CIO’s Guide to Selecting Software for International Retail
Raymark Solutions for International Retail
Raymark’s multi-currency, multi-language, and multi-tax capabilities make our retail enterprise solutions configurable on both local and international levels. Support for various types of retail business models and verticals, coupled with world-ready functionality, are some of the reasons why so many retailers choose to partner with Raymark, whether they are conducting business locally or expanding into emerging markets.
With a universal tax management module configurable to oper-ate in any state, province, region or country, Raymark’s interna-tional retail software solutions are ideal for any retailer consid-ering international expansion. Individual regions, languages, currencies, taxes, addresses and telephone number formats are easily defined. International pricing features enable global retail-ers to price the same merchandise according to different cost structures and currencies.
With its unique flexibility, the system can handle multiple curren-cies in diverse regions, and then standardize uploaded informa-tion to the head office currency, thereby making tracking and analysis easy and accessible. Doing business in Taiwan, Russia, Turkey or Italy? You’ll need fiscal printers, and Raymark already supports fiscalized receipts in these countries.
International retailers need the ability to segregate data and configuration to meet local legislative and market demands with centralized visibility to make informed decisions about the business as a whole. Raymark’s architecture allows for the
ability to segregate information based on logical business units within a centralized database. Stores in multiple countries can operate off of a single centralized database. Read, edit and write access to customer information, purchase orders, products, promotions, gift cards and more can be limited using Raymark’s store access and configuration modules. This can be limited to a single store or can include a country-wide group of stores.
Different regions will also have different hardware availabilities and requirements, so it’s important the retail software be hard-ware agnostic, so as to not restrict the retailer in their hardware choices.
Raymark Services Around the Globe
Raymark also has the global presence needed for multi-country deployments. With offices with professional services teams in Canada, USA, France, and China along with a network of interna-tional partners, Raymark can provide local or remote support wherever needed. Our support team is available 24X7 to respond to our customers’ needs in multiple languages.
Global rollouts need to be carefully planned and executed by teams with international experience. At Raymark, we often recommend a template-based approach whereby standard configurations are defined, then refined and localized per region when needed. That means that corporate guidelines are respected wherever possible, but that the implementation can be flexible to meet local needs.
Copyright 2014 Raymark Xpert Business Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
03 | The CIO’s Guide to Selecting Software for International Retail
Copyright 2014 Raymark Xpert Business Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
1
INTERNATIONAL CURRENCIES
Doing business in different countries means that retailers need the flexibility to accept
multiple currencies. With Ray-mark solutions, retailers have
the freedom to define any currency and exchange rate,
and to accept multiple curren-cies in a single store.
What’s more, retailers have the flexibility to view reporting in either the local currency or
a common converted cur-rency for measuring overall
business health.
2
MULTIPLETAXES
International retailers know the complexity that comes
along with having a presence in different tax jurisdictions.
Cumulative tax calculations, value-added taxes (VAT),
exemptions and rounding rules are all configurable with
Raymark’s retail solutions. Each point of business can link several levels of taxes,
including global, regional and local tax levels, with five sub-taxes for each level. Taxes are applied by product category
and region.
3
DIVERSE LANGUAGES
Raymark solutions have been translated into over 30 differ-ent languages, including those
requiring double byte char-acters. Application language conversion is easily achieved through language definition
tables.
Personal language preferenc-es can also be defined. Upon
logging onto the system, regardless of the location, the application will launch in the user’s preferred language.
4
LOCAL PRESENCE
Although screen sharing, vid-eo and other remote support tools and software have made it faster and more economical to deploy, support, maintain and train on software from afar, sometimes it helps to have boots on the ground.
When in-person professional services are needed, Ray-
mark’s four global offices and network of international part-ners can deploy local experts
to any region.
5
REGIONALLEGISLATION
Learning about retail law in any given jurisdiction can be daunting, but retailers doing business internationally face
legislative challenges on a whole different level.
Raymark’s solutions have been deployed in over 40 countries, so we have the
local experience needed to support and counsel retailers on local laws, from California’s notoriously stringent privacy rules to Russia’s fiscalization
requirements.
6
MANAGEDFLEXIBILITY
Customers from diverse cul-tures will respond differently
to various marketing and merchandising techniques.
The pricing, promotions and loyalty programs that work
well in Europe may not have the same effect in Asia.
Raymark’s flexible Grids and Groups concept enables retailers to tailor pricing,
product assortments, promo-tions, and more to meet local
demand, all within a single centrally-managed database.
Raymark5460 Côte de Liesse Montréal, QuébecCanada H4P 1A5T: 1-800-346-7296F: 1-514-737-0014E: [email protected]: www.raymark.com
For 25 years, Raymark has been empowering retail with leading-edge enterprise software solutions that help the world’s most prestigious international retailers optimize stock turns, build customer loyalty, and increase sales. Raymark develops and markets the ultimate suite of flex-ible and interconnected applications deployed in a centralized environ-ment and offers professional turnkey solutions including implementa-tion, training and customer support. www.raymark.com