Ecommerce for Microsoft Retail Management System

Ecommerce for Dynamics RMS is an effective solution to take your retail business to the next level and help you stay ahead in the competition.

Microsoft Dynamics RMS is one of the most popular point-of-sale applications for retail management and globally it has a lot of admirer. RMS can help you to streamline your business processes and at the same time, it reduces your overhead costs by optimizing the efficiency levels of your existing workforce. Of all POS applications available in the market today, RMS is probably one of the most user-friendly applications. But the real benefit of using RMS is not in user-friendliness. In fact, the use of RMS opens great avenues to augment your sales in hitherto ‘unchartered’ and ‘unreachable’ markets.

As a retailer, it’s necessary that you have an online store and as an online storeowner, it is necessary that your shopping cart integrate with your Dynamics RMS. If you do not have an online store, your sales are limited and will remain so unless a lot of people with pocket-loads of money migrate to your area and they form a serpentine line for buying products from your store! On the other hand, if you own an online store besides your regular brick-n-mortar one, your work is doubled. You manage your inventory and order at two places and you have to keep an eye on your stock every time a sale is made. There is the anxiety that someone will place an order for an item on the online store that has a nil-stock at the RMS down at your physical store. The result? Well, you cut a sorry figure before your customer who gives you an untold confirmation that he would never make a return to your store! The solution? Get ecommerce for Dynamics RMS.

Ecommerce for Dynamics RMS is the utility that can directly help you to MULTIPLY you sales figures. Unlike any ordinary web store, ecommerce for Microsoft Retail Management System is powered by an online store engine that synchronizes your Dynamics RMS and the ecommerce store database on the web. Your products details from the RMS and your online order information are always synchronized and up-to-date. So, what do you get? You have the options to go online with your entire database of products and sale wherever you without bothering an iota about synchronizing stock or orders. Your store powered by an ecommerce cart for Microsoft RMS will always have the most updated information online and you serve your customer in an unprecedentedly better way! Not only will your customers, your workforce remain happy too – as you will stop asking them to do the same thing twice!

In the ever-competing world of retail business, the key to success is in managing your running cost at the minimum simultaneously providing the best shopping experience to your customers. If Microsoft Retail Management System solves the former riddle, ecommerce for Dynamics RMS is the answer to the later one. In fact, a flexible, customizable and affordable ecommerce cart for Microsoft RMS has the potentiality to take your business to the next level and help you to get that month-on-month sales figure that you used to think only in dreams.

Online Store For Microsoft Retail Management System (Dynamics RMS) Retailers

How many times do you look at the “discard” row of your store? I mean the row of your retail store that displays the least sold products? Well, I bet whenever you look at it, you sigh. Wish you could sell them!

Now let me ask you something else. How many times do you feel that if you had more customers, you would have sold your HOT-CAKE product ‘X’ in truckloads? I am sure many times. But, you can’t as you do not have many customers!

These are some of the day-to-day scenarios for retailers like you using Microsoft Dynamics RMS to manage your physical store. You have an excellent system in place in the form of Microsoft Retail Management system but you do not have the necessary means to augment sales. You have saved time and resources by using Microsoft Dynamics RMS, but you haven’t capitalized its other capabilities. Besides managing your retail business, what Microsoft Dynamics RMS offers is the ability to integrate an RMS shopping cart for your business.

Yes, using an RMS integrated online store solution, you can give your Dynamics RMS wings – you can take it to places!

A Microsoft Dynamics RMS integrated online store can take the item information (including your inventory) from your RMS and publish it on the web site. Once an online buyer visits your store and purchases a product, the RMS shopping cart gets the order details downloaded in the RMS. Isn’t it just amazing? What you need simply is to start an RMS integrated online store powered by an RMS shopping cart like 24SevenCart.

So, more worries for unsold products or selling more products to new customers! You can now tap and reach any customer on the web and make multiplied profits!

Online Retail Store: Will It Dictate Business Terms In 2011?

Greater number of shoppers’ preference to buy online than going to a brick-and-mortar store has given the online retail industry a tremendous boom.

Where are you planning to shop this festive season? When more than a thousand Americans were asked the same question as a part of a shopping survey, a good 74 percent of them said that the best and the easiest way is to shop for gifts online because they are sure of getting the best deals and heavy discounts on a variety of items. Although a good number of shoppers still feel that brick and mortar retail stores offer best deals and season concessions on a wide variety of items, the retailers who are operating both the type stores are actually the bulk of the booty. For these retailers, the online retail stores help driving foot-traffic to their brick and mortar store.

The difference in opinion on whether you should buy from an online retail store of a physical one, is not something new. For quite some time, the consumers in the country are divided in their preference over online shopping and shopping from physical real world stores. However, what is different this year is that never before, such a high percentage of people voted favoring online shopping stores. 52 percent people said that the best deals are available online and this means that only 48 percent people prefer buying from brick and mortar stores, as they believe that they will get the best money saving deals there.

Out of those who prefer online retail store, 54 percent said that one of the main reasons for their preference is that shopping for gifts online prevents them from over-spending, thus, keeping them within their budgetary limits.
The time of online shopping store has come and has come in a big big way. Retailers, including large-scale departmental store operators have adopted aggressive online marketing and selling strategies to enhance their sales and make the most of the current trend, the marked increase in the number of online shoppers. The only hitch is the absence of holiday and festive spirit that manifests itself in shopping from real world shops and selling units. Nevertheless, powered by the meteoric rise in the popularity of social-media networks, more and more shoppers are driven towards online retail stores and they enjoy the festive mood even in the virtual world.

The shopping season is just halfway through and already the shopping records and sales figures are climbing to new heights. Record sales on cyber Monday and subsequent voluminous sales on everyday as the month of December passes, online retail store sales are rapidly growing across all markets from apparel to books to cosmetics. Even sports goods and wine retailers are also enjoying the fruits bulging online sales. Surely, as experts predict online retail will dominate the global in 2011 and beyond.

Shopping Season Kick Starts With Booming Online Retail Sales

For online retailers, the year-long wait is over as the shopping season is in full swing now. Despite a sluggish recovery, there is no shortage of enthusiasm for online shoppers who are already on a buying spree. Thanks to flexible and innovative strategies of online retailers, the web shoppers are finding it more convenient to shop online.

Around 72 percent of the 2000 shoppers interviewed in a survey conducted by a renowned online retail platform provider in the United States said that this holiday season, they are planning to shop for various gifts and items online, instead of the regular brick and mortar stores. The reasons for this shift in preference largely because of the following:

• Ease of buying (79%)
• No need to queue up (72%)
• Option to compare products through comparison sites (63%)
• Attractive deals and discounts (61%),
• Vast collection of items (51%)
• Efficient customer service (50%)
• Fuel savings (49%)
• Free or low-cost shipping and lower sales tax (36%)

In fact, a good number of them had begun their shopping before Thanksgiving itself and the sales on Cyber Monday marked a new record. Only 2 to 4 percent consumers said that they would begin after December 15 and a good percentage is going to wait for more lucrative online shopping deals and discounts to complete their holiday gift shopping.

Though they follow a single point agenda of buying the best product from a online shopping store, the shoppers are to an extent divided in their preference as to what do they expect from an online shopping store before deciding to shop from there. Comparison-shopping is the buzzword as 63% shoppers affirmed that they would make their purchases from 3 to 4 different sites and 23% said that they would consider 6 to 7 web sites. The factors that will influence their website decision include lower prices (69 percent), deals and discounts (65%), site loyalty or previous experience with the online retailer (32%), amongst others. Many online shopper prefer sites that have return policies that are pretty much flexible (26%), have positive customer feedback (20%) and even give away freebies with purchases (15%).

Books, video and audio stuff dominates what with more than 54% of online retail store visitors preferring them to other things followed by Electronics at 50%. Food items, cards, furnishing items, jewelry and fashion garments and accessories are amongst other preferred gift options for shoppers this holiday season.

However, 28 percent of shoppers still prefer to shop from regular high street stores and they have some unique reasons for continuing the tradition. The majority prefers seeing the thing physically before making the purchases while 25 percent people just love the feel of shopping in stores, braving the crowd and enjoying the festive spirit. Naturally, the 75% of those 28% brick-and-mortar lovers are the real ‘unconverted’ customers of online retail store owners and next hurdle for these ecommerce store owners is to convince these people to shop online instead of buying from physical shops. Again, the name of the game will be to innovate, attractive and more useful for their online customers.

Budget Process – A Little Investment To Optimize Business Expenses

Budget process is as much necessary for any online business as it is for the offline business. It not only helps to make right and timely decisions but also highlights the non performing business practices. Many online retailers do not see it as an important activity because of the misconception that it is just for traditional offline business. Second factor that stops the online retailers from budget process is its cost, which they think may be too high- while it is not so.

Cost of budget process depends upon the business model. Generally, start-up businesses have more heads to be covered under budget process in comparison to mature retailers. It can be done in-house or can be outsourced. Both have unique positives sides; selection depends upon the particular parameters. However, cost of budget process in the both the options vary at large. Therefore, the right selection of process for budget process is important to get it done at bare minimum cost. If you know enough about the technical terms and microscopic components that budget processing involves, you would certainly be able to get effective budget process at amazingly low price. The following part of this write up highlights such important factors of budget process.

Net profit is the difference between gross profit and expenses. You need to estimate revenue. To calculate gross profit, subtract the cost of sold goods from revenue. Major E-business expenses include the cost of development, maintaining and promoting (marketing) the web store. Providing world-class customer services including guidance, after sales, warranty etc also generates recurring expenses.

SEO (search engine optimization), arranging genuine e-mail lists and sending informatory e-mails, appointing new affiliates and offering more attractive discounts etc are few of those marketing activities that need considerable expenses. Generally, retailers are suggested to invest 10-12% of total revenue for customer acquisition. Retention cost includes the expenses like customer segmentation tools, promotion and e-mail campaigns etc. It is kept 5-8% of revenue.

The cost of search engine marketing includes the charges of pay-per-click, submission to different directories & search engines, banner postings and placing advertisements on relevant popular sites etc like services. The fixation of this cost entirely depends upon one’s budget and may vary from $2,500 pm to $25,000 pm. Comparison Shopping Engines are effective traffic generators. Registration to these engines depends upon the size of business and nature of services or products. The cost of affiliate marketing is generally kept around 20% of revenue; however, selection of this business marketing strategy depends upon particular business model.

The cost of e-mail marketing depends upon the volume of mails in each phase. This cost can be adjusted both way according to the budget limits and response. Customer Relationship Management consumes considerably major part of marketing budget. It needs to be very effective because repeat and reference business volume solely depends upon its success.

Social Media Marketing and Mobile Marketing are relatively new marketing practices. Both of these low budget exercises have been successful in establishing brand image as well as making it popular among the masses. Content management and Imagery creation practices also help in making the brand popular and unique. This practice needs considerable good budget. Under this practice retailers modify the promotional materials and programs, offered by manufacturers, according to local market and clients. Online Merchandising is another marketing strategy that includes categorizing of products and associating them with other products, which are more in demand.

When we talk about the technology of e-store, there seems no limit because we see new developments in internet technology every day. The budget selection depends upon the facilities, an e-retailer wants. Development of E-commerce Platforms, Order Management Systems, Fulfillment and Customer service are the major activities of Online E-business that need special consideration. Budgets for creating E-commerce Platforms may be anywhere from tens of thousands to million dollars; budget for Fulfillment may be around 20-12 % of total revenue and budget for customer service is kept around 2-7% .

If the budget allows, retailers may opt for having Site Search costing around $2500-10,000 pm; Personalization/ Product Recommendations costing $1200-2500 pm; Ratings & Reviews costing $2000-3000 pm and Web Analytic costing $500 to 15,000 pm like facilities too.

Therefore, we see that budget process gives us enough freedom to choose our own way that suits to our business and targeted customer segment. Budget processes guide us to optimize the distribution of funds for various business activities. Because of the increased accountability, it becomes easier to improve the efforts and strategies according to the identified voids well before the loss occurring.

RITE And LAN Services Form Strategic Alliance: Ecommerce Retailing

Minnesota’s Retail Information Technology Enterprises (RITE) and California’s LAN Services, LLC are joining hands to bring out a new application that would augment the use of “Gift Cards” with RMS integrated web stores.

The deal has not only commercial significance for both RITE and LAN Services, but it is also a breakthrough in optimizing the needs of retail customers shopping online. Rick Feuling, the president of RITE explained, “The RITE Gift application, an application that helps manage gift cards on Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System (RMS), is now integrated with an ecommerce platform thanks to the development team associated with 24SevenCart. With RITE Gift application integration to 24SevenCart online store system, a customer can redeem gift cards across multiple locations or from the web store. He/She can now conveniently pay for a purchase using their existing gift cards at the store or online. “

A retailer using Microsoft Dynamics RMS can accept gift cards at one location or across multiple locations. It makes it easy to create and redeem gift cards. For the shoppers, they can redeem it fully or partially whenever they make a purchase at the store. For retailers who otherwise pay the credit card service providers hefty fees for gift cards, this option will be a money-saver.

24SevenCart ecommerce solution helps retailers by taking their Microsoft Dynamic RMS based inventory online and establishing an RMS integrated ecommerce store. The RMS retailer can easily upload items or download orders to and from the online store quite easily.

“We have built a synergy in gift card processing for RMS users,” said Anil Jindal, CEO of LAN Services, “A Gift Card created at the store can now be redeemed at the physical store and/or at the retailer’s website. Moreover, the online shoppers can pay for their orders using either credit or gift card or both.”

LAN Services is known for their high-end applications for Dynamics RMS and POS 2009 and RITE is popular for their total computerized solutions for retail industry. Be it the RITE Gift and Biometrics or LANS’ 24SevenCart shopping cart, their products have been widely accepted by retailers. Now, with the integration of their major products, which would complement and enhance the performance of each other, online shoppers will have more options to exercise and ultimately, the retailers will succeed in reaping higher profits.


About RITE:
Headquartered in Sartell, Minnesota, Retail Information Technology Enterprises (RITE) provides complete Point of Sale solutions to retailers. From POS software and hardware through professional installation, training and support, RITE has everything to offer to run a successful retail business. For further details on RITE, please visit:
http://www.rite.us


About LAN Services:
A decade in the information technology market and with numerous satisfied customers, LAN Services, LLC (a Microsoft Certified Partner) has now an enviable list of worldwide clientele. Besides the 24SevenCart online store solution, LAN Services has also developed complete business models for e-retailing, point-of-sale solutions, Social networking, Price Comparison Engines, intranet portals and online marketing.
http://www.lanservices.com

Get a Multi-Store RMS Integrated Shopping Cart Solution

Price, customization and features – are the three things to consider while selecting a multi-store RMS integrated shopping cart solution

Microsoft Retail Management system offers some amazing features to manage retail business. The RMS application, esp. the RMS headquarters offers features to manage multiple stores in an unprecedented way. A multi-store version of an RMS integrated shopping cart takes full advantage of these features of RMS HQ and gives the retailer a complete command over different stores both individually and in a collective way.

However, to select the best multi-store RMS integrated shopping cart, you need to start with care. Frankly, most of the RMS integrated shopping cart providers see an affluent customer in the retailer who wants the multi-store version and they conveniently ask for an enormous sum. So, the pricing of the solution should be reasonable with the additional prices for each individual store integration should be clearly defined.

Ask the vendor to give a real-time demo on multiple stores and check how the ordering system works. Ideally, multiple orders should get processed simultaneously in different stores and the web integrators should be developed in such way that the communication between the RMS integrated online store and every POS systems and the headquarter should be completely synchronized.

Finally, the multi-store RMS integrated shopping cart solution should be 100% customizable to support your business specific requirements. This is no mean a solution and being a retailer if you want a certain feature, the solution provider should be able to develop that at a reasonable cost. At the end of the day, the solution should be primarily what you want for your business rather what the service provider offers.

Top 10 Ways Make Your Online Customer Buy Twice

It is easy to sell first time, but equally difficult to sell every time. The biggest challenge for online retailer is not to get the site up and running; the most grueling part is to make your customer buy the second time. In fact, the success or failure of an online retail store depends on the how many first time customers return for the second time and subsequent times. The more returning customers you have, more likely you are to stay in the market and earn profits. Therefore, as an ecommerce storeowner, you must know the things that make your online customers visit and buy from your store on a regular basis.

Top 10 hacks that can make your customers comeback to your store are:

Easy user interface – Give an easy interface to find your products with proper filter, sorter and search options. If they find it easy to locate their products, your customers will avoid going elsewhere.

Offer coupons to your customers – If I am your customer and purchased once, you have made a profit. So, what’s wrong in shedding a portion of that profit to make me buy once again and make more profit? Offer coupons to your existing customers and create a need so that they buy again.

Offer discounts – The most lucrative thing associated with online shopping is low cost with discounts. Make your price competitive, give discount whenever and wherever you can and create a noise. Send mailers to all your customers or run promo campaigns.

Be interactive and friendly – Use social media (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and so on) to be connected with your customers. Make your offers through these platforms. Use apps to make your products available through social media networks.

Get a toll-free customer care number – If possible, give 24 X 7-customer support through a toll-free number besides email and chat support.

Transparent business policies – Be clear in defining your shipping and return policies. Think from your customer perspective and if needed, add an FAQ section with the answers to the obvious questions.

Supports multiple payment options – Support all major credit cards in your region. If debit card or net banking is more popular, give these options too.

Sense of security – display authentic and reputed security seals from top service providers on store. Your online customers will talk about your security and this will create a trust.

Better technology, smarter look – Use the latest technologies and try to look smarter and sleeker than your competitors; your customers will always like it.

Keep an updated product list – Keep product-list of your online retail store updated and display the latest price and other information. If you want to display a product that is not in stock, Display the “Out of Stock” right at the beginning on the category page itself. No customer would like to start the buying process for an “Out of Stock” product.

These are some of tips (and not all!) that can make your store a ‘comfortable’ zone for your customers to return. Through your online store be friendly to your customers and give them better deals; nothing can entice your customer than a service with a smile.

Online Retailing: How to tune your store’s performance

For an online store, the buck doesn’t stop at selling the product only. Being an ecommerce storeowner, you need to monitor the performance of your online shopping cart constantly and that’s critically important! You must always be informed about the status your online business and have a clear idea about the performance. However, it is not so easy measuring the performance of your ecommerce shopping cart. There are so many parameters that you will have to consider; some of these are business or domain specific and some are more generalized in nature. Here we discuss a few aspects of performance monitoring of your online shopping cart:

Keep a tab on your profits
Your revenue depends on various things. You may run a PPC campaign on Google Adwords with a thick daily budget; you are bound to get better sales with bulging revenue. However, this is a return of an additional investment in terms of your PPC expenditure. Similarly, if you lower the price of your products below the market price, you will get sales and expanding revenue figure. Again, you are compromising with your profit margin to register better sales. So, it is important that you constantly monitor your profit PERCENTAGE over a definite period of time and regular plot it on a graph. A uniform upward growth means you are heading for a good time!

Distributed sales
The success of an online store business largely depends on your per customer sales. In other words, it is better to have five customers buying a certain quantities of products rather than one customer buying the same. If there are more individual buying sprees in your online store, better chances you have of a good exposure in the market place. So, it is important that you keep a tab on sales vs. no. of customers’ ratio.

Faster delivery, increased satisfaction
Your customers (and everybody else’s customers) love to get the shipment in time. If you are committing that the product will be delivered in 2 days, it should be 2 days. If he gets in on the 3rd day, the customer won’t blame the shipping company he will blame you! So, keep a tab on the delivery dates of each consignment. Ask the shipping company to send you a weekly or a fortnightly report of delivery of all consignments and find out the date difference between the order data and the date delivery of each order. If the difference is more than what you are promising for a certain order, find out why the shipment was delayed. If needed, call the customer and say ‘sorry’. If the instances of “missing the delivery date” are frequent, it’s time to change the shipping company.

Use Google’s monitoring and analysis tools
Google offers a plethora of tools to analyze and monitor the performance of your website. Google Analytics can help you to monitor your traffic on a daily basis with various filters and views. Similarly, Google Web Master Toolkit can help you to monitor your product-keywords and their overall positions on the web.

Success in running an ecommerce store depends on how regular you are in managing your necessary activities. It is not required to spend hours; it’s all about keeping a check on everything that relates to your customers!

LAN Services introduces New Winery-Specific Features for Online Wine Retail Store

Anything related to wine is special and needs extra-ordinary treatment. Like their customers’ aristocratic natures and ultra-sensitive taste buds, winery-owners often need specialized equipments and in modern days, customized software solution. LAN Services, the maker of 24SevenCart online shopping cart solution, is introducing a host of new features in the shopping cart system to meet certain specific needs online wine retailers.

“Our winery solution goes far beyond the regular process of integrating Microsoft Dynamics RMS with the online store. These new features are the fruits of our months of business analysis exercises to find the pain-areas in the online wine retailing business”, Mr. Anil Jindal, CEO of LAN Services pointed out. “We know how to present your wines, how a buyer searches, what you need to bring them back; we have covered everything in our winery solution”, he added.

The winery solution powered by 24SevenCart offers various wine industry-specific features. For example, the front-end website is equipped with a collection of filters and sort mechanisms that help the buyer find the exact wine based on price range, grape varietal or location. There are options to add additional filters or customize the sorting mechanism. The solution also offers an extensive module to manage wine club members’ portfolios, their purchases, friend list and so on. Since wine is considered an excellent gift for all occasions, 24sevencart powered winery store solution gives adequate option to manage and send gifts to multiple recipients too. Furthermore, Winelink (the application that integrates Microsoft RMS with the online store) synchronizes every customer’s details from the web store to the POS in the physical location.

Mr. Jindal also added, “The best part of our solution is - it’s truly affordable and 100% customizable; the winery solution can be integrated with various other third-party applications.” Some leading industry experts and marketers confirmed that the very flexibility in the entire solution makes it distinct from various other similar solutions available in the market today and this approach alone make a major difference when the retailer will sell his wines using 24SevenCart winery solution powered by Winelink.

For more info log on http://www.24sevencart.com/wine.htm