This is not about Icelandic sheep. It is Iceland-related though…

An Icelandic sheep that wants to find out more about LS Retail.

One of the advantages of being LS Retail partners is that we have access to materials and information about events that not everybody does. So, we have decided to share with you some information about LS Retail and what it can do for your business.

LS Retail is an independent software company that has worked in the retail industry since 1988. Today, they are the biggest Software developer for retail and hospitality solutions, based on MS Dynamics. The fact that the system is based on MS Dynamics means that integration to other MS products – SharePoint, Excel, Word and Outlook – is fast, simple and secure.

LS Retail provides its users with complete transparency over each process from GL (general ledger) down to a single POS (point of sale) transaction.

One of its many advantages is that everybody in your organization is using a single system, regardless of location or employee access level. This means that you have all the available tools to manage a successful retail operation directly from your HQ. The system is built on MS Stack, the foundation layer being the operating system and data structure solutions from MS. On top of that layer, you can find the business layer, which represents a standard ERP functionality (financial management, sales & marketing, purchasing, etc.).

 

This graph illustrates the architecture behind the LS Retail system.

At head office level you essentially run your business on day-to-day basis. Product management, for example, allows you to control what products each one of your stores sell, based on the purchasing behavior and interests of customers who tend to shop from that store.

You can tailor different sales commissions for each store, based on how well it is doing in selling certain items.

You have an item that is not being appreciated enough by your customers? Sales Commission allows you to give your employees an incentive by offering higher commission once they manage to sell that item.

You want to know how much staff each store is going to need at certain periods during the day or week? Business Intelligence allows you to access detailed information on when your store is likely to be busier. With Staff Management you can tailor a schedule that removes the “understaffed” or “overstaffed” arguments out of the equation.

The Replenishment feature provides you with insights as to how much stock each store needs. This way you can distribute your stock, according to local purchasing intensity.

Price & Offer Management, Campaign Management, Inventory Optimization, and many other features allow you to stay on top of your business and enhance its profitability.

At back office level, each user has access to information, tailored to their specific role within your organization.

The front office level is the face of your organization because this is where you enter into direct contact with your customers. With the Omni Channel solution LS Retail offer retailers different points for communication with their customers.

By adding mobile loyalty and e-commerce to your business you allow shoppers to not only purchase from your store but to have access to personalized offers, coupons and notifications. Because you have access to your customers’ purchasing history, your store can target specific customer groups or even specific individuals with offers that are more likely to result in effective engagement and purchasing.

LS Mobile allows the customer to browse through your full range of items, regardless of how they access that information – phone, tablet, personal computer, or even POS terminal. They gain access to detailed information on an item – like pictures and item availability in nearest stores, for instance. LS Mobile solutions allow retailers to engage with their customers in a unique and personalized way.

Member Management allows retailers to maintain their customers’ loyalty by offering their customers offers, based on their specific interests and shopping behavior.

You have internet connection troubles in one of your stores? LS Retail has got you covered. The Standalone Store setup allows the flawless operation of stores even in offline mode. Imagine you drive a car through the mountains and you lose your connection. The minute the system detects that connection is possible it transfers data to and from the head office so that everything is up to date.

If you want to use a single system (take a look at picture below) that reduces costs, provides you with full control over your business, prevents you from losing sales opportunities, and turns consumer behavior from mystery to a measurable graph, LS Retail is the solution we believe your business needs.

All in one! HQ –> Country/Region –> Stores –> POS – single solution for complex business operations.

If you think your business can benefit from having such system implemented, do not hesitate to contact us by filling out our Contact Form below,  following our Facebook page, visiting our website, dropping us an e-mail, or by giving us a call.

We are here to help your business!  

All the best,

NavTech Group

 

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When our developers don’t type, they talk…

We had a nice chat with one of our senior developers about the past and present DIY projects of NavTech Group. As a side note, you need to know that we are not only selling MS Dynamics products but we are also developing our own add-ons that meet the particular needs of our customers.

MS Dynamics is a standard solution, based on a platform that allows customization and the development of add-ons. We can tinker with the original product so that it responds to the needs of our particular customer. It allows our developers to expand the functionality of the already existing MS Dynamics products.

Our developers design add-ons that facilitate the integration with other environments, for example. They develop web applications that allow our customers to access their systems via different web-browsers. They also develop different mobile solutions that provide our customers with access to their system through their mobile devices (very handy for sales reps, for example).

For instance, they developed an application for a Swedish customer of ours that facilitated the receiving of payments by just using mobiles.

Another project they worked on was a so-called Partners’ Portal. One of our clients has developed a strong network of distributors that sell and implement our client’s products. The application we developed allows those distributors to connect to the system of our client. This way, for example, they can indicate how much products they managed to sell, order more products to distribute, and so on. It also allows field engineers (the ones who come to your house to install the software) to check-in how long it took them to perform a given task – basically, they create a timesheet, which can be easily accessed by their managers who, in return, can follow performance levels.

This year we were approved for an EU grant to develop a product that we believe would enhance the profitability and efficiency of every business, regardless of industry. Our senior developer gave us more information about that project. The product represents a “strategic planning” solution. Or, rather, strategic planning tool, as our developer says we would only provide our customers with the tool they need to execute their own strategic planning.

Here’s a summary of what he told us:

Managing an enterprise nowadays is still based on the old Venetian accounting system of double-entry. And, even though Luca Pacioli – the father of book keeping – is responsible for one of the greatest advances in the history of business and commerce, the double-entry system is only useful as far as material assets go. For example, a material asset would be the chairs you produce in your furniture studio. Despite the fact that double-entry accounting is still the main tool of modern business, it is a reactionary tool. It can only work with data that happened in the past. If you sold 5 chairs, you type in “5 chairs sold”, at what price and what profit. In other words, it works with things that already happened. As we know, a successful business is based on more than solely reacting to what happened.

Assets are no longer exclusively material. You have to deal with human resources and, for instance, how each one of your employees is doing in their respected field. Your company has development goals – where you want to be in 5 years’ time, how much you want to sell in the next quarter, how much investment your company needs in the next 12 months, and so forth. Strategic planning is the tool that allows businesses to make informed decisions that would give them the opportunity to better position themselves on the market.

Imagine you want to go to Japan. You need to choose a route, decide on a budget, choose mode of transport, find tickets, etc. By managing all these tasks you perform strategic planning. Once you start your journey, you follow your map to see that everything goes as planned. Taking photos of places you visited, writing in your blog, describing what you saw and so on is more of a reactionary activity, since you describe what has already happened.

Strategic planning is useful for those businesses that want to see how they would position themselves in the market in the future. This allows them to set up clear goals and find the best possible solution to going about and realizing them. Strategic planning is the tool that helps you apply a scientific approach to managing your business rather than a hope-for-the-best, gambling approach.

We are going to follow closely how the project is going and keep you updated! Thank you for reading!

All the best,

NavTech Group