Enterprise retail operations are growing more complex and therefore demand increasingly sophisticated IT solutions. The world population is exploding, and that includes the U.S. population which is forecast to double from 300 million to 600 million in the next fifty years. That means we are adding twice as many new consumers per day as we have added in the past fifty years.

The result of this worldwide population explosion is a comparable growth in retailing. However, competition is fierce among retailers, especially with companies like Wal-Mart who use a comprehensive and proprietary enterprise retail system to drive profit margins down to where they are measured in tenths of a percent. Costs continue to skyrocket, and retailers are looking for ways to compete, grow revenues and cut costs, all while improving their customer experience and loyalty.

In the retailers’ quest to achieve success, knowledge, as always, is power. Retailers need to know the status of every product in every store at every second. They need to streamline communications from the point-of-sale, which is as often a browser as a cash register, back to the manufacturer. Tracking transaction data in real-time is required to ensure proper inventory levels at all points in the supply chain to maintain store level inventory.

This critical need for real-time transaction data is further aggravated by exploding losses from theft. The National Retail Federation recently reported a staggering $37.4 billion in retail shrinkage due to employee theft, shoplifting, administrative errors, and vendor fraud. As in other industries, Forrester, Gartner and AMR all report that retailers are turning to technology for help.

The problem is, today’s enterprise retail software infrastructure is a conglomeration of legacy systems, multiple databases, end-of-life products, patchwork interfaces, and expensive consultants, all which carry huge overhead.

Retailers cringe at the thought of the expense, both in time and money, of updating their enterprise software and often choose instead to continue to bear the higher costs of supporting and managing what they currently have. Still, the cries from retailers continue: “We can’t get the data we need soon enough to increase revenues and profits, reduce overstock, eliminate out-of-stock situations, prevent shrinkage and reduce expenses!”

What’s needed is a completely new, fifth-generation enterprise retail system based on proven, state-of-the-art technologies. The answer is AIRS from Alpha Bay, the Adaptive Integrated Retail System Suite.

Find out how an Alpha Bay AIRS implementation can reduce costs and improve revenues for your retail enterprise. Call us at 801-838-7600.