Why Microsoft Dynamics ERP is the perfect fit for the retail industry?

By Marcelo Zouki

A global management solution implementation has many advantages, as for example, the access to state-of-the-art technologies, the use of up-to-date workforce with recent technologies, the ability to centralize international operations making business processes accessible in a single language, regardless of particularities of each location, centralized support and much more.

However, due to local needs, there is a strong work to be done to guarantee and respect specific business requirements, being them geographic requirements, legal governmental requirements or cultural bodies. The integration between the business areas is part of this work, so the data can be turned into valuable and useful information for the different areas and departments allowing the entire operational cycle to be closed.

Challenges and complexity may be different when we talk about global projects with local implementations. This scope of work brings needs and points of attention that may not be of major concern when implementing local solutions in national companies. One of these needs is the integration between financial processes and retail operations.

The link and relationship between these areas is vital to allow the centralized data (products, services, customers, etc.) that nurtures all the areas to achieve the operation, in front of the customer, and to translate sales into financial results, updated cash flow and reconciliation of transactions, allowing cross-checking of information and management follow-up of each stage.

To enable the project to be successful, this integration work must be done. Delivering a solution that enables centralized and at the same time transparent operations, with the integration of the information being carried out so that it is also possible to meet the local needs, thus making all operations accessible to more people, in less time, and bringing tools to analyze and evolve the entire operation of the client.

As an example I can mention one of the last implementation services we have performed that was for a global customer of the luxury retail industry. The company, based in Europe but with operations on all continents, was already using Microsoft Dynamics as their management software worldwide, but not in Brazil. For sure the solution brought an evolution on both technological and operational aspects, but it also brought a thorough work of mapping their needs (both business and legal) and integrations design to allow business processes between areas without data decentralization, rework or manual efforts.

How to track credit card captures, chargebacks and analysis transactions? How to control installments in payments (common solution in Brazil, but not usual in the global scenario) using an out-of-country solution? How to keep the information connected from processing customers payments to the results in the financial reports?

This was a big project, involving challenges such as the adaptation of foreign software to the integration with local software of electronic funds transactions (TEF), means of payment in installments, integration between transactions with cards and the Accounts Receivable area, complete solution of reconciliation of card transactions between software from TEF, retailer and acquiring network (company responsible for processing card transactions with financial institutions and paying them to the retailer), just to name a few.

All of this together with other solutions we found to another challenges encountered in this same project, were crucial for the customer operation, allowing the compliance of operations with internal auditing, control of commissioning, administration of fees and payments between financial solution providers, customers and banks, management of sales returns and credits for merchandise exchange, complete management of gift cards, eliminating the cost of a third-party solution for this, and not least we can mention the issuance of all types of sales tax documents to the final consumer, at each point of sale, required in each State of the customer operation.

Such challenges are known to retailers and can be met by a management solution such as Microsoft Dynamics ERP, for example, which integrates physical and / or e-commerce channels with the back office operations, implementing the functionalities and controls commented above, according to the specific model of operation of the company, being it from a global or local origin.

Consequently, from a strategic perspective, intelligence tools such as Power BI can process consistent and immediate information, and professionals with their increased productivity can proactively contribute to the performance of their areas and the business as a whole.