Check Out NetSuite's New Retail SaaS

This week, NetSuite debuted the NetSuite Multi-Channel Retail Management Suite, a Software-as-a-Service set of applications that helps retailers manage orders, inventory, marketing promotions and more across multiple retail channels, from physical stores to E-commerce Web sites.





Using the application's main dashboard (pictured), retail managers can get a top-level view of what's happening across their sales operations. Retailers with multichannel sales today generally have to cobble together such information from multiple "siloed" systems. Forrester Research estimates that cross-channel sales, such as when a customer buys a product online but picks it up at a store, will grow to 38 percent of all retail sales by 2012.

The NetSuite applications allow retailers to look at a customer's sales history, including in-store and e-commerce sales, and get a better understanding of their needs and behaviors.





The suite includes a point-of-sale module that allows the NetSuite software to be integrated with in-store point-of-sale systems. The POS module is based on software developed by OnSite, a NetSuite partner that developed a point-of-sale system that runs on NetSuite's core applications.

Data generated by the new retail applications is stored in the NetSuite data repository, giving customers the opportunity to analyze sales, orders and inventory by store and by channel in real time. Managers can analyze the profitability of specific stores and even specific customers as shown on this screen.



"You get sales information on your dashboard representing both your retail sales and Web sales -- all in real time," said Steve Jones, CEO at Explore Consulting, a NetSuite channel partner that provides consulting and integration services for NetSuite on-demand applications.





Jones said the new application set "is a no-brainer for any SMB retailer who wants to venture into e-commerce painlessly. I think that more businesses are realizing the financial benefit to Software-as-a-Service and the value in full integration out-of-the-box."

The NetSuite retail applications provide retailers with a way to manage inventory across multiple channels, as shown on this screen. Only 30 percent of retailers have tight integration between their cross-channel sales operations and their merchandising and inventory control systems, according to AMR Research.





The new applications are available now at a subscription fee of $499 per month plus $99 per user per month.