Open Source and the Imperative of IT Integration for Retailers

• Open-source ERP solutions provide the ideal IT backbone for retailers’ back offices.
• Cloud-ready and multitenant, these solutions enable retailers to provide each store with an independent management system, ensuring at the same time the autonomy of store managers and franchisees and the central control and protection of the brand in terms of business processes, pricing and promotions.
• At the same time, cloud-ready solutions enable very short deployment times, which allow retail chains to expand their presence and grow with minimal efforts and costs.
• Integration with POS systems ensures both local control of each transaction and central visibility for planning purposes.
• Integration with e-commerce solutions, also available as open-source software, enables retailers to implement a multichannel distribution strategy.

In this context, the back office plays a central role brokering the information that flows from and to each point in the system — from each POS to the back office of each store to the central decision makers of the retail chain and across all channels.