US-based retail hardware and software giant NCR has agreed to pay approximately $650 million to acquire Retalix, a retail technology company.

NCR management is using many elliptical phrases about “strengthening strategy,” “commitment to delivering solutions,” and “improving business processes and enabling experiences,” but there were no clearly stated reasons for the deal. Read the rest of this entry »

Retalix’ acquisition of Cornell Mayo Associates is symptomatic of the current trend of acquisition and consolidation in the retail marketplace (just look at RedPrairie’s four recent acquisitions in this area). This is a fast-changing marketplace, with retailers looking for broader solutions and less interested in multiple point solutions. Predicting how this merger will go is tricky, but in general I think it has to be a good move for Retalix. Retalix continues to execute on its strategy to expand into adjacent retail segments.

Cornell Mayo enhances the company’s position in the department store retail segment, and complements Retalix’s strongholds in the high-volume, high-complexity retail market (e.g., convenience stores, fast food restaurants, gas stations, and supermarkets). It will be interesting to watch for any cross-sales opportunities between Cornell Mayo’s point-of-sale (POS) and back-office apps and Retalix’ software tools for pricing, cashier balancing, sales trend reporting, labor scheduling, inventory management, accounting, and loyalty program management. As far as I know, the combination still lacks retail store task management and e-commerce solutions.

Profile: Retalix
Compare Retalix with other point-of-sale systems!

SOFTWARE SELECTED, IMPLEMENTED, AND PUT TO GOOD USE

Horticultural tools distribution business goes live with Sage ERP X3
Industry tags: wholesale and retail trade
“The 127-year-old company A.M. Leonard, which currently operates mostly via catalog and Internet commerce, selected Sage ERP X3 to replace its aged legacy system. The Sage product was chosen mainly because of its rich functionality and capability to make modifications and, notably, because they liked the people who sold the software. The entire implementation project took less than four months, which is a good result considering seven major modifications were made.”—Aleksey Osintsev, TEC Research Analyst

• TEC profile for Sage ERP X3
• Compare ERP software for distribution now!
• Press release

Read the rest of this entry »

Part II of this blog topic analyzed Epicor’s forays into the attractive retail sector via the CRS Retail acquisition two years ago. Most recently, with the acquisition of NSB Retail Systems, Epicor has further expanded its functional footprint, market share and geographic presence in the sector. Namely, NSB added over 200 specialty retail logos, thereby more than doubling Epicor’s retail install base.

While many analysts like Gartner, AMR Research or Aberdeen Group have quickly come up with their customary brief alerts, the usual-suspect bloggers have not seemed that interested in this event, with the notable exception of Frank Scavo in his Enterprise Systems Spectator blog post.

I concur with the assertion coming from both Epicor and the above analysts and bloggers that the retail sector is much more promising and with many more “greener pastures” than Epicor’s traditional overcrowded manufacturing and distribution sectors. The retail applications market is indeed large (AMR Research is predicting its size to be over US$10 billion by 2011 from US$8 billion today), growing (at an estimated 7.1 cumulative annual growth rate [CAGR]) and quite fragmented (whereby Top 5 vendors accounted for only 33 percent of the market in 2006, and no vendor currently has over 10 percent market share).

Epicor also cites some favorable trends in the sector, such as that (as with other industries) the adoption of packaged software will become the common technology approach, and that retailers too have become more interested in acquiring an integrated set of applications from a single vendor. Read the rest of this entry »

Take note if you’re evaluating software for any of the following types of systems.

• learning management
• POS or merchandising
• financial software
• CRM
• distribution-oriented ERP

We recently published updated ratings on a number of vendors’ products. Individual reports are available for purchase, or better you can review the ratings in-depth using a free evaluation centers trial. Here’s a quick rundown of the updates.

Knowledge Management Solutions’ KMx product, which is an integrated e-learning package, is up-to-date as of its 4.3 version in the Learning Management Evaluation Center.

Retalix targets companies with retail and distribution requirements. Depending on what your company does, you can view its products’ functionality based on our ERP - Distribution, SCM, Merchandising, or POS models of enterprise software.

Two significant updates in the area of enterprise financial software are online for comparison. One is for the Lawson S3 Finance system and the other is for Microsoft Dynamics GP.

Finally, the latest information on Sage SalesLogix is available in our CRM Evaluation Center. It covers a 30% change from the previous ratings and shows new or increased support for over fifty features.

Because we continuously update our knowledge bases with new ratings and research, I’ll make an effort to publish short notes like these periodically.