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RetailVista has undergone tremendous growth in the field of order fulfillment in recent years. This begins in the sales order process, where scenarios are now utilized. We've observed that different types of orders require different methods of order processing. For example, the sale of fireworks differs greatly from garden furniture, which, in turn, differs from orders for items located in the store (showroom orders). By capturing these differences in separate scenarios, each type of order will follow the appropriate order processing. Digital order pickingEspecially as the number of orders increases, we've found that gathering orders on paper ultimately becomes impractical. After all, by the time an order is printed, the paper may already be outdated. As a solution, RetailVista Mobile has been expanded with two forms of digital order picking. There's a simple variant for gathering one order at a time. The significant advantage of this digital order picking is that warehouse locations are immediately debited in terms of stock position. The other variant is guided order picking, where orders are gathered line by line. This can be done in various ways, such as by a single order picker or multiple employees picking orders simultaneously. It's also possible to gather multiple orders in a single run, using carriers to keep multiple orders neatly separated.CarriersCarriers can be physical (collection bins) or digital, with carrier labels printed during the order picking process. Afterwards, it's always visible which article belongs to which order.Since many of our retailers have a store, there's often a desire to pick orders from both the store and a warehouse. RetailVista Mobile supports both options, and even mixed ones. However, this creates the need to merge article flows afterwards. Customers may place orders with items both in the store and in the warehouse. This is where the pack & ship application comes into play. Pack & ship applicationThis application is used at the packing department to prepare orders for transport. The pack & ship application can assist in merging different carriers. Subsequently, a check can be performed to ensure the correct items are gathered. Errors can easily occur, especially when multiple orders are picked simultaneously. This check is done in conjunction with registering shipments with a transport company, such as PostNL. This combination ensures that the contents of each box are known. This applies only to multi-parcel shipments. Each box in that case receives its own barcode. This ensures that if a box goes missing along the way, the undelivered items are known.Shipping labelsShipments are registered with SendCloud. This "broker" ensures the availability of various market parties that handle shipments, such as PostNL, DPD, DHL, and many others. After finalizing the shipment registration, the track & trace barcodes are stored in RetailVista, and all shipping labels are automatically printed.For "own transport," the pack & ship application also provides a solution, as there's an internal parcel service called 'RetailVista' parcel service. This internal service issues track & trace barcodes and prints shipping labels. This means that orders delivered via own transport will always be provided with shipping labels. Finally, a warehouse where all outgoing shipments have shipping labels! Handout applicationTo handle own transport, there's an 'issue' application within RetailVista Mobile. This application can be installed on delivery drivers' phones. By scanning the printed shipping labels, the software knows whether there's a multi-parcel shipment (multiple boxes) and informs the driver of the number of boxes to be delivered to a customer. We also provide good solutions for payment to the driver. Shipments can be prepared as cash on delivery, so the issue application will indicate that a payment must be made before handing over the shipment. After delivery, the driver will deposit the money into RetailVista POS, ensuring that the cash balance is correct at the end of the day and all outstanding payments have been processed.ReturnsUnfortunately, items are sometimes returned by customers. RetailVista recently introduced a returns management system for this purpose. There's support for pre-registering return shipments, but it's also possible for customers to return items without pre-registration. In that case, pre-registration essentially occurs at the same time as when the items physically arrive. Returns also utilize pre-configured return scenarios, including refunding the purchase, exchanging shipments, or resending items if a customer hasn't received a shipment. The return module prevents items from being returned more frequently than customers have ordered (and received). And of course, the original purchase price is taken into account. There are various integrations with payment systems such as Buckaroo and Pay.nl.
The return module is currently in pilot with some RetailVista users in 2024 and will be commercially available in 2025. Note that all behaviors and functionalities described above depend on the aforementioned scenario settings. There's a great deal of flexibility in this area, and desired functionality can be enabled or disabled. With the assistance of a RetailVista product specialist, the right choices can be made.
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