Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations

Designed to work in fast-paced, high-volume, multistore environments, Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations (RMS-SO) further expands your retail power at the POS and in the back office. In physical stores, catalogs/phone sales and Web orders, RMS-SO totally integrates and simplifies multi-channel retailing through all-new connectivity power.

RMS-SO tames any stock, inventory and sales method—including your services, layaways, subscriptions, work orders and back orders. In one or a hundred checkout lanes, RMS-SO’s easy-to-grasp screens deliver faster, smoother sales. Cashiers make fewer mistakes. Lines move faster.

RMS-SO tracks, manages and speeds up every aspect of retail management—sales, inventory control, discounts, mailings, pricing, purchasing, receivables, reporting and suppliers. RMS-SO gives detailed, flexible, blazing fast reports on exactly what’s happening in every department, for every item. You make informed decisions with real-time data and maintain a unified view of each customer—whatever the sales channel.

Keep the same software, database, and user interfaces as you expand to multistore operations and multi-channel retailing. Avoid conversions and new learning curves. RMS-SO shaves costs and speeds your growth from a single lane to a national chain. Even small retailers now have big-business tools.

Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations Overview

Feature Summary

Unique Features

System Requirements

Web Access

Customer Success Stories

Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations Overview

New marketing opportunities flash by every day. Today's customers want more SKUs, personalized service and connected convenience. Perennial chores of inventory management, purchasing and pricing must be streamlined to find time for new tasks. Data exchange with customers, suppliers and other systems must work first time, every time, anytime.

Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations is recognized worldwide as the only economical software solution that handles every POS and management challenge. It expedites checkouts and every back-office task, shows you new ways to market, promote and sell, scales up smoothly for expansion and e-commerce, and cuts your POS system and operating costs.

See, manage, price, and control inventories across multiple locations. Make informed decisions with real-time data. Maintain a unified view of each customer—whatever the sales channel. Connected solutions let information flow to customers, business partners and employees. You streamline operations to make your enterprise more nimble, responsive and productive. Close the loop on customers to build more dynamic, lasting relationships.

Any Inventory. Any Store. Any Chain! Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations tames any stock, inventory and sales method—including your services, layaways, subscriptions, work orders and back orders.

Power, Speed and Flexibility at the Point-of-Sale. In one or a hundred checkout lanes, RMS-SO’s easy-to-grasp screens deliver faster, smoother sales. The customizable POS screen looks like a receipt—with every item, price and quantity in plain sight. Cashiers make fewer mistakes. Lines go fast. Tricky transactions—layaways, returns, partial payments, mixed tender—all become easy.

Enhance Customers' Shopping Experience. Serve customers as individuals, using the same tools retail giants do. RMS-SO can make every customer feel like a valued friend by keeping customer records as complete as you like them. Happy customers are repeat customers. Besides building a loyal customer base, RMS-SO's features speed lines and ensure accurate accounting.

Save Your Time and Money.  Every function is easy to learn and flexes to your changing needs. Intuitive screens speed learning so staff can spend extra time serving customers or researching new products.

Customizable Management Tools. Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations incorporates all-new tools to manage every aspect of your store with amazing ease, complete security and absolute control. At the POS or in the back office, RMS-SO's flexibility gives faster task completion, complete visibility and accuracy.

Quick, Comprehensive, Flexible Reports. Make smarter decisions using accurate and timely data. Exploit thousands of standard report possibilities or design your own. RMS-SO's report engine runs the longest reports with blazing speed.  Better reporting power gives you tighter management and higher profits.

Easy Integration. Easy integration with the Internet and other software packages avoids double work and broadens management visibility. Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations amiably integrates with legacy systems, accounting/financial software, EDC, credit card services and the Web. Make in-store traffic, catalog sales, phone orders and Web traffic feed each other! RMS-SO helps you maximize cash-in from every "touch" and transaction.

More Cash-In Per Customer. Make in-store traffic, catalog sales, phone orders and Web traffic feed each other! RMS-SO helps you maximize cash-in from every "touch" and transaction. In myriad ways, RMS-SO helps you serve customers better to increase revenue and bind loyalty.

Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations Helps You ExpandEconomically. RMS-SO flexes and conforms to the way you sell and work. It gives you the kind of information tools that retail blockbusters use—customer purchase histories, e-receipts, personalized marketing, even B2B, e-commerce and CRM/ERP connectivity.

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Features Summary

In retail, new marketing opportunities flash by every day. Today's customers want more SKUs, personalized service and connected convenience.

Perennial chores of inventory management, purchasing and pricing must be streamlined to find time for new tasks. Data exchange with customers, suppliers and other systems must work first time, every time, anytime.

Microsoft's acquisition of the QuickSell product line gives retailers an integrated, end-to-end POS/retail management solution that is 100% backed by Microsoft. Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations efficiently handles transactions, customer histories, inventory management, purchasing and shipping, even Web sales. It enables chainwide retail management with Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations Headquarters (HQ).

Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations, paired with Microsoft’s Small Business Manager or Dynamics, completes retail tasks in every corner of the store—from the register through stock levels, to balance sheets and payroll taxes. Powerful separately, invincible together and thoroughly connectable to other Windows applications, these best-in-class solutions arm you with everything you need to survive and expand—no matter who moves into the mall.

Even small retailers now have big-business tools.

Supported Hardware

Point-Of-Sale Capabilities

Internet Applications

Inventory Types

Inventory Control and Tracking

Pricing, Sales, and Promotions

Advanced Security Options

Wizards

Customizable Active Reports

Customer Management and Marketing

Employee Management

Interface with Other Accounting Software

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Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations Unique Features

Whether you are new to Store Operations's retail-savvy advantages, or familiar with QuickSell 2000, this primer updates you on Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations's new and often unique features. RMS-SO is packed with exciting advanced features that dramatically boost sales and improve back-office and POS efficiency.

Net Display Channels

Call Net Display your subtle "up-seller." It enables you to showcase advertisements and Websites on a second monitor for customers at your point of sale. You might put these monitors around the store or display them to customers awaiting checkout. This replaces the pole display and can show Web sites and Web pages you pre-select or ads from your local CD-ROM or DVD.

Net Display supports multimedia, so you can include sound and action clips. It's entirely programmable and interactive, so entering the customer's name can trigger personal greetings, reminders about customary items and other persuaders. Purchases in one category can trigger notice of specials or mix `n match offers for similar items.

Shipping and Tracking over the Internet

If you use UPS or FedEx, Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations streamlines shipping. No need for a dedicated PowerShip or other machines. Customer name and address—even product weight—plug in automatically. RMS-SO transmits data to FedEx or UPS Web sites for shipping documents. RMS-SO maintains shipping documents and will track shipments. Manage your account from the browser screen. Know and tally exact costs from the shipper's on-board schedule.

Empowering the POS with Corporate Information Via Internet or WAN

You and your staff will find many more ways to profit from RMS-SO's connectivity. View Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations as your total, two-way, instant information conduit between your point of sale terminals, your back-office computer, your IT system and the outside world of consumers, suppliers and partners.  

Under security rules you set, you and your store associates can access, display and work with any file or any program, on any accessible computer in your network—or in the world. You can run those applications, even use their output instantly with no delay to the customer. You pre-set the only Web sites, files and programs that customers and sales associates will see and access.

Stores connect to corporate via Internet, VPN or WAN. Information from corporate can be "pushed" to the POS or "pulled" by the POS using standard Internet protocols such as HTML, HTTP, HTTPS or server-side scripts. The built-in Web browser displays acquired information on the POS screen. Text, graphics and multimedia information can be displayed and heard.  

Advanced Security Features

Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations incorporates tight security controls and restricts employee access to sensitive information. It includes a built-in security system with 31 security levels (security definitions or profiles). These protect Web access features, programmable POS keys, screens and fields, report writing—every sensitive corner of your system and confidential data. 

System administrators define each security level to grant tightly specified access privileges. You can assign the behavior for every screen feature, defining if that field or control can be viewed—and/or edited—by that level of employee. After you define the security level, assign it to the appropriate employee(s). You dictate precisely what data fields each employee can view and/or change.

Active Reports

You’ve never seen a report engine jet through jobs like this one. Huge reports on tens of thousands of items once took twenty minutes to calculate. Optimized for speed, Quick Reports calculates the worst of them in literally seconds.

With point-and-click speed, you can find and compare key information easily. Generate a wide variety of consolidated reports to obtain instant sales figures, identify slow-moving items and see sales for any day, any register—and many other filters. Then customize each report to visually emphasize crucial data.

Advanced sorting and filtering tools enable you to fine-tune your reports. You quickly pinpoint the exact data you need to realistically project future sales and make effective management decisions. Incorporate your company logo or other graphics into reports for presentations. Then store these parameters for easy and regular use.

Change database items from any report

These are “Living Reports.” Wherever RMS-SO's “Show Me” icon (magnifying glass) appears on screen, click the item to see its detail, say a cashier’s full profile or all the database descriptors for an item. Users having appropriate security access can change database definitions directly from a report. You can rearrange column sequence, show or hide any column—even grant or lock out access to certain people printing certain reports. 

Custom-Build and Reorganize Reports

After you generate the report, Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations gives you a vast variety of ways to view and reorganize your data. You can even custom-build and organize your reports directly on the report preview screen by:  

Store Operations's Efficient Assistant

The traditional downfall of other retail systems is the requirement to change things in three or four places. Besides being time-consuming, that weakness spawns inconsistencies, data entry errors and long hours of corrections. In Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations, your own personal automated assistant helps you change properties in your database all at once—eliminating the need to manually change each individual item. You update item prices, costs, reorder information, sales tax assignment, even put groups of selected items on promotion.

Label Designer and Wizard

You need to print labels in different sizes and shapes to accommodate different products and printers. Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations's new features speed up the way you process and print labels. Label Designer lets you easily design your own WYSIWYG label templates. You can add and position graphics and text.  

Save time when you print labels. Use Label Wizard to select one of your customized templates, then specify filter criteria. Print only as many as you need. No need to manually create and adjust labels every time you want to print a label.

Receipts with Logos and Graphics

You can completely customize point-of-sale receipts to display your company logo, address, phone numbers, even graphics. Whether you want to promote your company name or highlight a holiday sale, you can program the software to custom-build the receipts that best relay your message(s).

Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations can print graphics directly on the receipts, including barcodes, logos and pictures. It can include text in your preferred font and format. You can size and position your graphics and text.

Gift Certificates, Gift Cards and Vouchers

Store Operations has always handled gift certificates and vouchers. Now "gift cards" offer gift-givers a "dynamic gift certificate" that's tied to your store. The gift-card holder can spend any amount up to the card's limit, then the giver can renew the card repeatedly. Clear receipts, both printed and retrievable at any time and document every purchase.  

Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations can tally cardholder purchases against a pre-purchased amount, then recharge the gift card against a credit card, a store account or other tender.

Customizable POS Buttons

Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations lets you program a button on the POS screen to access other software files and Web pages—on your computer or via Internet. It can invoke programs, information and capabilities on the POS screen, or send them to the customer's monitor.

Buttons are normally displayed on the right side of the POS screen, but you can reposition and size them as you choose. They give you one-step access to as many as ten programs, reference pages or Web sites. This feature gives your store associates immediate access to worldwide computing power while the customer checks out. But every employee's Web access is totally under your control.

Accounts Receivable Feature

Accounts Receivable offers many flexible new search and payment options. Rather than requiring a customer to pay an entire account, you can process and track customer payments by individual invoices and statements.

The Aged Receivables option lets you select the specific invoice a customer wishes to pay. In addition to setting up revolving accounts, you can also bill payments for net terms. 

New Item Wizard

Use the New Item Wizard to quickly add items to your database. And, as always in Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations, adding something once means never having to add it again in another part of the program.

The New Item Wizard enables you to set up item types, define kit and matrix components and set standard properties. This feature is especially useful when creating assembly, kit, matrix, and/or lot matrix items. For example, rather than manually entering each component of a matrix item, you can use the New Item Wizard to automatically add all components to the database at once.

Enhanced Journal Viewer

Store Operations's enhanced journal capabilities enable staff you have empowered with the correct security designations to view and print any journal from any register in your preferred format. This can be done at the point of sale or in the back office.

Customizable POS Screen

You customize the look and functions of your POS screen with the field displays you want. Pick and choose from several display features, including status bar, HTML status bar, custom buttons, totals, function keys and NetDisplay.  

You can resize and reposition the transaction screen. And Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations will save your screen settings.

Unlimited Line Item Entry

Whether your customer wants five items or thousands, RMS-SO lets you sell unlimited items in one transaction. Other products limit the number of items per transaction. Grocery stores and other large-client enterprises need voluminous item lists. And these big-purchase customers are just the ones you want to impress with fast service.

Detailed Customer Information

When you select a customer, you will immediately see "Bill To" and "Ship To" information. You see detailed customer information right on the transaction screen, including account number, total sales, number of visits and date of last visit.  

Having pertinent customer information at your fingertips retains repeat customers are builds new relationships.

Orders, Quotes and Layaways

The POS program introduces new features to improve creating and processing work orders, sales quotes and layaways. You can view and edit detailed information directly on the transaction screen, assign a reference number and accept payment(s) towards a work order or layaway.

Depending on whether you create an order, quote or layaway, on-screen information can include comments, on-deposit amount, deposit payment, order balance, due date, reference number and expiration date. Trusted associates with the necessary security level can edit these fields on the transaction screen.

Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations allows unlimited flexibility when dealing with orders, quotes and layaways. Rather than requiring customers to pay for all items on an order, RMS-SO lets them pay for any combination of items and allows you to add/cancel items at any time.  

Editable Time-Clock Entries

Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations has incorporated a number of new employee time-clock capabilities. You can now edit time-clock entries in the Manager program. As Administrator, you can view a particular employee's clock-in and clock-out times. The Time-Clock window displays all cashier names with time in, time out and time elapsed.

Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations includes handy tools to allow authorized users to edit time-clock information, including clock-in date and time and clock-out date and time. Editing is useful when cashiers log in under the wrong name or forget to clock in or out. And of course you can restrict employees' access to time-clock edits.

Assembly, Matrix and Lot Matrix Items

Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations neatly organizes all of your assembly, matrix and lot matrix item information into an easy-to-use grid. You see all your items and their related attributes at once. You can edit item attributes directly on the grid.

You can assign/barcode each item with a separate lookup code. To quickly add matrix items to your database, let the New Item Wizard define matrix components all at once. Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations adds the matrix item and its components to the database. You can sort matrix items by dimensions. You can view selected (or all) individual components (item lookup codes) of the particular item matrix, in addition to their description, quantity, size and color.

Informative Graphs

Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations can display your revenues, sales and inventory data in a variety of ways. Drop-down list boxes let you generate a variety of graphs that you can further customize.  

Select different time periods. Group related data. See numerical and graphical versions. Print it, store it, email it. Make templates of your favorite graphs and reuse them at will. It's another powerful RMS-SO tool to give you the visibility you need to manage. 

Support for Data Warehousing and OLAP

The point of sale is where customers "vote with their wallets" on where they buy, what they buy and how often. That's why customer data, buying histories and preferences are vital to survival and expansion.

Store Operations captures detailed customer data in a Microsoft SQL Server database for analysis. A growing number of retailers are turning to data warehousing and on-line analytical processing (OLAP) to maximize customer spending and bolster customer service and repeat business by personalizing the shopping experience.  Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations makes that data immediately and accurately available.

Retail Rounding

Store Operations introduces new global pricing features that enable you to perform retail rounding. When you use the Store Operations Assistant to change item prices, Store Operations includes an option that allows you to round all updated prices to customary retail values based on rounding rules that you specify. 

"Buy X, Get Y" Discount Capability

Sell a specified quantity ("X") of items at full price and give the customers a certain number ("Y") of items for free or at a discounted price. For example, if customers buy three T-shirts, they can receive another T-shirt for free. Or, if they buy four pairs of socks, they receive the next three pairs at 50% off. Pick and choose your desired discounts.

Multiple Foreign Currencies

Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations lets you handle multiple foreign currencies and exchange rates. You can set up each desired currency with its associated exchange rate and locale. New features include the ability to assign these currencies to applicable suppliers to handle purchase orders and inventory transfers. Use Store Operations Label Designer to customize labels to display multiple exchange rates, even graphics of associated International flags. 

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Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations System Requirements

You want a stable and reliable retail system that will grow with your business and encourage that growth. Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations gives you hallmark technological advancements you expect in a stable, reliable environment. And it’s backed by award-winning training and support.

Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations is designed to run on any PC-compatible system under Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, or Windows XP. One central design goal for Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations is to make the software scalable and extensible. It relies on Windows DNA and Microsoft SQL Server as framework and the architecture for scalability. SQL Server easily scales from desktop to enterprise server to accommodate a database of any size. 

The minimum requirements below will yield a functional level of performance. Higher levels of performance can be gained with hardware upgrades.

Database Requirements

Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations requires Microsoft SQL Server for its database storage. The SQL Server can be run on the same machine as Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations or on a dedicated database server for higher performance.

The vast majority of retailers are small to medium-size and do not have the budget or technical expertise to set up and maintain database servers. For this reason, the Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE 2000) is provided with Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations so retailers can start with a robust database engine even on desktop PCs. The following are some quick facts on MSDE:

Client Requirements

Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations can run on a stand-alone PC or in a networked environment. Any of the following operating systems can be used: Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT 4.0 Workstation Edition (or later) Service Pack 5, Windows NT 4.0 Server Edition Service Pack 5, Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Professional Edition, Windows XP (all versions). 

System Minimum Recommended
Processor: Pentium 300 Pentium 500 or higher
Hard Disk Space: 4GB free 8GB free
RAM: 64MB or 128MB for
Windows 2000 or Windows NT
256MB
Video: SVGA (800x600) with 16-bit video driver SVGA (800x600) with 16-bit video driver
CD-ROM: Optional Optional
Network Card: 32-bit 32-bit

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WEB SOLUTIONS

This Web-enabled point-of-sale (POS) application lets retailers maximize their in-store capabilities and expand their potential to the Web. Retailers can sell anywhere and integrate Web technologies, while Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations handles POS and back office functions with speed and ease.

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Customer Success Stories

Wild Birds Unlimited franchises take flight with Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations
WBU's 280 franchised stores in the U.S. and Canada serve the $4.5 billion bird feeding and bird watching market. Store Operations allows franchisees to automate as much of their retail operations as they wanted while keeping TCO low.

The Moderne uses leading-edge technology to move trendy fashions
Dublin's largest clothing store rescued sales space from storage, found any item in minutes and broadcast specials on Microsoft Retail Management Store Operations's Net Display monitors.

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