Replacing your point of sale and back office is a decision you will live with for a decade. Every vendor's demo looks good, because a demo is built to. What separates a platform that fits from one that fights you is less visible: how it holds data, how it reaches your books, who controls the environment and how it is rolled out.
These are the questions we would ask, grouped by the part of the business they protect.
Start with how your stores actually trade
Before features, describe your estate: the formats you run, the companies and countries behind them, and the moments that go wrong today. Then ask:
- Can one platform run all of our formats, or will a supermarket, a convenience store and a mall each need something different?
- When head office decides a promotion, how does it reach every lane, kiosk and storefront? Does anyone key it in by hand?
- What happens at the lane when the store loses its connection? Does it keep trading, and how does it reconcile afterwards?
- Can one company run several operating companies, with their own stores, prices and permissions?
One data model, or several systems talking
Many retail estates run on a point of sale, an inventory system, an e-commerce platform and a loyalty tool that are wired together. Each has its own idea of a product, a price and a customer, and the wiring is where things quietly break.
- Do checkout, receiving, online orders and replenishment read the same stock figure, or copies of it?
- How many product masters will we maintain? Who owns a price change, and where is it made?
- When a customer earns points online and redeems them in store, is that one record or two?
How it reaches your books
A retail platform should not replace your finance ERP. It should feed it cleanly.
- Which finance systems do you post to, and in what form: daily journals, document by document, or both?
- How are tills, tenders and bank settlements reconciled, and how quickly does a difference reach finance?
- When stock is received, does the accounting entry follow in the same step, or is it rebuilt later?
Who owns the environment
This is where enterprise platforms differ most, and it matters to your security and procurement teams.
- Is our environment shared with other retailers, or dedicated to us?
- Which region and which cloud will it run in, and can we choose our own?
- Who decides when upgrades happen? Is there a way back if a release causes trouble?
- Who controls encryption keys, backups and access to our raw data?
Identity and control
- Is there one sign-in across every module, app and partner portal, or a password per system?
- Can roles be scoped to a company, a region and a single store?
- Which changes are logged with who, what and when: prices, promotions, stock adjustments, permissions?
- Can the person who raises a document also approve it?
Suppliers, tenants and landlords
Much of the work in retail is with other businesses. Ask how they take part.
- Can suppliers confirm orders, book deliveries and submit invoices in a portal, rather than by email?
- If you run malls or concessions, can tenants and landlords work on the same platform?
- Do your partners pay to use those portals?
The rollout, not just the software
A retail rollout is a retail project before it is a software project.
- Will one store go live end to end before the rest, and what does that pilot include?
- How are product masters, prices, customers, stock and open documents migrated, and how are they reconciled afterwards?
- How are store teams trained, and who supports the first weeks of each wave?
- Will we work with a named project team? Can our own integrator take part?
How you will be charged
- Are we licensing modules we switch on, or a bundle we grow into?
- Does the price follow our estate, by store and lane, or our headcount?
- Is implementation quoted separately, so we can compare it?
- What happens to the licence when we close stores?
A shorter list, if you only have an hour
If time is short, these are the questions that reveal the most:
- Do checkout, receiving and online orders read the same stock figure?
- What happens at the lane when the network drops?
- Is our environment dedicated to us, and who decides when it is upgraded?
- How does a day of trading reach our finance ERP?
- What does the pilot store include, and how is data migrated and reconciled?
The full list, ready to send
These questions are the short version. The Retail ERP Buyer's Guide sets out 67 of them in eight areas, with why each one matters, what a strong answer sounds like and the warning signs, plus six scripted demonstration scenarios. It comes with an RFP question workbook your team can send to a shortlist and score together.
How One Retail answers them
We built One Retail around these questions: one data model across checkout, store operations, partners and finance, a private environment for every client, and rollouts that start with one pilot store. If you would like to see the answers rather than read them, the product tour follows a single purchase order from the buyer's desk to the books, and our team can take you through the rest on your own formats.