iVend Retail FAQs

  • Who is iVend Retail best for - their role(s) within what kind of companies.

    iVend Retail offers a fully integrated suite of retail management solutions designed to provide retailers of all sizes, in all geographies, the tools they need to operate competitive, profitable businesses. Used by thousands of retailers in 85+ countries, iVend Retail manages all of the day-to-day sales operations from system administration and store operations to reporting. Role functions that are well serviced by iVend Retail include IT administration, marketing, finance, buying and merchandising, store operations, eCommerce and supply chain. All roles benefit from the features on offer and are fully catered for from the cashier and sales associate to the invested owners of the business including the COO and CEO.

  • How does iVend Retail benefit them?

    • Business Owner, CEO and COO: iVend Retail increases the equity value of a business by improving sales, market share, margins, profits and return on capital investment. The solution is designed to maximize sales potential by implementing fully integrated sales growth programs across all sales channels. The solution provides real-time visibility into enterprise wide sales insights to enable better decision making.
    • Finance: iVend Retail allows finance teams to achieve sales objectives with a lower stock to sales ratio and to focus inventory where it is most needed.
    • Buying and Merchandising: The advanced forecasting and replenishment engines in iVend Retail greatly improve the accuracy of inventory level planning thereby reducing the investment needed in safety stock, while simultaneously enhancing the service levels to the end customer.
    • Marketing: iVend Retail ensures a consistent customer experience across all sales channels via an Omni-channel engagement. Fully integrated solutions afforded by iVend provide retailers with a single view of their customers to deliver a personalized experience to shoppers that see them fully engaged throughout the sales process.
    • Store Operations: Store productivity and decision making is boosted through easy to use reports and dashboards, which can be accessed from a large number of supported devices either on premise or on the cloud. In-store sales associates and managers are empowered with context filled information to not only save the sale but to realise true sales growth with many features that value-add to support better cross sell and up-sell opportunities.
    • eCommerce: A natively integrated feature rich, eCommerce/mCommerce platform that greatly accelerates sales growth for retailers by expanding their businesses to reach a new online audience. With iVend eCommerce retailers are no longer constrained by their immediate geographical location but can expand their business to include customers from around the globe. For a much smaller investment, retailers can realise a much larger return, replacing old systems for generating sales is greatly simplified with iVend eCommerce as it comes fully integrated with iVend Retail out of the box, which significantly reduces the size, time and cost of the usual implementation footprint. Retailers and their customers alike, realise a much faster, more enjoyable and convenient shopping experience with iVend eCommerce.
    • IT: iVend Retail uses open platform technology to help retailers protect investments and transform, replace or integrate with existing systems. iVend Retail can be integrated with any ERP, accounting, CRM and customer-facing solution via the iVend open APIs. In addition, iVend Extensibility allows for the core retail solution to be extended and tailored offering new features and functionality. Examples of these include rentals, scheduling, vertical specific functionality such as hospitality, optical and specialty service retail models. The flexibility and customizability of iVend Retail supports and enables retailers to grow and evolve their business solutions in response to changing market and consumer expectations. iVend Retail offers robust and extensive automation with real time integration, including the upgrade processes. This ensures retailers stay up to date with system improvements, allowing IT teams to better spend their time on value-adding with strategic projects. iVend Retail is multi-currency, multi-company, multi-channel and supports multi-tax jurisdictions with full legal and fiscal requirements being met across the globe.
    • Supply Chain: iVend Retail provides forecasting and replenishment functionality to help retailers maintain stock levels and meet customer service goals. iVend Retail provides mobile based functionality to help maintain accurate store and warehouse stock records, thereby supporting efficient inventory management. iVend Retail standard functionality supports a wide range products types by offering features to easily manage inventory by serial and batch, by kits and assemblies, by special analysis and also for items that require special ordering.

  • How technical do users need to be to use iVend Retail's software?

    After setup, users do not have to be technical at all, as iVend Retail is a very user-friendly and intuitive system. The solution can be easily customised right down to the individual user, allowing retailers to tailor the solution to suit any particular skill level.

  • What makes iVend Retail a leader in this space?

    iVend Retail delivers the only complete Omnichannel retail management solution with end-to-end functionality right out of the box. The modular solution supports more retail sales driving initiatives than any of our competitors. iVend Retail offers a full and comprehensive suite of integrated solutions with functionality that includes terminal POS, Mobile POS, customer loyalty, eCommerce/m-Commerce, inventory handheld management, reporting analytics and digital passes and all within a single platform. iVend Retail empowers retailers to deliver a seamless customer experience across all channels.

  • Who are iVend Retail's biggest competitors (3-5 companies)?

    • Cegid
    • Retail Pro
    • LS Retail

  • How/why is iVend Retail better than those competitors (or most others in their market)? What about iVend Retail is unique, stronger, easier, etc.?

    iVend Retail is an exceptionally comprehensive system, focused on all customer touch points (In-store terminal and mobile POS, online with eCommerce, catalogue shopping, kiosk type pop-ups and a 24/7 global support network). Unlike our competitors, iVend is the only retail management solution that provides a true Omnichannel experience right out of the box. Designed for maximizing retailer profits by enabling the consumer to browse and search for products anywhere, buy anywhere and, if necessary, return anywhere. iVend Retail helps the consumer achieve their objectives irrespective of where the stock might be or where they might be. iVend Retail is a solution suite comprising seven modules that cover every aspect of the consumer’s touch points by providing all the elements expected of a complete merchandise management system including functionality for terminal POS, Mobile POS, customer loyalty management, e-commerce/m-commerce, retail analytics and digital passes. iVend Retail can be easily integrated with any ERP system and works for retailers of all sizes from small single store operations to large enterprise multi-store chains.
    Other key features that empower the retailer and offer an enhanced shopping experience for the customer include:
    • Powerful Promotional Bonus Buys and Pricing engine
    • Gift certificates and coupons
    • Integrated customer loyalty programs in-store and online enabling the earning and redemption of awards at anytime and anywhere.
    • Offline POS enabling a continuous uninterrupted flow should network connection systems become unavailable
    • Fully integrated merchandising management.
    • Synchronized supply-demand forecasting, planning and replenishment to reduce excess inventory while at the same time avoiding stock-outs and short supply
    • A comprehensive suite of reports and dashboards that provide the ability to identify dynamic consumer buying patterns and determine the right pricing and promotions to help maximize profitability. iVend comes with its own reporting and dashboard designers to maximize in-house control and ownership of their reporting systems.
    • iVend Retail Extensibility provides a layer of flexibility and customizability that makes it extremely fast and easy to add features and functionality beyond the core solution. iVend Extensibility enables specialty retail models to be easily serviced and catered for such as rentals, scheduling, hospitality, optical and much, much more. Furthermore, extensibility can be used to expand the already rich sales reporting by offering additional layers of transaction analytics or even by splitting sales across multiple customers while still maintaining full tracking and account management.

  • What kind of features can customers expect iVend Retail to release in the near future? And longer term?

    Our dynamic leadership and product development roadmap enables iVend to maintain a progressive and competitive advantage for all of our retail customers. Seen as the innovators and not the imitators, we always look to see how new emerging sales trends can be improved upon.
    Upcoming developments include, but are not limited to:
    • Revamped mobile POS application for iOS and Android devices
    • Customer Facing Display enhancements
    • Browser based Management Console
    • Inventory tracking with RFID
    • Clienteling
    • Footfall integration
    • Electronic shelf labels
    • Social media integration – Facebook and Twitter
    • An in-store self-service mobile POS app with product information, shopping lists and loyalty information

  • Which popular or common software does iVend Retail integrate with?

    • ERP
    • CRM
    • CCTV
    • eCommerce platforms
    • WMS
    • Accounting
    • Business Intelligence (BI) Analytics

  • Software pricing can often be complex. If it's pretty straightforward, list tiers, pricing (per year, seat, etc) and limits for iVend Retail. If it's not simple, use broad estimates or ranges for typical setups.

    Broadly there are 2 licensing and pricing models:
    (i) Perpetual Licensing, where a customer buys a perpetual license to the product upfront and then continue to pay for upgrades yearly through a Software Assurance program in order to receive new versions and 24/7 product support. Software Assurance is normally 20-25% of the perpetual license fee and is recurring, paid annually in advance.
    (ii) Subscription Licensing, where a customer pays a subscription price to have access to the products and services. Renewal of a subscription may be periodic and activated automatically, so that the cost of a new period is automatically paid for by a pre-authorized charge. All upgrades and 24/7 support services are included in the annual subscription price. As an example subscription pricing for a single store, with a single POS can be as little $160 per month.

  • Does iVend Retail offer a trial or free download available?

    No, not currently, however a customer can download a demo version of the solution that comes preconfigured with demo data and a limited license that allows them time to review the functionality on offer.

  • Does iVend Retail offer any kind of training/education for their product?

    Initial training is included with the implementation program and processes, which is offered at a greatly reduced cost. Ongoing self-education is available via an extensive library of eLearning and documentation materials, consisting of interactive videos with quizzes, user guides and implementation manuals. In addition to these, there are regular monthly training webinars, a comprehensive knowledge base and an iVend Retail forum, which is manned by a global team of specialists; all of these services are available online at the iVend Knowledge Portal and are free of charge to registered users.

  • Describe the implementation process and timeline for iVend Retail software.

    Although, we provide a full suite of eLearning and installation guides, we do always recommend the engagement of a fully qualified and experienced consultant to perform the installation, configuration and system initialisation processes. These services are offered through our global network of expert implementation partners.

  • What are the iVend Retail support options? List all.

    Level 1 and 2 support services are provided by our expert implementation partners. Level 3 support services are provided directly by CitiXsys with 24/7 access – services are available via our monitored online dedicated support portal and in addition we also offer telephone and forum support around the clock globally.