Blog Cin7 Helping LOCATE customers find a new home
28 September, 2022

Helping LOCATE customers find a new home

The choices for inventory and order management software are narrowing by the month. In July 2020, Square sunsetted Stitch Labs. In June 2021, Intuit/QuickBooks announced it was sunsetting its TradeGecko platform. In November of 2021, Xero announced October 10, 2022 as the date it will be sunsetting its LOCATE software.

The field of inventory software providers is undergoing a trend of consolidation because the few top full-featured players are becoming established as the solutions of choice.

If you’ve started an ecommerce business, are in the planning stages for one, or are expanding your brick-and-mortar to include online, implementing a flexible, cloud-based, all-in-one inventory and order management system should be top of mind.

The sunsetting of LOCATE may leave you in need of another software solution for managing  your inventory. If that’s the case, how would you feel about getting an online system that could do more than LOCATE? Is your business sufficiently prepared for robust growth, for instance? Cin7 is an inventory and order management solution built to position your business for growth for years to come.

There are still several options out there, even without LOCATE. How can you know which solution to choose? How do the leading providers that are left compare to each other? Which solution is best for you?

 

Choosing the right alternative to LOCATE

Here are some important considerations to keep in mind as you begin to research inventory control providers.

A solution that will grow with you

The software you choose should be able to keep up with the growth of your business. A good way to estimate the future growth of your business is to take the quantity of goods you’re currently selling and increase it by a reasonable growth factor each year for the next five years.

Higher complexity online sellers are adopting Cin7, which supports multichannel sales operations and boasts over 700 built-in integrations that connect to popular accounting, shipping, and 3PL providers to handle warehousing and fulfillment.

When selecting an inventory management system, you should make sure it’s  completely SaaS-based. SaaS stands for Software as a Service, which essentially means it operates totally in the cloud. Some providers are not completely SaaS based, and require physical servers to be installed in each of your locations. Of course, these servers have to be maintained.

Highly configurable multichannel D2C options

We recently conducted a survey of 4,000 online sellers. We wanted to find out what strategies the most successful sellers were applying. Of the 4,000 businesses we polled, 47% rated multichannel selling as their #1 priority.

Building a variety of sales channels allows for a more agile business strategy, one that’s less vulnerable to market disruptions. Cin7’s integrated ecosystem enables multichannel selling from all of your online and physical store locations.

We even published the survey as a fact-filled eBook. It’s available for free right here.

Strengthen your supply chain

We’ve all heard about the current state of the global supply chain. Experts tell us the disruption may not be resolved until 2024 or beyond. This underscores the importance of choosing a software provider with the richest feature set for the price to mitigate the impact of supply chain disruption wherever possible.

Compared to competitors, Cin7 comes out way ahead when it comes to feature depth. As your business grows, the ability to connect directly to major retailers via built-in EDI simplifies bulk orders and payment processing. Cin7 seamlessly connects inventory and order management to point of sale, online marketplaces, accounting software, shipping, and 3PL providers. It also includes a warehouse management system.

When it comes to integrations, no other solution can beat Cin7. With over 700 built-in connections, Cin7 creates a centralized network of real-time 360° visibility across your business and builds efficiencies in finance, order fulfillment, EDI, and 3PL.

Cin7 immediately syncs all sales and purchasing transactions with popular accounting software like QuickBooks and Xero.

When it comes to financial analysis and reporting, Cin7 boasts extensively configurable reporting analytics including pivot table-based reports to help with sales analysis and inventory forecasting.

B2B and Wholesale

Cin7 ensures you can handle inventory control, sales, purchasing, order fulfillment and payment processing for B2B orders. Cin7 includes a configurable payment portal that allows you to set payment terms, take wholesale order deposits of any amount, and process all payments.

Cost

Cin7 is priced in the mid hundreds, includes multiple users, and connections to third parties in the monthly subscription fee. Most other solutions require middleware providers to create connections and charge a recurring monthly fee per connection.

With the number of connections required to run your business, it’s financially wise to go with a provider that has already built direct connections to the leading third parties you’re going to need to work with and includes them in your monthly fees.

 

Don’t delay researching

October 10, 2022 is just around the corner. If you’re a growing product seller and multiple sales channels is your goal, book a demo here. One of our Cin7 sales specialists will help you find out if Cin7 is a fit for your growing business.

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