Managing retail franchise operations brings about unique challenges and opportunities from a software standpoint. Franchisees want their independence, and ability to manage their businesses according to unique local demands, while franchisors need flexible controls to ensure the health of the overall brand.

1. The CIO’s Guide to Selecting
Software for Retail Franchises

2. 01 | The CIO’s Guide to Selecting Software for Retail Franchises
Managing retail franchise operations
brings about unique challenges and op-
portunities from a software standpoint.
Franchisees want their independence,
and ability to manage their businesses
according to unique local demands, while
franchisors need flexible controls to en-
sure the health of the overall brand.
Finding a single POS or retail ERP solu-
tion that meets the needs of the franchi-
sor and all franchisees can be a difficult
task. Historically, some franchisors have
even left the software selection up to the
individual franchisees, resulting in a mish-
mash of disparate, disconnected systems.
The downsides to this arrangement are
numerous, and even more obvious in to-
day’s omni-channel marketplace.
Whether you’re running an exclusively
franchised model or a mix of corporate-
owned and franchise stores, and whether
your stores are full franchises (franchisee
owns and controls inventory) or sub-
license franchises (the brand owns and
controls inventory), Raymark has the solu-
tions you need.
The CIO’s Guide
to Selecting Software for Retail Franchises
Copyright 2014 Raymark Xpert Business Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Challenges of Operating
Disparate Retail Systems
1. Added costs of software licenses, host-
ing and maintenance.
2. Additional IT resources needed to man-
age disparate systems and databases.
4. Added costs for integration.
3. Lack of real-time visibility into inven-
tory and sales, resulting in uninformed
purchase and allocation decisions.
4. Added risk of error or fraud.
5. Poorer customer service due to lack of
centralized inventory visibility.
6. Lack of centralized reporting.
7. Reduced productivity due to duplicate
entry of data.

3. 02 | The CIO’s Guide to Selecting Software for Retail Franchises
Raymark Solutions for Franchise Retail
Franchises are a popular business model used by retailers look-
ing to expand their distribution locally or internationally with little
capital investment. However, franchisors are often faced with the
dilemma of not retaining enough control over franchisee opera-
tions.
One of Raymark’s main differentiators is our proprietary Point
of Business Concept. Administrators can configure the Point of
Business (POB) to be anything from a buyer’s workstation, a point
of sale terminal, or a warehouse receiving station, allowing each
one to perform its unique tasks within a centralized database.
Retailers with franchise operations usually host a combination of
both corporately owned flagship stores, and franchise operated
field stores. This hybrid business model creates a need for a re-
tail software solution that enables head office to manage multiple
business entities simultaneously while allowing each of those
entities to interact seamlessly with corporate.
Using Raymark’s centralized retail enterprise solutions, franchi-
sors obtain real-time control of and visibility into pricing struc-
tures, sales numbers, and stock requirements while still allowing
their franchisees to operate independently.
Managed Flexibility
From a data standpoint, many retailers with a combination of
both corporate and franchise owned stores struggle with data
segregation and store group management. Raymark’s archi-
tecture allows for the ability to segregate information based on
logical business units. Read, edit and write access to customer
information, purchase orders, products, promotions, gift cards
and more can be limited using Raymark’s store access and con-
figuration modules. This can be limited to a single franchise store
or can include a group of stores.
Raymark point of sale solutions allow stores to be defined
through a three-tiered structure of associations, and support a
multi-store grouping structure built on multiple business units
(i.e. groups and grids for pricing, discounts, costs, etc.).
Filtering store transactional information within a store group
means that stores, employees, purchase orders, transfers, sales
transactions, customers, receiving and adjustments can all be
filtered and managed from a store group perspective.
The owner of a store group will have access to ALL stores within
the defined group, but not other groups. Each store will have
access only to their own information based on predetermined
security settings.
Copyright 2014 Raymark Xpert Business Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

4. 03 | The CIO’s Guide to Selecting Software for Retail Franchises
Copyright 2014 Raymark Xpert Business Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
1
HARDWARE
INDEPENDENCE
Raymark’s flexibility and
adaptability allows all stores
to have a variety of hardware
configurations, so store own-
ers can continue to work with
the equipment they are most
familiar and comfortable with.
Even Raymark’s mobile solu-
tions are hardware agnostic,
so they can be deployed to
a variety of device types and
form factors.
2
CONFIGURABLE
PRICES
Owners have the flexibility to
regulate in-store pricing by
using either corporate recom-
mendations or setting the
price to suit the local market.
Prices can be changed in real-
time for multiple stores at a
time.
Cost and price structures can
be associated in accordance
with the franchisee, the store
group, or the corporate store.
3
INVENTORY
MANAGEMENT
Franchisees can opt to pur-
chase stock from a preferred
vendor or combine purchases
with head office to benefit
from group discounts.
Franchisees can perform
both centralized and decen-
tralized stock purchasing, and
purchase stock that is not
within the main corporate
inventory product list. Fran-
chisors can additionally opt to
sell inventory to their franchi-
sees at a profit.
4
AUTONOMOUS
REPLENISHMENT
Raymark solutions also allow
each franchisee to configure
their own replenishment and
stock level models.
Alternatively, replenishment
can be managed centrally
from the corporate office, al-
lowing the entire organization
to benefit from volume dis-
counts on bulk orders as well
as more efficient inventory
management.
5
CONFIGURABLE
PROMOTIONS
Depending on the franchise
model, promotions can either
be managed centrally or at
the franchisee level or store
group level.
Promotions can be configured
to become active only at spe-
cific days or even time of day
(for example, a one-hour-only
event).
6
CUSTOMER
PROFILES
Rules can be configured
with regards to the visibility
each store has into customer
profile information. Visibility
can be limited to the current
store, the franchisee’s group
of stores, or widened to
include the entire enterprise,
even e-commerce profiles
and all in real-time.

5. Raymark
5460 Côte de Liesse
Montréal, Québec
Canada H4P 1A5
T: 1-800-346-7296
F: 1-514-737-0014
E: info@raymark.com
W: www.raymark.com
For 25 years, Raymark has been empowering retail with leading-edge
enterprise software solutions that help the world’s most prestigious
international retailers optimize stock turns, build customer loyalty, and
increase sales. Raymark develops and markets the ultimate suite of flex-
ible and interconnected applications deployed in a centralized environ-
ment and offers professional turnkey solutions including implementa-
tion, training and customer support. www.raymark.com