The introduction of cloud-based versions of Merchandise Management and Direct Commerce is part of RedPrairie’s overall cloud platform strategy of making access to its products easier and more affordable for small and medium businesses (SMBs).
The upfront cost of servers, infrastructure and licensing has made it cost-prohibitive for SMBs to gain the same value from the applications that large enterprises have seen over the past decade, says Tom Kozenski, vice president of product marketing at RedPrairie.
“By offering hosted, cloud-based versions of these solutions, we are able to replace the huge up-front investment with a subscription-based model that allows SMBs to realize the return on investment from their RedPrairie solutions more quickly,” Kozenski said in a statement.
The cloud-based solutions are particularly well suited to retailers with seasonal businesses, RedPrairie says. With an on-premise application, retailers must build up their computing capacity to handle peak periods during the height of their busy season. At off-peak times of the year they have excess computing capacity sitting idle.
With the on-demand offerings, retailers can turn the volume up and down as needed, only paying for the capacity they are using at that time. They can also reduce maintenance costs, since all the hardware is managed by RedPrairie in its hosting facilities.
RedPrairie Merchandise Management is designed to help big-ticket retailers such as furniture and large appliance stores optimize core business operations, including merchandising, inventory management, customer service, warehouse management and point of sale. Direct Commerce integrates all buyer and transaction data for retailers to deliver a 360-degree view of the customer.
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