The Impact of ERP on Supermarkets and Grocery Stores
In India, the market size for supermarkets and grocery stores is expected to reach $289.29 billion by 2027 at a CAGR of 8.06%. India is the 3rd largest market for grocery and supermarket after the USA and China respectively. Its market size has increased more slowly when compared to the expansion of the retail industry as a whole.
This is a result of a number of issues affecting this sector of the economy, such as inadequate inventory control that drives up costs and spoilage, a deficiency of departmental simplification and integration, disparities in the grocery store and/or supermarket’s suppliers, poor coordination and communication, and issues with cash flow. The fierce competition in this sector, which likewise has lower profit margins, makes these difficulties even more severe.
Recent Trends in Supermarket and Grocery service industry
India’s food retail industry has been going through significant changes for a while now, and these changes have been made much more rapid by the epidemic era and the habits that were formed during that time.
The way businesses in this industry are run has changed as a result, starting with production, compliances, procurement and procurement management, marketing, inventory management, proactive customer service, and so forth. This has also affected the profiles of each buyer persona in this industry.
Customers now have higher standards for companies operating in the supermarket and grocery store sectors than only providing high-quality in-store and online experiences and a wide selection of products. This implies that in order for your company to thrive in this quickly evolving sector, which primarily deals with perishables, you will need to have a flexible business plan that will guarantee that your goods are available when customers want to buy them.
Emerging market recent trends includes:
The millennial and gen Z generations of today don’t even enjoy going outside to buy a bag of chips. Everyone wants delivery to be completed at their fingertips so they can unwind and kick back. Thanks to the growth of speedy delivery services such as Blinkit, JioMart, Bigbasket, Swiggy Instamart, and others, groceries are now always available at your location.
Retail digital enterprises have grown dramatically since the pandemic, yet there is a workforce shortage. Businesses should embrace automation to deal with this, implementing robots, self-checkouts, and pick-center store technology. This promotes job satisfaction and lowers stress levels in addition to guaranteeing business continuity and allowing for the provision of greater compensation and benefits. Real-time data management and operations can be further streamlined using an ERP system.
Retailers must use consumer data in the digital age to improve tailored shopping experiences and reliably satisfy customers. By using this data, profit margins are raised, brand image is enhanced, and stock-outs are reduced. Additionally, it helps with improving replacements, lowering customer attrition, and providing information for operational choices, all of which improve revenue and cost effectiveness while resolving supply chain issues.
Premium food categories like specialty coffee, meal kits, alcohol, and frozen meals are experiencing growing sales, particularly in packaged and semi-prepared varieties catering to consumer demand for convenience. This trend towards “fresh frozen” foods represents an opportunity at the intersection of fresh produce and consumer packaged goods, yet remains under explored by many in the industry, including food companies, investors, and manufacturers. The increasing demand for higher-priced, higher-quality fresh or fresh-like foods indicates a burgeoning market.
Challenges Faced by Supermarket and Grocery Stores
How ERP can help the SuperMarket and Grocery industry
Every sale matters in the supermarket and grocery store sector because of the fierce competition, high employee turnover, and slim profit margins that these businesses face. Consequently, the supermarket and grocery store industry will benefit greatly from the deployment of an ERP system, which will help them centralize information, boost sales and efficiency, and enhance cash flow.
For companies in this sector, an ERP system offers a number of advantages, but its primary advantages are in the areas of production management and traceability. Nevertheless, the following are just a few of the main advantages of an ERP system:
Efficiency Reduces Costs
Investing in an ERP system will help you reduce costs, losses, and inefficiencies by optimizing your business operations. By putting in place an ERP system, your staff will be free to concentrate on activities that genuinely call for their knowledge, abilities, and intelligence as opposed to labor-intensive manual operations that can be readily automated, like updating data across the board for your company.
In fact, the necessity for various systems will disappear when systems are consolidated using an ERP system. Your managers will now be able to quickly assess whether your manufacturing line is operating efficiently thanks to an ERP system’s dashboard-based insights, reports, and analytics, such as key performance indicators.
An edge over competitors
When you control and automate operations as much as possible, your ERP system will help you maximize output, maintain quality and safety, reduce waste, and boost efficiency. All of this will eventually make your company more competitive in the extremely difficult marketplaces in this sector.
Customer Support
Providing a high-quality customer experience is essential to retaining customers, encouraging their loyalty, and keeping them around. Jupical, an ERP system provider with integrated CRM, may strengthen your sales processes and assist your staff in maintaining client connections.
This is because the ERP system provides tools that enable you to log all of your sales interactions, correspondence, questions, and complaints so that they can be reviewed at any time. Actually, a dashboard with resolved and open client tickets will be included. All of these will eventually result in more satisfied clients and a stronger profit statement for your company.
Consistency
The foundation of quality management is consistency, and maintaining quality is crucial if you want to guarantee total client happiness. Your clients will value the consistency that results from your ability to manage your inventory across platforms and at all manufacturing or sales phases with an ERP system.
Because of this and the fact that they can depend on your items and their constant high quality, your clients won’t search for alternatives from other companies and will instead become devoted supporters of your brand.
This is where your ERP system will come in handy, as it will assist avert a number of possible mistakes that may happen in your warehouse, during transportation or storage, or even during final sales. Your ability to identify errors will increase with your ERP system, enabling you to safeguard not only your reputation but also your income, sales, and profit.
Simplifying the Procedure for Sales
The ERP system offers a number of features that will assist your sales departments become more productive by streamlining the sales process. The following characteristics will benefit your sales department:
- Producing precise quotes in a timely manner
- Monitoring quotes and completed orders
- Adding the markup to the total costs when determining prices
- sending bills in a timely and precise manner
Optimizing Time and Quantity of Inventory Levels
Managing inventories is a major problem for companies in this sector. But most of these issues might be handled with an ERP system. ERP gives every function access to a single, dependable, up-to-date information source along with the associated rights for each team.
Actually, the following are a few issues that an ERP system can help with:
- Unable to find components or raw supplies at the warehouse
- Goods that are semi-completed or finished but have beyond their expiration date
- Overstock of SKUs The acquisition of superfluous items “just in case”
- arduous work to inform other departments about the availability of products
Using the projection tools in your ERP system, you would get insights for future demands.
How Can the Jupical Team Assist the Supermarket and Grocery Store Industry with an ERP?
Because it offers an ERP software solution that is completely integrated, fully compliant, and easy to deploy, Jupical is among the top ERP systems on the market. This cloud-based company management solution has all the tools you need to provide you a comprehensive, real-time picture of your grocery store and supermarket business.
As a result, you might reduce data redundancy, optimize all processes, integrate all data and projections, and boost your company’s profitability. Contact Jupical for more information and to schedule a 1:1 meeting with our industry experts.