Retail Prices: Get a Handle On It

Managing retail prices is a challenge when you have multiple levels of your operation. It’s not impossible. Follow these tips to manage your retail prices more efficiently and profitably:

• Manage your promotion rules – Promotions drive traffic to your store and increase sales, but you have to price your merchandise correctly. How you set your promotional rules will determine how many sales you make during the promotion and whether you turn a profit. Take complete control over your promo rules long before you start your promotions.
• Manage multiple campaigns – Large department stores, chains, and other retail operations can manage multiple concurrent campaigns from one central database. If you have several campaigns going at once, you’ll increase your effectiveness if you can manage them all centrally.
• Be transparent across your enterprise – You want everyone at every level of your retail operation to know the details on all of your promotions. This will improve your operational efficiency and your customer service.
• Measure performance in real-time – There is nothing more important than knowing what you’ve sold, how much you’ve sold, and how much you’ve earned, in real time. This will affect your operation on multiple levels.
• Track all of your campaigns in one place – Not only should you keep an eye on metrics in real time and manage multiple concurrent campaigns, but you should be able to track and monitor every metric in real time from one central location. That includes performance metrics as well as sales and operations.
• Keep your database secure – Database security should be at the top of your list. You can measure and track and control all you want, but if it isn’t secure, then you will lose your operational power.

Retail price management is one of the most difficult aspects of running a retail operation. It’s not impossible. With the right tools, you can stay profitable, maintain efficiency, and be effective at every level of your operation.