Bhatia Traders, a highly diversified commercial operation in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), needed to consolidate its financial reporting by deploying business management software. The company chose Microsoft Dynamics® GP with Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management Systems (RMS) to achieve a culture change and greater efficiencies in the business. As a result, net profit on sales has increased significantly despite difficult trading conditions.

With several medical facilities, pharmacies, and five retail shops, Columbus Regional Healthcare System (CRHS) in Columbus, Georgia, is the area’s most important provider for a wide spectrum of health needs. Retail income helps defray medical costs, so efficiency is vital. With no automation, earlier records were nonstandard, barricading improvements. Pushing a previous system into shops only added sales records by category, not by SKU, and did not address scores of weekly hours spent tracking staff’s payroll-deducted purchases. Retail Technology Experts installed Microsoft Dynamics® Retail Management System, Paquin Healthy Discounts, and interfaces that reduced many task times to zero. This motivates customers to centralize more of their buying into CRHS stores and pinpoints purchasing to defeat space limitations. Now, it will be easy for CRHS to deploy stores in new facilities.

Miami-Dade County Parks and Recreation runs the nation’s third-largest park system. Until recently, the department ran its summer camps, recreation programs, and facilities rental programs with a manual system of paper forms. To improve operations, the department installed a point-of-sale and management solution using Microsoft Dynamics® Retail Management System and Recreation Dynamics from US eDirect, a Microsoft Dynamics Partner. The solution centralized information and enhanced cash management operations among all the associated parks and recreation facilities. Today, park administrators have real-time access to accurate information about department operations and finances, and park employees can manage their operations more efficiently and offer better customer service to residents. In addition, the department expects its improved processes to increase revenue collection.

Ring, a subsidiary of Egyptian corporation Orascom Telecom, sells and provides services for mobile phones. In 2008, the enterprise began to upgrade its IT infrastructure with Microsoft Dynamics® business management solutions. Since deployment, Ring has experienced a range of benefits, including an increase of its customer base by 40 per cent and a saving of more than EGP300,000 (U.S.$55,000) in development costs.

Venus Beauty Supply matured from a family men’s store into a chain of two beauty product locations in Spartanburg, South Carolina. But the makeover brought new challenges, such as managing 60,000 ever-changing SKUs, many of which were not barcoded. Identical products came from several vendors. Previous software created work by losing hours of data entry, misreporting stock levels, and causing unwise purchases. Then Venus installed POS Unlimited’s beauty-supply solution. Its preloaded database contains most beauty products and their vendors, standardizing records and saving weeks of data entry. Mobile PDA enables walk-around stock management and purchasing. Owner and staff can now spend more personal time with customers, showing off new products and promoting repeat business. Venus also saves nearly a full staff person’s wages per week through streamlined inventory and purchasing tasks.

When two partners built a chain of four pharmacies near Kansas City, Missouri, time demands rose as fast as square footage. The largest store offered 10,000 SKUs to 900 customers a day. But every pharmacy’s albatross—accurately invoicing insurance companies and reconciling piecemeal payments—took up to 20 hours of staff time per store each month. Then nursing homes and customers had to be invoiced for the remainders. To tame the paperwork, partners selected Microsoft Dynamics® Retail Management System, Nova Libra Pharmacy POS, and Speed Script’s Pharmacy Management System. Task times shrunk, billing accuracy hit nearly 100 percent, and customers praised faster lines. But an unexpected bonus appeared. When partners agreed to divide the chain, accounts receivable were clear to the penny, customer lists showed preferred buying habits, and stock levels reported by store were impeccable.

Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory was filling stores with customers, selling new franchises, and constantly renovating stores. But customers might see three systems in one visit thanks to a patchwork of old electronic cash registers (ECRs) in every shop. Collecting information from them was sporadic and required tinkering. Data was inadequate for reports, and prospective franchisees saw ECRs as a weak spot. The RSC Group had tailored the company’s Microsoft Dynamics® GP ERP system, so its recommendation of Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System opened doors. All sales functions now occur on one register and transactions are four times as fast. Daily polling delivers accurate data from every store, and information slides into Microsoft Dynamics GP. Store owners and executives have data on sales, stock levels, a customer loyalty program, and reports to manage growth.

The owner of Coyote Hobby in Oregon City, Oregon, came from a successful background in large companies with management information at his fingertips. But his earlier point-of-sale system left nearly 50 hours of data entry after each profitable hobby show. Lack of sell-through data harmed buying decisions. Some products gathered dust, not cash. Microsoft Dynamics® Retail Management System with DRS Hobby Bundle was installed in a day, fully automates the store and remote shows, and connects to Horizon Hobby, a large supplier—yet allows buying anywhere. Post-show data entry evaporated. Slow products were found, put on sale, and flew off shelves. The owner now creates reports on any facet of the business, such as customer buying habits, in a few clicks. The owner’s new peace of mind and profits prove that his new margins, buying, and other strategies are based on facts, not whim.

Canucks Sports & Entertainment is a Vancouver-based entertainment company that owns and operates the Vancouver Canucks National Hockey League franchise and the team's home arena, General Motors Place. Generating additional revenue through retail sales is important to sports franchises around the world. But in 2005, this team was using an aging retail system that dragged down transaction speed during its scant 90 minutes per game sales window. Sales and inventory reports were exasperating to define and delivered contradictory or disappearing data. With the help of Microsoft® Gold Certified technology partner The RSC Group, Canucks management implemented Microsoft Dynamics® Retail Management System. The franchise accelerated transaction times, sped up customer lines, cut maintenance costs, reduced administrative steps and hours, and now has excellent inventory visibility.

Bicycle SuperStore is an 11-store franchise based in Melbourne. Its stores sell and repair bicycles, and also retail a very large range of bicycle accessories. The company’s growth potential was inhibited because all product-line data was managed at a store level. Maintaining product information for point-of-sales systems was time-consuming, and effort was replicated across stores. In addition, without consolidated stock and sales data, Bicycle Super- Store could not negotiate significant supplier discounts, or generate comprehensive performance reports. By implementing Microsoft® Dynamics® Retail Management System in its stores and head office, the company dramatically reduced in-store administration, generated savings and efficiencies from better supplier relationships and purchasing, and removed the major technical impediments to further store expansion.