How we do sales today has changed completely.
With Great progress in Cloud computing infrastructure and in Software As a Service Model, Cost is no more an excuse to not adopt to Newer Sales mechanisms or adapt to changes in existing Sales Channel.
In this essay, Author has given a glimpse of a real life encounter with one of the major retailer in London metropolitan area and how adapting to newer ways make sense not just for saving cost but also for increasing sales.
This Article is a must read for retailers who are keen to grow their sales and penetrate into newer sales channels with minimal IT/Software expenses.
What? It may sound too preposterous to say "You can earn without any spending" Anyone who's been in business wouldn't agree more.
But what-if I say it is true.
What if I tell you, GenNext (Read Generation Next) is everything about it.
Look around, Today, Google and most of its Services are free.
If you are selling Online today, you are already using one or more of its free Services.
But what I want to tell you is, it is just the tip of iceberg you have used so far and you can get lot more for free than you can possibly imagine.
It is the era of web-services and business app-services, which are going to change the way you have been managing your information and the way you have been doing your business traditionally.
How? To help elaborate my case, I am going to discuss on one of my real life encounters.
Around 6 years back, Mr Richard Sharp, an electronic retailer with more than 3 million pound annual turnover was doing good brisk business.
He had 3 retail stores in London metropolitan area.
He was keen to grow his business and since online (Internet) was booming it made sense to have his business Online.
All of this sounded like a great plan.
Since he was smart and ahead of his most fellow retailers, he knew and realized that he would need more than just a website (read it as few html pages) to develop and grow his business.
As usual, he did his homework.
He researched and talked to many industry experts and finally decided to have an IT software solution to manage his inventory and help him sell Online and in Stores.
He did well, the best he can do at those times.
He now had a software solution to manage his business and his business data.
He ended up spending close to 30-40 Grands in pounds.
Next few years, his business boomed Online.
Within few years (around 2 years), smart as he was, he realized he had a need to start selling his product in eBay and amazon.
He jumped on it and very soon started doing brisk turnover in those channels, as well.
He now realized that it was very tough for him to manage his data and sales across these different channels.
He also realized that his business would pretty soon need to enter and grow in newer channels.
That's when he met me.
It was in mid 2007.
He was considering to modify his existing solution to integrate with amazon and ebay.
He had quotes from various organization and free lancer's.
It was around another 10-15 grands UK pound to have this achieved.
He asked me for suggestion.
I asked him very few, simple questions (for him to ponder on) (Write it down on a small piece of paper; if you too have similar questions as Richard had)

1. How much did you spend on your initial software?
2. How much will you spend to have software developed for eBay and amazon?
3. How much did you spend in managing your server infrastructure?
4. How much did you spend in Support cost (Technical Support cost) for your application?
5. How much additional did you spend for your resources and for training?
6. How long are you going to continue building your solution?
7. What is your primary business?

From his response, It was quite clear to him that even after spending 45-50K in developing solution to meet his current needs & after annually spending 15-20K in supporting his solution, he will still not be able to keep up with the advances in technology and changes in business environment.
At this point, he was a little concerned and asked me what other option does he have? Look Around My suggestion was simple, Look Around! Look around, the concept of owning software has changed significantly over the recent years.
Today, Many of the Applications are available free or as an opensource application.
It is no longer needed to plan, build and own your software.
For more serious businesses, Good news is, many of the required Applications are now available at a very attractive pricing in a software as a Service model and are also made available on a cloud infrastructure, allowing merchants(users) to scale their infrastructure and enhance their functionality as needed.
Adapting to this model is quite critical to small businesses to sustain in the current retail landscape where business environment (read it as customers) are more agile and purchasing behaviors change more frequently.
As For Richard Sharp, I suggested him to go with RiteCart's multichannel Software Service model.
With RiteCart's multichannel service model, he would get all he wanted (Multiple websites, ebay, amazon; all integrated) at an annual cost less then his current support cost.
And the best part will be most of frequent changes in the software will not be completely charged to him.
Also as the market grows, given as flexible solution as Ritecart is, he would be able to subscribe to add newer services at a very low cost and with a quick turnaround.
Point is, By adapting newer ways, his business would now be very agile and quick in providing services to his customer at a cost of 1/10 of what he was used to spending.
All of that saving, by just being a little wise on how you spend!