The logistics involves planning, implementing and controlling efficient, effective flow and storage of goods and services from the beginning point of external origin to the company and from the company to the point of consumption for the purpose of conforming to customer requirements. Logistics is generally viewed as within one company, although it manages flow between company and its suppliers and customers. Supply chain management includes logistics flows, the customer order management and production processes and information flows necessary to monitor all activities at the supply chain nodes.

The simple structure of supply chain can be depicted as under:

Material management is a scientific technique, concerned with Planning, Organizing &Control of flow of materials, from their initial purchase to destination.

Material management is an important management tool which will be very useful in getting the right quality & right quantity of supplies at right time, having good inventory control & adopting sound methods of condemnation & disposal will improve the efficiency of the organization & also make the working atmosphere healthy any type of organization

Inventory management involves a retailer seeking to acquire and maintain a proper merchandise assortment while ordering, shipping, handling, and related costs are kept in check. It also involves systems and processes that identify inventory requirements, set targets, provide replenishment techniques, report actual and projected inventory status and handle all functions related to the tracking and management of material. This would include the monitoring of material moved into and out of stockroom locations and the reconciling of the inventory balances.

Purchase Management module facilitates streamlining the procurement of required Products for the retailers, packaging the material. It automates the processes of identifying potential suppliers, Supplier Evaluation, Supplier Quote Evaluation, awarding purchase order to the supplier, and billing processes. Purchase module is tightly integrated with the inventory and Material Management module.

The Order management module facilities user to generate various kinds of work orders from the system based on need like Purchase orders, Work orders. Generate enquiry from the system, Quotations analysis and finding the best fit offer based on defined parameters by entering the quotation details in the system and generated the comparative chart of suppliers/ vendors.These Orders are sent to the vendors for the supply of goods.

In retail business POS billing is one of the important factor to make the customer satisfy and happy. Connectivity is one of the major challenge in operation of POS and it’s data reconciliation with the central server.

The customers spends more time in store selecting items but when it comes to billing – they need it fast i.e. No waiting time for billing and payment.High labor turnover and relatively low computer literacy is common in retail industry, so it is critical that your POS system requires little training to operate.

Taxation part is also a major challenge in retail business as the taxation on various goods and items based on commodity of products and it needs to be managed within the system in such a way that the billing and tat related statutory requirement could be met.

In order to meet the above requirement The ALPSeRetials POS billing system is designed keeping in view this aspect as it runs in off-line mode and the reconciliation from the central server happens near real time basis. The Barcode based billing system enables the POS operator for fast billing with lesser training. Some of the major highlights of the system on Tax module are as under:

• Customizable Accounting Schema
• Comply with the Tax-regulations as per Indian Taxation Act.
• Advanced Tax Module, complex tax rules / regulations.
• Handle taxes at central, multiple-state & city levels
• Product Costing Report (Limit (PO) price, min. / max., standard, average, current, future)
• Multi Tax Categories: At region/state/country, product levels
• Various book of accounts / Journals: General Ledger / GL, Cashbook, Bankbook, etc.

Dispatch and Delivery of Goods and services are an important part of the overall supply chain process. It becomes more important and critical when it comes to e-commerce portal activity where the customer order booking needs to be taken care of through entire life cycle of supply chain i.e. from booking of order to the delivery of goods/ services at the door step of end customer.

It involves many functions in between the order booking and delivery like order management, vendor management, logistics, order mapping with vendor, shipment tracking and final delivery including the entry of delivery note in the system for the closure of a particular order ID.

A franchisee sale point or Franchisee Retail store is an integral part of the parent company’s business model. The franchisee store comes into picture for rolling out the outlets in more rapid way at much lesser cost i.e. in a franchisee model business expansion the parent company has to make lesser investment in terms of setting up of infrastructure, cost of keeping inventory, cost of manpower i.e. overall cost of operations of a company owned store only by sharing some % of marketing expenses as a profit with the franchisee. If we analyze the model, we will find that the in entire business cycle the parent company which is appointing the franchisee is acting as vendor or supplier of all goods and services which will be available at the franchisee store.

The overall system deployment view is as under: