For South African retailers, Black Friday and the December holiday season offer a chance to cash in on a countrywide shopping spree that is expected to generate over R150 billion in sales over Black Friday weekend alone this year. However, without effective ERP to streamline fulfilment, a seasonal bonanza could be a once-off win for local retailers.
This is according to Devon Remmington, Director at Brilliant Cloud, who says ensuring a successful festive season should start well in advance of the season, by getting the right tools and processes in place to optimise the opportunity.
Remmington notes that the end of the year is peak time for local retailers, with growing opportunities for e-commerce businesses. The recent Online Retail in South Africa 2025 report by World Wide Worx, in collaboration with Mastercard, Peach Payments and Ask Afrika, expects online retail sales to exceed R130 billion by the end of this year, and projects that by 2027, online retail will exceed R150 billion and account for 12% of total retail turnover. The report also notes that those retailers planning new strategies to compete with major international e-commerce platforms are focusing on competitive pricing, faster delivery options and expanding their product ranges.
Remmington says brick and mortar and online retailers operate in a competitive environment, in which consumers have heightened expectations. “A lot can go wrong if retailers don't have the proper processes in place. They have to ensure they have brought in the levels of stock they require, that they manage it effectively internally and that they get it dispatched to their customers quickly. If a retailer doesn’t have the capability to suddenly manage that process when there’s a surge in demand, they are simply not going to get repeat business,” he says.
“The most successful international and local e-commerce businesses know this, and therefore they focus heavily on fulfilment. They know that if they get the supply chain right, everything else will take care of itself. In seasonal businesses, they have the resources to employ more warehouse managers, operational managers, packers and other staff to ensure seamless fulfilment,” Remmington says. “However, businesses operating on a smaller scale don't necessarily have the sort of cash injection these bigger companies do, to employ more people to manage peak periods. This is to their detriment if they have done a great job advertising and suddenly have an influx of demand for their product. They need to make sure they have the right back-end supply chain infrastructure to be able to get those items out on time to those customers.”
To be competitive and keep growing, retailers must become more proactive, he says.
“You need to improve demand management and have the right systems and tools to help you manage your supply chain all the way from procurement to delivery. You need to have visibility of everything – from the lead time for your orders from elsewhere in the world, to expected demand, to warehouse distribution and stock management in retail stores. You also need to keep track of what's happening with regards to your stock levels so that you don't have a situation where stock disappears and there's no accountability. Plus, the whole delivery management process has to be optimised for routing, tracking and customer notification.”
Next-generation ERP for mid-market retailers
Remmington highlights Acumatica – ERP born in the cloud and built to meet the needs of mid-market companies. Acumatica integrates a retailer's financial and operational data into a single platform to manage key functions like inventory, order fulfilment, customer support and financials. The software provides real-time insights, streamlines processes with automation and AI, and offers a unified, omnichannel customer experience.
“Acumatica has a strong focus on manufacturing and distribution, using AI and automation to ensure there's a seamless flow of processes and goods moving in and out of the business. It delivers real-time visibility and takes the guesswork out of how you manage your inventory and distribution,” he says.
Easily integrated with tools and systems organisations already have, Acumatica allows organisations to personalise their instances in a low code/no code environment and access data from any device.
“It is a complete end-to-end solution to track what's happening in your business,” Remmington says. You can immediately go and check if an order has come through, or if a particular delivery is en route. It can automate your processes, giving you the opportunity to start working smarter, with all the information you need at your fingertips. You can also customise dashboards per role, so the warehouse manager can see what’s happening in their environment, while the order fulfilment team has dashboards specific to their functional role: they can check how many orders are on back order, how many orders are in the fulfilment process, or how many orders have been dispatched. When a customer calls through, they can also get a 360-degree view on what's happening with the client: what orders they've placed, what orders have come through or what orders have been dispatched to them.
“Acumatica also has replenishment functionality. It allows you to input lead times and looks at your historical trends, your quantity on hand and past transactional values, and then it tells you, okay, that based on this volume of transactions that you generally process, you need to order X number of items to make sure you've got enough stock on hand,” Remmington says.
“Unlike many other ERP systems that are built around finance systems, Acumatica was built around the requirements of manufacturing, distribution and business-centric organisations. It was designed with an understanding of what is involved in the typical supply chain process, the typical distribution business and the typical manufacturing business, so it helps minimise manual work and operating costs, and optimises efficiency for these sectors. And because the system has an open architecture, we can customise it to each client's unique requirements,” Remmington says. “With Acumatica, retailers can work smarter and more proactively, so they are ready to handle peak shopping seasons and don’t risk losing customers due to poor fulfilment.”
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