For customers it should be simple. For you it keeps getting more complex. One click and the goods are on their way, with a firm delivery promise. For a prospect to become a customer at all, and for the purchase to go that smoothly afterwards, a great deal has to work at the same time in the background, from stock levels to after-sales service. The better that plays together, the easier the rest becomes.
German retail counts around 537,000 companies with a combined turnover of roughly 2.5 trillion euros. However different they are, the pressure is similar. What used to be good service is simply expected today. Costs are rising and a few platforms are pulling in ever more market share. Whether wholesale, retail or mail order, the requirements are often the same. The systems behind them rarely are.
The large marketplaces increasingly own the direct line to the customer. Anyone selling almost exclusively through other people's platforms ends up knowing little about their own customers and hands over both margin and relationship. That is a strategic question. Do you build your own access to the customer, or do you leave it to Amazon and others?
Whether goods are available, when they arrive and how easily a return can be handled is decided by the stock in the background. As long as that is not managed in real time across all channels, every delivery promise remains a risk. Reliable figures are the basis for customers trusting you.
Another shop, another marketplace: every additional channel creates another spreadsheet next to the system that is supposed to be leading. That costs extra time and creates new sources of error. A shop therefore does not need a second inventory system in the shadows. It needs a clean connection to the system that leads anyway.
If every additional order needs additional hands, in the end the headcount grows and not the margin. With rising costs, manually maintained workflows eventually stop working, whether in purchasing or order processing. Growth should rest on good processes and not on individual employees keeping everything in their heads.
With durable goods in particular, what happens after the purchase often decides everything. A trusting, long-term customer relationship is defined above all by how a return runs, whether a service contract applies or how quickly a spare part arrives. The sale itself quickly moves into the background. Only when all workflows are cleanly recorded in the system is there a basis for regular repeat revenue.
Retail only works as a whole when customers, channels, stock and processes run on a shared data basis. That is why we connect Microsoft technologies, existing systems and custom development so that inventory management, shops, CRM, data and AI work together sensibly.
Retail companies do not need another system today. They need a platform on which customers, channels and processes are finally connected in a meaningful way.
An AI agent evaluates information, pursues a goal and completes tasks in a business process independently. In Microsoft Dynamics 365, such agents are already built in; for other systems we develop them to match. In retail they pay off above all in the activities that cost time every day without really creating value, from procurement to service. This shows most clearly in two areas.
In the supply chain, timing decides margin and availability. With the Microsoft Procurement Agent, supplier communication, order changes and their effects can be handled considerably faster. The agent spots delays early, tracks open responses and makes visible what a change means for stock, production or customer orders.
Matching agents and features: Procurement Agent, Supplier Communications, Impact Analysis
Sales and service hold a large share of the daily routine work. Agents – from Microsoft, for example – help qualify inquiries, create cases automatically and handle customer concerns faster. This lets your teams concentrate more on advice, customer relationships and complex cases.
Matching agents and features: Sales Agent, Customer Service Agent, Case Management Agent
Soon, agents will shop for their users without anyone opening an app. Those who remain findable and purchasable will be the ones who provide their products, including prices and availability, in a way a machine can work with. That is still a vision of the future. But the course is being set right now.
This also changes the role of ERP, product data and processes. In the future, it will no longer be enough to present products to people only. Information must be structured so that AI agents can also understand, evaluate and use it directly. Companies thus lay the foundation for today’s sales and tomorrow’s commerce.
Which agent brings your retail company the most added value?
The Microsoft standard gives retail companies a proven foundation on which inventory management, finance and customer business can be mapped. The difference only emerges when your company's individual requirements come into play. Where the standard reaches its limit, we extend it with a ready-made integration, a custom app or targeted development.
From purchasing through the warehouse to the invoice, everything sits in one system with Microsoft Dynamics 365. For mid-sized companies that is usually Business Central; for international retail groups, Finance & Supply Chain Management.
Anyone who wants to last in retail has to know their customers. In a CRM such as Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Service, the entire customer history sits in one place, across all channels, from first contact to service case. Individual orders become a relationship that belongs to you and not to the marketplace.
Whether Shopify, Shopware or a marketplace: your shop is firmly connected to the ERP. It pulls stock and prices directly from there. Orders run through automatically and prices and product data are the same on both sides. The shadow system that otherwise grows next to inventory management disappears.
We bring data from ERP, shop, store and finance systems together on one platform with Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Fabric. This creates analyses, forecasts and the basis for using AI.
Not every process can be mapped with standard software. With Power Automate, recurring workflows and approvals are automated. Where additional features or interfaces are needed, Power Apps creates custom business applications that fit seamlessly into your Microsoft landscape. The result is end-to-end processes that lay the groundwork for using AI agents.
For tasks that recur constantly in retail, there are ready-made extensions that can be used immediately. The Bank Automation Suite, an add-on for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, automatically assigns incoming payments to open items, even at high online volumes. Others connect your document management so that documents no longer have to be filed by hand. This closes typical gaps without commissioning custom development.
You are growing fast, opening up new sales channels or want to put existing processes on a stable footing. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central brings finance, order processing, warehousing and sales channels together on one platform. It is quick to introduce and does without unnecessary overhead.
You manage several companies across different countries and channels. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management supports complex trade and supply chain processes across multiple companies, locations and sales channels. From purchasing and warehousing to international reporting, the platform grows with your requirements.
You want to move closer to your customers, build a web shop or extend existing trade structures with digital sales channels. The challenge is not the shop itself, but connecting customers, prices, product data, stock and orders end to end with ERP and CRM.
agenic connects commerce, CRM and ERP on a shared data basis so that new sales channels do not create new data silos.
As varied as today's retail companies are, many share a similar starting position. The following examples give you insight into our experience with wholesalers, retailers and mail order businesses.
A retailer with its own production ran its online shop separately from inventory management for a long time. In the project, shop, ERP and product database were connected so that even billions of possible price combinations appear in the shop in real time. Orders and stock have run through one system ever since, from the shop window into the supply chain.
A mid-sized retail company previously handled purchasing, sales, accounting and inventory management through separate routes. With Business Central as a shared basis, these areas now mesh, from order through stock posting to invoice.
We only show what we can prove.
Not in every case. If your current system still carries the daily workflows, a clean connection to shop and finance is often enough instead of replacing everything at once. A new ERP pays off when the old one slows growth, no longer keeps up with new channels, or you have to keep a spreadsheet alongside at every turn. In the initial consultation we look at which route makes more sense in your case.
For most smaller and mid-sized retailers, Business Central is the right choice. As a rough guide, it fits well as long as you stay below roughly 20 licenses and do not have deeply nested international structures. As soon as several companies and countries come together, Finance & Supply Chain Management plays to its strengths, for example in international reporting and in processes spanning several entities. What fits in the end we decide from your processes and not by a fixed formula.
That depends on a few things, above all the number of users and how many channels and interfaces come with it. For smaller and mid-sized retailers, Business Central sits well below the larger solution. International groups with Finance & Supply Chain Management operate in a different range. You will get a reliable figure fastest if we briefly go through your starting position in an initial consultation.
Through a firm connection between shop and ERP, usually with a ready-made connector or via the open interfaces. Whether Shopify, Shopware or a marketplace such as Amazon and OTTO, what is exchanged is products, prices, stock and orders, so that both sides always have the same status. The shop stays your shop window while the ERP manages stock and finance in the background. Anyone who wants to bundle everything even more tightly in the Microsoft world can use Dynamics 365 Commerce instead of an external shop.
The core is simpler than the word sounds. There is one leading system holding stock and customer data, and all channels access it. Whether someone buys in the store, orders in the shop or goes through a marketplace, behind it is always the same stock and the same customer history. What matters most is that no second inventory system runs alongside in the shadows.
By giving one system authority over stock and having all the others draw on it. As soon as shop, checkout and warehouse are connected live to the ERP, every sale and every return immediately changes the same figure. That way you and your customers see the stock that is really there, and not last night's.
Today above all customer service, monitoring stock and demand, supplier communication and preparation work in sales. An agent can, for example, capture incoming orders, let the routine cases run through on their own and speak up as soon as something stands out. Where your greatest leverage lies depends on how your systems are set up and how good your data is.
Very few retail companies start on a greenfield. Usually there is an ERP, a shop, various marketplaces and many processes that have grown over the years. Here it makes sense to look first at what already works well and where the biggest bottleneck is today. From that, the next step usually becomes clear very quickly.
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