Retail Solutions is offering exactly what the market needs: the option of a service in place of a costly enterprise system.

-Sara Shah, ABI Research

Connect • Learn • Advance

SaaS Offerings

Retail Solutions leverages its proprietary, experienced-based software and analytic capabilities to provide a variety of delivery options, making it easier for customers to derive the greatest value from solutions that are offered.

Customers in pilot mode interact with Retail Solutions through a combination of on-demand applications (SaaS) and highly skilled analytic consultants, while customers in roll-out mode have the option to have less assistance by our services team.

Retail Solutions is proud to provide a unique competitive advantage to our customers. Retail Solutions offers a set of no-risk solutions requiring no software purchase, no additional headcount and no hardware or fixed costs, while giving customers access to tried, tested and proven knowledge and solutions. This enables our customers to realize the real value of our solutions at every step of their program, from inception to global roll-out, to speeding up deployment and adoption, all while maintaining a fast cycle of continuous upgrades.

Retail Solutions’s software as a service (SaaS) is delivered in two ways:
as a hosted solution or as an appliance behind our customer’s firewall.

Retail Solutions Hosted Delivery

Typically, our customers start with a hosted solution and then gradually shift to an appliance mode, depending on the need. Retail Solutions customers do not have to pay huge upfront license costs. They sign up for a monthly subscription, renewable on a periodic basis.

In the hosted mode, the customers’ data is delivered to the Retail Solution hosted environment via secure communication mechanisms, such as AS2. Retail Solutions processes the data and delivers the results via a secure on-demand web interface. In addition, our services team provides added value on top of the standard on-demand capability by providing highly effective experienced-based insight and advice.

Retail Solutions has contracted with a major managed services provider to host the data and solutions. The facility operates on world-class standards. It is manned and secured 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is connected through multiple secure point-to-point T-1 trunks and each server and storage device is backed up with multiple power sources including standby battery back-up. Each server is also continuously monitored for performance.

Upon request, Retail Solutions will provide Service Level Agreements for its hosted service.

Retail Solutions Appliance Delivery

With the appliance model, Retail Solutions delivers an appliance fully loaded with our solution to the customer - installed, maintained, and operated. Retail Solutions has capabilities to remotely monitor and maintain this appliance without any additional maintenance burden to the customer.

Retail Solutions delivers updates to all of the software on the software appliance. These updates, whether simple bug fixes or innovative new features, come pre-integrated and tested by Retail Solutions. The customer no longer has to handle conflicts among multiple versions of installed software or synchronize update schedules among software vendors. Most support issues are handled with Retail Solutions as the single point of contact. Thus, our customers are able to spend more time using the solution and less time maintaining the software.

Customers in roll-out mode may require direct appliance alerts to handhelds operated by their merchandisers. Retail Solutions supports the handheld protocols used by third party merchandisers as well as custom protocols used by in-house merchandise organizations.

The customer can select the level of appliance redundancy depending upon the criticality of the application. The delivery of Retail Solutions service is customizable.

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Advantages of SaaS

On Demand / SaaS offers:

Retail Solutions

A core shift in the underlying relationship, from product-based to service-based	X
Web based application with delivery of the application service over a standard Internet browser that is specifically designed and developed by the SaaS provider, not another technology firm	X
No end user investment required in software, hardware, implementation and integration services, or use of additional IT staff	X
No software/hardware installed; remotely delivered and managed applications from a single or multiple centralized locations, but not residing on the client's site or within its underlying IT structure	X
Rapid and simple deployment, configuration and training (typically less than three months)	X
Single application code base (Java, J2EE, .NET, or open source) and single platform and database selection that is used across the entire customer base allowing for significant product development and R & D efficiencies	X
A 'one-to-many' application delivery model that is often defined as a multi-tenant architecture, which is scalable, secure, and replicable application architecture capable of supporting thousands of concurrent customers on a single instance of the application	X
Frequent upgrade cycles occurring multiple times per year in addition to minor product enhancements on a routine basis that are all seamlessly deployed over the Web	X
Pay-as-you-go pricing with a wide variety of models (i.e., subscription, transaction, etc.) and terms ranging from payments received upfront, to pre-pay, to as incurred	X
Ability to customize and configure the appearance, policy settings, workflow and other characteristics to meet the diverse needs of a large customer base	X
Ability to integrate using APIs and Web Services with other existing third-party and internally developed enterprise applications and databases	X
Back-end application hosting from remotely managed/owned facilities, or provided by a third party	X
24 x 7 x 365 perpetual account responsibility with ongoing customer services supporting end-user adoption, use / training, and troubleshooting	X

Source: TripleTree