Manage the lifecycle of your retail stores seamlessly with Synergee’s modular SAAS platform

The Silicon Review

In the early 2000s, it was speculated by many forecasters that retail stores would eventually shut down due to customers moving online. Nearly two decades later, it is very clear that the previously made forecasts were not very accurate, and retail stores are proving to be a strategic asset for the retailers. Still, in its core, retailing is all about understanding the customers’ wants and needs. The management of stores through Store Lifecycle Management (SLM) from the negotiation of leases, site selection, site closure, and re-fit strategy is often undertaken by different parts of an organization operating in siloes, making decisions based on limited information and supported by poor process and systems. Retailers must now take a consistent and holistic approach towards managing the lifecycle of their stores to succeed.

There are various firms that provide shop life cycle management services, but one that stands out from the rest is Synergee. The company provides an end to end solution to manage the shop life cycle inside a network through a modular SAAS platform. The solution integrates with the customer IT solutions with Single Sign-On and web API with the ERP. Synergee enables Candidate management, Real estate Development, lease management, and project management to implement a new concept or open a new shop. Synergee provides a comprehensive solution to manage the network on a day to day basis. For the technical department, facility management helps to maintain the shop. For the revenue and profitability analysis, Synergee helps to create a forecast and provide management reporting, sales analysis, and cash flow forecast. The field visit for district managers is managed right from their cellphone to fill a questionnaire from the site, take pictures, and automatically create a visit report. Action items are processed, and an action plan is monitored. Synergee also provides to Retailers a strong central purchasing platform to handle supplier management and annual condition negotiation and annual rebate calculation. The credit management module enables to manage risk for customer payment, customer scoring. Synergee was founded in 2010, and it has offices in Brussels, Paris, Montréal, Mende (France).

In conversation with Laurent dubernais, CEO of Synergee

Tell us about the challenges addressed by your management and animation solution.

Physical Retail is exposed to many challenges due to the change in consumption habits:

As growing the revenue is more and more challenging, to manage profitability, it is needed to work on all P&L lines and streamline all processes inside a network. All parties, including internal departments (development, finance, legal, technical) and third parties (suppliers need to collaborate and exchange information to save time and money). A special focus on property management where the total cost of ownership (lease, arrangements & equipment) needs to be monitored.
The concept is more and more volatile; they only last a few years. Retailers need a way to quickly deploy a new concept on a large territory, monitoring the project time frame and the costs.
Retailers need to deliver the same service everywhere. They need to control the consistency of delivered services on the field and have an action plan to adjust when needed
Multi distribution Modes: To expand quickly, Retailers need to deploy their network with different operating modes depending on the location, profitability, and level of investment. This can be under company-owned shops, corners, or Franchises. Some countries prefer to contract with a master franchisor that knows the market and can leverage existing business. Synergee enables retailers to follow the benchmark and consolidate their complete business, whatever the way it is run.

Q. With market research, companies sometimes find the results of a study difficult to believe, unclear or mixed. Do you provide assistance for decision making?

We are often involved with prospects to calculate the ROI of such projects. There is a lot of savings, with a large impact on customer profitability. Just an example of lease management, renegotiating your lease at the right time, and not missing any deadlines to renew of decline a contract can have a big financial impact. The ROI is usually very fast a few months only.

Q. Do you feel that ads and assertive sales techniques are sustainable methods to reach the right audience?

Retailers often feel the pain described in the challenges, but many don’t know that the Synergee solution exists. We have a lot to evangelize and raise awareness. The target audiences are CEOs or VPs of retailers. Synergee brings a complete view of their business that creates value. Access to senior management can be difficult, especially in large organizations.

Q. What is the important factor that contributes majorly to the success of your business?

Franchise market is growing
Retailers are facing profitability issue and need to become industrial.
Lease is a fixed cost that needs attention
Retailers are going global and need a multicurrency, multi-language, multi accounting standards solution.

Q. Do you have any new services ready to be launched?

We are launching two new modules next month for property management:

Energy Reporting – part of total cost of ownership (TCO) the energy has more and more impact. We are providing reports on fluid consumption (gas, electricity, water) in unit and cost. This will enable the retailer to identify potential issues.

Sinister Management – When a sinister happen manage the relation with the insurance and the process to get the POS repaired.

Meet the leader behind the success of Synergee

Laurent dubernais, CEO of Synergee has a long track record in software industry delivering innovative solutions for Retailers. After having worked for 25 years for software leaders (Hyperion, Oracle), He decided to create a software as a service platform to industrialize the process of Retail network management.