Hong Kong is struggling to recover since the COVID pandemic, which saw many expatiates leave after a three year shutdown, and tourist numbers dwindle to a fraction of pre-pandemic levels. High rents and a labour shortage are now adding to the pain for retailers to survive in Hong Kong. For established chain stores, repositioning of the distribution strategy away from Hong Kong, while growing retailers expands to western countries to gain global exposure and customer base.
Among the solutions to save the retail businesses, overseas expansion, franchaising into strong growth markets such as Southest Asia and western countries, and going to online have recently been a prevailing strategies by retailers regardless of their scale or categories.
Expansion without established structures and processes, lack of experienced staff, stretched resources can lead to huge investment without return. For finance teams in particular, there will be unfamiliar legal and regulatory regimes to navigate, local tax obligations to observe and the effects of currency fluctuations to manage. A slip-up in any of these areas can have serious consequences.
NetSuite OneWorld Powers up Retail Expansion
NetSuite OneWorld enables retail chains to manage multiple subsidiaries, business units and legal entities, domestic or internationally from a single solution, providing real-time financial and operational visibility and control at the local, regional, and headquarters levels for retail chains or your franchisees.
Develop standardized business processes and deploy them across the entire retail organization, from headquarters to divisions and subsidiaries, at the click of a button. Ensure compliance with company policies, local and international accounting standards, and regulatory reporting requirements. OneWorld adjusts for currency, language, taxation, and legal compliance differences at the local level, with automated roll-up to the regional and global level for consolidated reporting. Role-based dashboards give business leaders a global view of company performance and the ability to drill down into key metrics at any level of the organization, giving them real-time insights into the business.
Historically, business users wanting to gain business insight from data spread across their company had to head to Excel or another reporting tool, or submit an IT ticket and wait to get a data file back that would usually require an extra round of manipulation and report-building. All this meant it took several days if not weeks to get the answers you were looking for.
Today, businesses need to be run in real-time, which means everyone needs to have access to their own actionable metrics whenever they need them. And if you can’t predict what changes to certain market conditions or scenarios will have on your business, then you might as well concede to your competitor
Benefits of NetSuite OneWorld for Managing Retail Overseas Expansion
Looking across the universe of NetSuite retail customers, there are proven benefits to business operations that can only come from a modern business system with built-in flexibility, has Business Intelligence for all, and Just Works for companies that range from pure play ecommerce to multichannel retail chains.
The results you see here are from a project where research vendor SL Associates held detailed discussions with a retail customer on the improvements they have seen in their business as a result of using NetSuite. There are 10 aspects of business areas that NetSuite has brought along significant improvement in the KPIs. Socring over 50% improvement areas lies in obtaining 360 business visibility and actionable insights, time to close financial books, productivity of accounting staff, time to process online orders, sales from recurring customers and maintaining business continuity by IT and their support costs in the organization.
Strategic Management of Retail Expansion
Global Business Management NetSuite OneWorld is built around robust financial reporting capabilities that enable a retail chain to understand what is happening across the global business in real time. A multi-language user interface helps bridge communication barriers and provides a flexible hierarchy that allows your retail businesses to run their entire entity structure with ease. OneWorld is designed to provide an up-to-date global view of the business with subsidiary specific drill-down capabilities that allow you to quickly understand what is going on anywhere in the world.
Intercompany Accounting and Consolidation NetSuite’s unified data model simplifies intercompany reconciliation and netting. A sales order created by one subsidiary can be linked to a purchase order created by another. When the order is invoiced, the system identifies the transaction and automatically posts the appropriate elimination journal entries. And with intercompany netting, accounting managers can easily balance intercompany accounts and automatically create settlements for select transactions.
OneWorld also accelerates the month-end close process, making it easier to produce timely and accurate consolidated financial reports. A flexible general ledger provides a standardized chart of accounts while allowing account codes to be customized for individual subsidiaries. Transactions recorded at the subsidiary level under one set of codes automatically map the correct account at the parent level.
Comprehensive Multi-Currency Management NetSuite multi-currency management supports 190+ currencies and exchange rates (letting you do business with both customers and vendors globally) as well as a wide variety of payment options. It provides real-time currency conversion and financial consolidation. With NetSuite OneWorld, you are able to manage a complete range of international tax structures and restate currencies and consolidate financial reporting across business units.
Audit and Compliance Reporting OneWorld has been built to support both global standards and country-specific requirements. The always-on audit trail, built-in analytics, access logs, and workflow, along with the ability to drill down to the underlying transaction detail, ensures that you’ll always get supporting documentation. Access to NetSuite is based on user roles and permissions. NetSuite’s SuiteCloud platform offers unrivaled levels of personalization, customization, and development—all within a framework that ensures security, scalability, globalization, and the assurance that you’re always on the latest version of the software.
ERP for Retail International Expansion or Franchising
NetSuite helps retail chains or fast-growing retailers with a single source of truth – one platform to manage all of your outlets and franchisees with real-time financial and operational data and reporting, enabling your seamless data-driven decision making for multiple markets. All you need is to get your team on board to the journey for the single line-of-sight in your business expansion with a scalable platform to fit your growth momentum.
ONE Pacific, an award-winning Oracle NetSuite Solution Provider with more than a decade of experience in automation and SaaS solutions consulting, is with proven success in implementing NetSuite solutions and our expertise lies in seamlessly integrating ERP systems, like NetSuite, to enhance retail and ecommerce management, financial visibility, and operational efficiency. Discuss your unique business challenges with our consultants by giving us a quick call at +852 3460 5018 or email to: info@onepac.net .
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References:
https://www.jll.com.mo/en/newsroom/six-key-challenges-facing-hong-kongs-retail-market-for-recovery