Lettuce
Price: From $39 (around £25, AU$45) per month
Like Brightpearl, Lettuce was set up by friends who needed a better inventory management solution than was already available for an existing business that they were running. It was designed to be cost-effective and simple to use, where other platforms were not. The platform was publicly launched in 2012 and was bought by Intuit earlier this year.
Again like Brightpearl, Lettuce is cloud-based, meaning it can be accessed from anywhere on any operating system. It provides both inventory management and order management functionality. Inventory management features include an overview layout to give a real-time view of what is happening in an organisation's inventory, and the ability to group sub-parts together into products for manufacture, and forecasting for future inventory planning.
Lettuce allows users to capture and track orders online for both consumers and retailers, and in the office via phone call, fax or email. The platform integrates with a variety of powerful services such as Google, QuickBooks, Shopify, UPS and FedEx. Functionality is included for managing shipping, customers and vendors, amongst other activities.
Ordoro
Price: From US$39 (around £25, AU$45) per month
Ordoro bills itself as primarily a shipping app, but with built-in inventory management functionality. The company was founded in 2010 and says it has processed over US$244 million (around £150 million, AU$280 million) worth of orders since its conception. It claims to "create user-centric, thoughtfully-designed software that's helping merchants efficiently manage everything that happens after the order is placed on their webstore."
Ordoro uses what it calls a "unified inventory" for managing the stock levels for all of a user's distribution channels, such as different retailers and marketplaces. By doing so, it aims to minimise the amount of manual updating that is required to an company's inventory.
As with other platforms like Lettuce, parts or components can be grouped into larger products for manufacture. Resupplying of items can be done from within the platform, with suppliers and products added in as required.
JumpStock
Price: Varies
Jump Technologies was established in 1999 and offers a variety of software for inventory management, replenishment, procurement, and proof-of-delivery. The company operates across a number of industries, including healthcare, office supplies, food logistics, transportation and distribution. It claims to have been "among the first companies to use the cloud to leverage existing smartphone and tablet technology to solve supply chain problems associated with procurement, inventory management and proof-of-delivery."
JumpStock aims to provide a simple, lean and agile inventory management solution. It is primarily targeted at the healthcare industry. The platform uses barcode scanning and smartphone devices to automate procurement and inventory management processes and reduce the amount of time that staff must spend on administrative functions. Its focus on automation is also said to reduce inventory errors.
In addition, JumpStock enables users to better track item information (such as use by dates), provide a clear overview of an organisation's inventory as a whole, and scale manageably should an organisation begin to grow. Jumpstock says its implementation process takes less than a week and requires minimal staff training.
Zoho
Web: http://www.zoho.com/crm/order-management.html
Price: From $25 (around £16, AU$29) per month
Zoho's inventory management functionality is actually part of its CRM offering. Zoho has built up a sizable portfolio of over 25 business applications over the years, which can be used in a modular manner. It's products are all cloud-based and have won awards from the likes of InfoWorld, PC World and TechCrunch. The company boasts over 9 million customers worldwide and has offices in the US and China.
Zoho's online inventory management software aims to provide seamless integration between pre-sales and post-sales activities in the one application. It allows users to manage organisation-wide product catalogues, create multiple price-books and offer different discount types as required. Users can create and track sales quotes, track sales orders and purchase orders, monitor current stock levels and manage the invoicing process.
