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Bright Pearl: A Quick Look
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What Is Bright Pearl?
Founded by Andrew Mulvenna and Chris Tanner in 2007, Brightpearl is a multichannel retail management system software geared towards high growth brands, retailers, and wholesalers. It functions as a unified platform from which multichannel sellers can automate and streamline the vital processes of their retail operations such as inventory and sales order management, shipping and fulfillment, retail accounting, and more. Regarded as one of the leading merchant services providers today, Brightpearl currently provides its services to more than 1.4K business owners and has processed over $2.5 billion in merchant sales.
Let’s Talk Features
Sales Order Management
- Designed to handle a high volume of orders
- Centralized platform to manage orders across all sales channels
- Automated order processing – automated inventory allocation, order routing, sales invoicing
- Customizable order management workflow – track order fulfillment process from start to end by assigning custom order statuses; set rules on inventory allocation, fulfillment, shipping, invoicing, billing, and order tracking based on sales order process
- Amazon FBA Multichannel Fulfillment – Amazon multichannel fulfillment integration allows faster fulfillment for orders from sites such as Shopify, Magento, eBay, Bigcommerce, etc.
- Automated dropshipping
- Flexible returns and refunds management
- Integrated real-time accounting
- Integrated Point-of-Sale System – intuitive and integrated iOS mobile app with offline capabilities syncs sales, inventory, customer and payment info in real-time, and can process online and in-person transactions
- Offline orders processing
- Automated creation of shipping labels via shipping and 3PL integrations
- Backorders and pre-orders management
- Sales analysis reporting
- Wholesaler management
Inventory Management
- Real-time inventory updates (based on product sales, warehouse-to-warehouse transfers, returns, restocks, etc.) across all sales channels and locations for full visibility and control
- Inventory barcoding
- Automated inventory demand planning software – track inventory performance by viewing insights on seasonality, fastest and slowest moving inventory, historic sales data, reorder points, out of stock periods, and many more for data-driven inventory forecasting
- Amazon FBA inventory reconciliation – to maintain accurate inventory levels
- Integrated real-time accounting
- Integrated shipping and order fulfillment management
- Product analytics
- Raw material inventory tracking
- Product kitting
- Multiple price lists – diversify product costs, assign to vendors for complete and accurate auditing and accounting
Shipping and Order Fulfillment Management
- Workflow automation and customization for order fulfillment
- Multi-warehouse order fulfillment – track and manage inventory across all stores, warehouses and suppliers; do inventory allocation and transfers to ensure products are at their proper locations
- Order splitting automation
- FIFO (first-in, first-out) – based order routing
- Pick, pack and ship workflow automation
- Shipping prices configuration
- Amazon FBA Multichannel Fulfillment
- Dropshipping automation
- Integrated shipping labels
- Backorders fulfillment management
- Customizable shipping methods
Warehouse Management
- Warehouse management system fully integrates with inventory management and accounting platforms.
- Configurable workflows
- Exclusive interface for warehouse management staff
- Automated shipping integrations
- Full and partial inventory counts based on location, throughput, value, product attributes or selection defined by the user
- Returns management
- Inventory reconciliation
- FIFO-based pick and pack workflow
- Barcoding
- Customizable views of inventory details for effective shipping prioritization
Retail Accounting
- Retail accounting system provides complete audit trail by consolidating purchasing, sales and accounting data in one place
- Automated, real-time financial reporting
- Third-party accounting software has access to real-time sales performance reporting
- Accurate COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) tracking, integrated landing costs and business expenses management for highly accurate financial reporting; See true value of inventory and understand profitability
- Sales tax and VAT returns reporting
- Amazon FBA fees, transactions and adjustments tracking
- Accounts payable and receivables real-time tracking and reporting
- Multi-currency support
- Bank reconciliation functionality
Purchase Order and Supplier Management
- Inventory stock level reporting
- Fully automated purchase management – low inventory alert triggers the automatic placement of purchase orders with user-set product quantities
- Centralized supplier management – manage complete supplier data in one platform; suppliers can input tracking information via supplier portal to reduce user’s data entry work
- FIFO inventory costing method for accurate accounting
- Landed cost tracking and dynamic unit cost tracking
- Automated batch invoicing
Reporting and Business Intelligence
- Report scheduling
- Customizable reports
- Management reporting
- Product analytics
- Inventory and demand reporting
- Sales channel performance reporting
- Customer reporting
- Financial performance
Payments App
- Online payments systems integrations – Brightpearl currently integrates with Authorize.net, Braintree, Sage Pay, PayPal, Worldpay, USAePay, Stripe, iZettle and many more
- Business-to-Business payment processing via virtual terminal or phone
- Send customizable “Click-to-Pay” invoices for increased customer convenience
- Secure customer data management
- Secure user delegation
- Integrated Point-of-Sale system enables processing of payments made in person
Customer Relationship Management
- Access to customers’ historical data
- Customer credit management
- Access to email correspondence history with customers and suppliers
- Manage customer correspondence via automated reminders
- Customer categorization with customizable tags
What We Love about It – The Pros
It’s a Centralized Platform for Your Retail Operations
Brightpearl greatly eases the burden of managing a multichannel retail business as it consolidates all your sales channels in one place and provides you with all the tools you need to manage your orders, inventory, shipping and fulfillment, accounting and customer data, and business analytics. Aside from syncing all your business data across all sales channels in real-time for full visibility, it also has powerful automation features that allows you to automate routine tasks and processes to streamline your business operations. Because it greatly reduces the amount of work to be done on the backend, you can spend more time focusing on the front end of your business to increase sales and make your business more profitable.
Its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Functionality
Brightpearl offers the functionality of an ERP system, as it provides complete retail insights and analytics that cover your entire operations. Its robust reporting system provides full transparency and visibility, and enables you to stay in full control by giving you instant access to business metrics and key performance indicators that matter to you the most. You always have a complete view of how your business is performing, allowing you to make quick, intelligent, data-driven decisions that can optimize the various aspects of your business. It also allows you to make accurate forecasts, helping you plan for the future more efficiently.
Its Capacity for High Level Performance
Brightpearl is a powerhouse with enterprise-class reliability and was designed to be able to handle 25,000 orders per hour. It seamlessly integrates with a network of marketplaces, shopping carts, ecommerce platforms and 3rd party service apps that gives the platform the ability to support high transaction volumes. Brightpearl is continuously adding new integrations and its open API allow you to integrate the platform to your specific needs with personalized workflows and unique processes.
What We’re Not Crazy About – The Cons
Brightpearl Pricing
While Brightpearl does not advertise its prices on its site (interested parties must request a price quote), it makes it perfectly clear on its pricing page that it caters to fast-growing, larger merchants. Its entry level High Growth plan is recommended for merchants who do $500K to $2 million in sales annually and its Enterprise and Brand Leader plans are recommended for those who do $2 million to $5 million and $5 million and above in annual sales, respectively. This strongly indicates that this is out of the price range of small multichannel sellers.
Another thing to take note of is the steep onboarding and set up fee that needs to be paid before you start using the platform. In our opinion though, the eye-watering onboarding and set-up fee is justified and we explain why in the part which discusses implementation time.
Its Implementation Time
Just to be perfectly clear, we are putting Brightpearl’s implementation time here because the implementation time of most of its competitors range from one day to four weeks. For Brightpearl, it takes about eight to 10 weeks. This needs to be properly contextualized, though.
For Brightpearl, implementation goes through several meticulous stages and the first one is the creation of a customized project plan that supports the unique business needs of the customer by a team of consultants tasked to guide the customer from demo to project launch.
Next, the team will migrate and validate the customer’s business data to optimize software performance, advise the customer on importing and managing client data, connect and test integrations with online marketplaces and ecommerce sites, orient the customer on integrations and applications to streamline business processes, prepare training materials for the customer and his or her staff, assist the customer during project launch, and evaluate and further optimize the customer’s system post launch.
At each stage, the team will conduct quality and performance checks to ensure that the project plan is well suited for the customer. The whole process understandably takes time and can be a bit expensive, but it ensures that the platform works properly and addresses all the retail operation demands of the customer.
Its High Learning Curve
Brightpearl is a sophisticated piece of tech, and learning its wide range of functions and capabilities can be a bit tedious and overwhelming. Despite the excellent set up and onboarding assistance, it may take some time to get accustomed to the workflows of the platform.
On a more positive note, Brightpearl customer support team is available via phone or live chat 16 hours a day, and its email support is available 24/7. Brightpearl also has a great resource center with instructional material such as guides and how-to-do articles, as well as a community forum where you can congregate with other users. These help and support features do a fantastic job of lowering the platform’s learning curve.
Our Final Take: Should You Get Bright Pearl?
Please read before proceeding:
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Before considering Brightpearl, ask yourself the following questions:
- Do you sell on at least two ecommerce platforms?
- Is your multi channel retail business doing at least $1 million in sales annually, or do you expect it to be doing so in the next 8 to 12 months?
- Do you process at least 2K orders per month?
- Do you have more than one warehouse to manage?
- Are you willing to make a considerable investment in a retail operations management solution to take your business to the next level?
If you answered “YES” to all of these questions, Brightpearl is a viable option for you. The platform isn’t really for businesses still in its early growth stages and its powerful functionality will more likely benefit business owners who have established firm footholds on multiple sales channels.
Also, while Brightpearl can be quite a financial investment, it is significantly less expensive than a “catch-all” enterprise resource planning system. You get to save money while enjoying all the vital retail management features and perks of an ERP system. Moreover, Brightpearl has a shorter implementation time than traditional ERPs, allowing you to reallocate your time, focus, and attention to growing other aspects of your retail business.
To sum up, Brightpearl is an ideal all-in-one retail management solution for mid-sized to large multichannel retailers that promises to provide the high level of functionality traditional ERPs offer at less cost and faster implementation time. It’s a worthwhile investment that can help unlock the full potential of your business.
If you’d like to see how your multichannel retail business can benefit from a powerful ERP system like Brightpearl, get in touch with their team and request a free trial. Experience first hand how the platform can improve your workflows to create significant bottom-line savings.
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