Aralco Inventory Management vs. Thrive Technologies

Aralco Inventory Management is well suited for a retail operation with one or two locations that is expanding to 5+. At that point, there is small enough start-up costs and significant benefits available for this software to assist a company with the inventory and POS challenges associated with rapid growth. Aralco Inventory Management is also particularly helpful for retail companies that have complicated sales orders or a sales fulfillment time that is longer than a day or a week.

Incentivized

No solution is perfect, but I would say that Thrive is a particularly robust and complex solution that's intended to tackle major demand management and inventory forecasting problems. Smaller companies simply won't need a solution that's so all-encompassing. I would recommend waiting unitl you know that you need it before moving forward with a solution like Thrive.

Incentivized

• Retail focus
• Single source for all inventory control requirements
• Power-to-cost ratio
• Training package

Incentivized

• Cloud-based, accurate forecasting system saves lots of time and can tangibly boosts ROI
• Robust demand management down to the SKU level
• Optimized replenishment prevents too much money from being tied up in inventory

Incentivized

• Lengthy set-up process that requires strong management
• High base hardware requirements (can't be used with just a phone, for instance)
• Inventory forecasting is not linked to any external or macro forces

Incentivized

• Although it's simpler than many alternatives, it's a highly complex system and at times we felt lost during the transition period.
• We didn't get the results we had imagined when looking at their case studies and marketing materials. I understand many factors go into those things, and their case studies are not necessarily indicative of typical results, but your mileage may vary.
• Inventory replenishment alerts about potential stockouts weren't always reliable.

Incentivized

Abas ERP was what we had used previously, and though it did its job adequately, it lacked the forecasting, demand management, and inventory replenishment sophistication of Thrive. We reached a point where we felt it was untenable to supplement the previous system on our own which necessitated the switch to Thrive.

Incentivized

• Short training time reduced costs and increased sales which increased ROI
• Less downtime which reduced costs and increased ROI
• Good customer support which boosts employee morale which leads to efficiencies and higher sales which increased ROI

Incentivized

• We were able to reduce the amount of resources tied up in inventory
• Forecasting tools meant significantly less time spent trying to wrangle spreadsheets
• The transition was painful, causing initial doubts, but it was certainly worth the growing pains

Incentivized