Brightpearl by Sage

Score8 out of 10

295 Reviews and Ratings

What is Brightpearl by Sage?

Brightpearl’s retail operations platform is designed to handle peak trading, integrates with the full retail tech ecosystem, and is omni-channel native. Additionally, the vendor says their solution is the system of record for key trading data, provides real-time trading insights and is automated so users can stay in control and manage by exception.

According to the vendor key differentiators include:

Software and Service. Service is an integral part of Brightpearl's offer. The vendor says their retail consultants get users live three times faster than traditional ERP, always for a fixed cost. And the in-house team is available throughout, from tech support to ongoing business consulting.

Built for Retail. Brightpearl is built only for the retail sector. This means: configuration not coding, designed for use by merchants not IT staff, every new feature is relevant, and their integrations and ecosystem are 100% retail.

Designed to Scale. Whether it’s seasonal peaks, promotions or sustained growth, merchants need an ops platform that can handle the volume. The vendor says they stand by their numbers: orders, SKUs, channels, reporting and financials fit for multi-million dollar merchants.

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Customer timeline giving you insight into pending orders, previous purchases and potential marketing opportunities

Deep insight in your customers, product and sales channel through Brightpearl's Minubo integration

Fully integrated POS for access to all product inventory information at the till

Managing suppliers and purchasing inventory is quick and easy, says the vendor

Provide top-notch service by having access to your customers’ full interaction history and personalize your marketing communication with product-interest tagging.

Brightpearl’s flexible inventory management has all of the features you need to stay in control of your inventory and make fast, effective business decisions. Redistribute your staff towards growth strategies and reduce the time spent on costly admin overheads.

Inventory Planning. With Brightpearl’s integrated inventory demand planning solution, understand exactly how your inventory is performing so you can put your time and money into the most impactful areas of your business. Identify trends to ensure you have the right products at the right time.

Intuitive and easy-to-use POS, access all inventory across multiple locations alongside full customer order and communication history.

Brightpearl’s integrated accounting is built specifically for retail and wholesale businesses, providing real-time insight into sales performance, profitability and costs across all your channels, all from the same system you use to manage sales, purchasing, inventory, customers and suppliers. Make the right decisions for your business in order to manage cost, reduce risk and remain agile in an ever-changing trading environment.

Brightpearl’s intelligent process automation has all of the features you need to speed up order processing, reduce fulfillment latency and costs, and automate your entire order-to-cash process.

1 / 10

Isobel Sandbach

Business and Data Analyst in Information Technology at Workplace Interiors Co. (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Brightpearl by Sage to manage order processing and fulfilment across our three e-commerce sites. Some orders are fulfilled via dropship, while the rest are shipped directly from our warehouse using the Warewolf and Shiptheory integrations.

Before Brightpearl, we were using disconnected systems, manual workflows, and endless spreadsheets. This made it challenging—and time-consuming—to obtain accurate data for reporting.

Since implementing Brightpearl, we’ve been able to streamline and automate key processes and improve accuracy. Having a complete audit trail of every transaction has also given us greater visibility and confidence in our operations.

Pros

Flexible customisation.
Sales order automation.

Cons

Automation is limited to sales order triggers only. It would be great if we could also set up automations relating to customers, purchases, credits, inventory, etc.

Return on Investment

It's hugely reduced the time taken to process orders, meaning we've been able to manage growth without needing to increase our headcount.

Usability

Tanmeet Kapoor

Business Analyst in Marketing at Maxcolor (11-50 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As a small business owner, we can confidently say that Inventory Planner has been an absolute game changer for our operations. Its ease of use and powerful features make it an essential tool in managing our inventory effectively. The integration with our e-commerce platform and softwares is seamless, streamlining our entire inventory management process. It has saved us countless hours of manual work, enabling us to focus on other important aspects of our business.

Pros

The integration with our e-commerce platform and softwares is seamless
The forecasting system is really good
The customer support at Inventory Planner is outstanding. They are there to help you out at each step

Cons

It's difficult to understand the software at first glance
It gets slow sometimes
Rest it's all good

Most Important Features

Forecasting the demand
Integration with our other systems
Good customer support services

Return on Investment

It has been a good steep growth
We have got positive ROI by using this software
Its easy to use and user friendly so gives us time to focus on other aspects of business

Martin Powell

Managing Director at BODYWORKZONE LIMITED (1-10 employees employees)

Pros

Support is very good.

Cons

Supports only a small number of marketplaces and in a limited way only. When I signed up with Brightpearl they claimed that you could list directly onto eBay from within Brightpearl but this turned out to be untrue as Brightpearl did not support eBay postage policies (eBay's semi literate way of saying shipping tables).
Not only can you not list directly onto eBay, you cannot list directly from within Brightpearl to any marketplaces whatsoever. With other software you can list directly to all the marketplaces they integrate with.
Brightpearl is abysmal at VAT. Brightpearl calculates VAT on Channel Islands and Canary Islands orders even though there is no Vat in either of them. So when you pay HMRC you will be paying them a bit extra unless you check all your orders which makes the software somewhat redundant.
When I signed up they advertised Brightpearl as the software to automate your online selling. But it didn't really do that. A couple of years later at considerable extra cost they released an add-on app called Brightpearl Automation that does seem to deliver on automation. However other software offers that at no extra cost.
Brightpearl claims that it integrates with Amazon, but this is only partially true as they have completely ignored the new marketplaces that Amazon have opened. If you list on those marketplaces you have to input the orders manually and Brightpearl will not update the stock, putting you at risk of negative feedback. Other software integrates fully with all Amazon marketplaces.
Now that I am leaving it was suggested that I might benefit from read-only access so that we could easily double check things like warranty claims. They offered me a year's read-only access for £10,080 which is more than double my yearly contract for full use of the software. Now, if that isn't taking the mickey, I don't know what is!!!

Return on Investment

It has been beneficial but now I realise that other software can do so much more.
Efficiency is improved because orders are imported automatically but that counts for all the other software I have looked at.

Alternatives Considered

Cloud Commerce Pro

Usability

Ben Phillips

Ecommerce Manager at Goodhood (11-50 employees employees)

Pros

Stock accuracy and stock movement
Clear pricing for products across multiple currencies
Ability to enrich data

Cons

Search is a little clunky
Difficult to update or change information on single items when they're part of a larger group of products
Not being able to create Parent/child variants across sizes

Return on Investment

Brightpearl has really helped with stock integrity

Other Software Used

Shopify Plus, Klaviyo

Usability

Verified User

Manager in Information Technology (11-50 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We changed to Brightpearl by Sage mainly for the automation and ease of use. The direct API integrations with Shopify Plus are great. We have 10 stores and sell on various marketplaces. Brightpearl by Sage has made all our workflows more efficient; freeing up time for tasks previously put aside.

Pros

The Training is very in-depth.
The set up is easy.
James and the team are great.

Cons

The product upload isn't very user friendly. The deletion of options if not all options are listed, for example.
Why the products, suppliers, customers etc unique identifiers are email addresses and names and not SKU's or Account numbers makes everything more difficult, especially when uploading data.
Category mapping using an import is a nightmare. Only being able to do 1 category at a time is pretty ridiculous for such a complex system.

Return on Investment

Looks good so far. We haven't used it for long but all is progressing well.
Time has been freed in all departments.

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Brightpearl by Sage