Whether you’re exploring your options for new business platforms, or ready to get started, we are trusted business partners for some of the world’s most well-known brands. With over 25 years of experience with the Microsoft stack, we can help you understand all the capabilities Microsoft has to offer.
How organizations can fight fraud, even as it runs rampant during the pandemic
The Catfish. The Reject. Attack of the Bots. These aren’t upcoming horror movies – they’re examples of fraud scams experienced by consumers and businesses alike. In the US alone, consumers lost $246 million from online shopping fraud in 2020, according to the FTC. For businesses, the threat is even greater: omni-channel brands and retailers are constantly at risk of data breaches and organized retail crimes.
Fraudsters take advantage of outdated legacy systems and security loopholes, which in turn damages a brand’s reputation, sometimes permanently. Hacked eCommerce sites and stolen payment card numbers are some of the primary reasons customers walk away from brands.
Battling fraud can feel futile. But advancements in AI and machine learning can help organizations be more proactive about securing data and spotting patterns of fraudulent behavior. Let’s look at some examples of fraud, what consumers are worried about, and what a business can do to secure its brand and protect its reputation.
According to a report from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, 79 percent of respondents have observed an increase in fraud since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. 90 percent of respondents anticipate that this trend will continue well into 2021. Specific types of fraud cited were malware and ransomware attacks and credit card fraud. For brands and retailers, credit card and payment fraud, both by individuals and organized retail criminals, is an urgent issue.
Retail and eCommerce fraud can manifest in several different ways:
Catfishing: bad actors will contact a company’s customer service department and manipulate employees, usually with a sad or sympathetic story, into waiving fees or giving them discounts or free products.
Bots: Automated attacks by hackers can acquire customer data, including credit card numbers, or take over accounts. Bots may also scoop up large quantities of limited-edition products, shutting out real customers. Especially for brands, ordering large quantities of goods and selling them on resale markets dilutes its reputation.
Inside jobs: Employee collusion in either stealing products, or helping outsiders abuse a company’s return and exchange policy.
However, all of these types of con jobs have something in common: a data trail. An organization can use that data to its advantage, with the right tools.
According to a report from Experian, 74 percent of consumers said security was the most important factor when deciding to engage with a business online. Consumers lose billions of dollars every year to credit card theft, hacked accounts, and phishing scams. And it’s only gotten worse: with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, eCommerce shopping skyrocketed, along with scams like account takeover (a fraudster gaining access to a user’s online account and making unauthorized purchases or stealing credit card numbers).
Bad actors like Bargain Bear are an example of an organized crime ring dedicated to online fraud. There are many ways gangs like Bargain Bear perpetrate scams – content abuse, like stealing trademarks and product images to use on shady websites, exploiting security flaws in eCommerce sites to steal customer account information and credit card numbers, or using a brand’s eCommerce site as a testing ground for stolen credit cards.
Even just the perception of fraud can turn customers away. Forget about the financial losses – the impact to a brand’s reputation from this kind of behavior can be ruinous.
Whether you’re exploring your options for new business platforms, or ready to get started, we are trusted business partners for some of the world’s most well-known brands. With over 25 years of experience with the Microsoft stack, we can help you understand all the capabilities Microsoft has to offer.
Sunrise Technologies’ VP of Global Business Development Mike Pereira recently sat down (virtually) with Business of Fashion to discuss the future of supply chain management for brands and retailers. Shifts in supply chains have changed the way brands and retailers serve customers. This interview covers new technologies and strategies businesses should embrace as the world emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, new opportunities within supply chain management, and solutions for both large and small businesses planning a comeback.
Whether you’re exploring your options for new business platforms, or ready to get started, we are trusted business partners for some of the world’s most well-known brands. With over 30 years of experience with the Microsoft stack, we can help you understand all the capabilities Microsoft has to offer.
Part of what makes Dynamics 365 so unique for businesses is that it tears down application silos, and connects everything together. This solution will help save your organization time and money, and will scale with you as your business grows. See for yourself! Please let us know if we can help answer questions.
See how to solve the common challenges faced by consumer brands, manufacturers, and distributors:
The race to become a cloud retailer is fierce. See what a modern and delightful experience looks like in the cloud:
No matter what your role is within your organization, Dynamics 365 has functionality to make your life easier and your work more efficient. If you’d like a tailored demo experience, or to see Sunrise’s exclusive solutions for supply chain and retail, contact us.
Our industry experts have been working with companies like yours for years. Solving complex global, omni-channel, supply chain problems takes skill and know-how. Invite us to help advise and guide you to your best industry solution.
Save time and gain instant value when you deploy Microsoft Dynamics 365 with Sunrise industry extensions. Contact us today to ask questions or discuss next steps of how to start your project.
Enjoy this talk from Annie Graziani, Sunrise’s fashion expert, from PI Apparel’s Spotlight session on Supply Chain Transparency and Visibility.
Let’s face it: legacy fashion supply chains are broken. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s become apparent that new models are needed to create a more secure, sustainable, and resilient future for fashion and apparel brands. In this talk, Annie discusses some of the challenges and opportunities inherent in today’s fashion landscape.
Whether you’re exploring your options for new business platforms, or ready to get started, we are trusted business partners for some of the world’s most well-known brands. With over 25 years of experience with the Microsoft stack, we can help you understand all the capabilities Microsoft has to offer.
Global supply chain disruptions can wreak havoc on brands. The Sunrise 365 Supply Chain Control Tower unites all your demand and supply data sources in a single view. See the actual impact on revenue and run what-if scenarios on real-time data to make better planning decisions. Whether you’re facing vendor failures, overstocks, out of stocks, or other sticky situations, the Supply Chain Control Tower helps you identify potential problems before they cause chaos.
Whether you’re exploring your options for new business platforms, or ready to get started, we are trusted business partners for some of the world’s most well-known brands. With over 25 years of experience with the Microsoft stack, we can help you understand all the capabilities Microsoft has to offer.
Whether you’re exploring your options for new business platforms, or ready to get started, we are trusted business partners for some of the world’s most well-known brands. With over 25 years of experience with the Microsoft stack, we can help you understand all the capabilities Microsoft has to offer.
McKenzi Gebhard is a Senior Supply Chain consultant and Project Manager at Sunrise Technologies. McKenzi has worked with global organizations to implement Microsoft cloud solutions in the luxury furnishings, retail, and consumer goods industries
Customer expectations have never been higher. To meet these expectations fast shipping, resourceful customer service representatives, and extensive return policies are a must to stay relevant. But, while omni-channel retail capabilities are touted as the goal for a truly customer-centric shopping experience. So many people sing the praises of omni-channel, yet few companies do it well. Why? It starts with their systems footprint.
Complexity in the systems footprint
Satisfying customer expectations
Standalone OMS as a solution?
One solution for true omni-channel retail
Frequently asked questions
Most companies have separate eCommerce, POS, and call center systems. The integration required to sync the required information across these systems is an immense amount of work. For many legacy systems, this is quite a tall order. These kinds of “ship from anywhere” policies require both a ton of integration work and an understanding of the sophisticated routing rules for a fully integrated supply chain. Solving these technology challenges usually requires outside help, in which case you need a partner who understands the complex supply chain challenges inherent within retail.
Say you’re a company with retail stores, eCommerce, and call centers. In today’s retail landscape, your customers expect you can do the following:
- Buy online, pick up in store: Customer A places an order online but wants to pick up the product in a retail store. In order to do this, your eCommerce system needs visibility into your retail store’s inventory, plus the ability to send a pickup order to the POS system.
- Buy in store and have the item shipped to their house: Customer B found an item they liked in the store, but wanted it shipped to their home. For this, your store’s POS needs visibility into the eCommerce system’s inventory, and the ability to send an order to your eCommerce system to fulfill the order. Or, the POS may need visibility into other retail stores’ inventory to fulfill the order from one of those instead.
- Call a call center and process a return or exchange for an item purchased through another channel: For this, a customer service rep needs visibility into all the inventory channels and the ability to place an order and process a return from any of them.
… repeat for other shopping scenarios, and you can see the amount of work required to integrate all these systems is staggering.
Some companies have embraced Order Management Systems (OMS) as a layer to smooth these omni-channel challenges. But the efficacy of OMS is questionable. As an integration-heavy product, it’s still a lot of work to get up and running. At best, it can solve your order and fulfillment challenges in the short term. But many retailers have found they spent years installing an OMS, only to realize very little value and a lot of headaches maintaining yet another system.
The solution for achieving true omni-channel commerce, that is both long-term and cost-effective, is a single platform that keeps track of all your orders and inventory across your entire supply chain. ERP systems like Dynamics 365 operate seamlessly across your entire business, including your retail stores, call centers, and website.
Omni-channel operations require integrations between all your sales channels. The work required for these integrations is expensive and time-consuming.
OMS is expensive, and you still have to do the same integration work to connect all your sales channels. You may find you’ve spent a tremendous amount of money and time on a system that only returns a fraction of your investment.
Dynamics 365 combines supply chain, finance, and retail on a single platform. Say goodbye to patching together integrations between disparate systems, and hello to seamless operations on a single platform, backed by the security of the Microsoft Azure cloud.
Whether you’re exploring your options for new business platforms, or ready to get started, we are trusted business partners for some of the world’s most well-known brands. With over 25 years of experience with the Microsoft stack, we can help you understand all the capabilities Microsoft has to offer.
Save time and gain instant value when you deploy Microsoft Dynamics 365 with Sunrise industry extensions.
As the Chief Administrative Officer for Sunrise Technologies, Heather Essic is responsible for overseeing Sunrise operations, including finance, marketing, and pre-sales. Prior to being named the Chief Administrative Officer, Heather was Sunrise’s Director of Business Development for Existing Customers, leading extensive sales cycles for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and consulting.
Trust. It’s hard to gain, and easy to lose. And for brands, consumer trust is essential for growth. One of the most challenging parts of growing a company is maintaining your brand’s reputation while expanding into new products, channels, and regions. You may be thinking about different expansion strategies. But have you considered all the ways in which your legacy systems might be affected?
What is a brand promise?
Different expansion strategies
How branching out can affect legacy systems
How a global platform supports your brand
Frequently asked questions
A brand promise is the experience or product your customers can expect to receive every time they interact with your company. Customers need to know you, like you, and then trust you. A person’s connection to a brand is built on trust.
There are three paths companies typically follow as they begin to grow:
- Products: As a brand becomes more popular, it may branch out into new product categories. For example, a fashion brand may start selling accessories, then handbags, then shoes.
- Sales channels: Next, that same brand might open brick and mortar retail stores. Conversely, it might start selling online.
- Locations: Finally, this brand is ready to sell products in new regions or countries. Many companies start by using distributors in other countries before opening international offices or stores.
The biggest challenge, whether you’re opening your first retail store or your first international office, is keeping the brand promise. The biggest mistake we’ve seen companies make during one of these expansions is installing a legacy business application that serves one strategy but not another.
Let’s say you are an apparel company selling to wholesalers in the U.S. — there are plenty of low-cost apparel management systems for your industry. But that type of system will buckle if you try to expand into new channels, markets, or products.
Or maybe you’re a catalog retailer, branching out into wholesale. Can your current systems handle those types of business processes, like B2B accounts receivables, net terms, cash discounts, or chargebacks?
We’ve heard this story many times: a growing brand chooses a business system (or a few legacy applications) for the business they have right now, but not for the future. Then, as the company grows, their legacy systems are strained. The results are poor customer experience, inventory problems, and other nightmares that frustrate customers and erode their trust. As the brand promise falters, eventually so does the brand.
Don’t be shortsighted when you select an ERP system. The best thing you can do while you’re still a growing brand is choose a business application that can support different products, sales channels, and regions. A global platform, running on a single database can handle these kinds of processes from the beginning.
They are. But customizing your business applications is a short-term solution. They won’t support your company in the long run.
The ERP industry has evolved over the last few years, especially with the ubiquity of cloud computing. Systems like Dynamics 365 are built for multi-dimensional, global businesses.
You can definitely use a global system like Dynamics 365 with industry-specific solutions. Our customers use Sunrise 365 Supply Chain and Retail Replenishment solutions to get specific inventory, supply chain, and retail functions for their businesses, without customizing their core ERP software code.
Whether you’re exploring your options for new business platforms, or ready to get started, we are trusted business partners for some of the world’s most well-known brands. With over 25 years of experience with the Microsoft stack, we can help you understand all the capabilities Microsoft has to offer.
