Retail merchandising systems provide retailers of any size with the tools to react to real-time data from across the enterprise. These tools include everything from inventory management and control, to replenishment, forecasting, purchase order management, point of sale (POS), and even customer relationship management (CRM).

Using our Merchandising Evaluation Center, we compared Lawson Software, Epicor, and Aldata Solution head-on. For the overall rankings portion, we looked at these vendor solutions in two basic configurations: with and without POS functionality. To eliminate any chance of bias, and to ensure a level playing field, all 3,072 criteria comprising all the modules and submodules in the merchandising request for information (RFI) were given equal weight and priority...