Case Study

How Cloe Moda Transformed Its Retail Operations with NetSuite and Zoku’s Unified Commerce Platform

Introduction

This case study looks at how Cloe Moda, a leading fashion retailer in Mexico with over 50 boutique stores, transformed its retail operations using Zoku’s Unified Commerce Platform. Cloe Moda made the decision to move to NetSuite for financial, manufacturing, procurement and inventory management. However, this move to cloud native centralized management fell short of unified commerce. After a thorough evaluation, Cloe decided to partner with Zoku and IMR Software, Zoku’s strategic partner in Mexico, to implement Zoku’s unified commerce solution to take full advantage of their NetSuite investment with real-time management of operations across all stores.

“Due to various social and political factors in 2024, the economy in Mexico has not performed as expected. This has affected all sectors, but we have managed to achieve a cumulative sales increase of 7.7% from January to September 2024 compared to the previous year, during the same period, there was an 18.20% increase in unit sales.”

Cesar Cruz Castillo, Business Applications Manager

Key Context

  • Cloe has been working with Zoku since August 2023.

  • 18% increase in unit sales – Individual unit sales have increased by almost 20% since adopting Zoku.

  • Centralized storewide synchronization: Real-time inventory, customer, product and sales data sync across all stores, leading to more accurate and up-to-date stock information.

  • IT support needs decreased: Automated processes dramatically reduced manual interventions, reducing the reliance on IT support.

  • Superior consumer and associate experience with robust, easy to use apps

  • Trial of Zoku’s mobile POS solution trialed in 11 stores before being rolled out to 56 stores.

“Zoku’s platform transformed how we manage our stores. Real-time data synchronization and streamlined operations have made a huge difference in our daily efficiency.”

Cesar Cruz Castillo, Business Applications Manager

Who Is Zoku?

Zoku delivers a unified commerce platform tailored to meet the specific needs of the Retail, eCommerce, Wholesale Distribution, and Food & Beverage industries. With its innovative approach and a strong team of experts in software development, consulting, and business transformation, Zoku has positioned itself as a leader in the industry. The company has made significant strides in research and development, achieving certifications such as Built for NetSuite from Oracle, and expanding internationally.

Zoku’s Cloud Native integration platform – deployed on Microsoft Azure, providing customers with secure, scalable, and high-performance services worldwide.

Enterprise-Level Certification – Zoku’s Point of Sale and Inventory Management applications are certified as Built for NetSuite by Oracle NetSuite.

Cloe’s Challenges and Objectives

“Managing promotions and keeping our data synchronized across multiple stores was a constant challenge. We needed a solution that could bring everything together in real time, without relying on manual updates or heavy IT support.”

Cesar Cruz Castillo, Business Applications Manager

As Cloe Moda expanded to over 50 stores, they made the choice to move to managing operations across multiple stores became increasingly complex. Their key challenges included:

  • 1

    Data Synchronization: Struggled to synchronize inventory, sales, and financial data across all stores, leading to inconsistencies and stock discrepancies.

  • 2

    Promotion Management: Difficulty in quickly setting up and executing promotions across multiple stores, resulting in delays and inaccurate stock levels during key promotions.

  • 3

    Inventory Accuracy: Lack of real-time inventory visibility caused discrepancies between store stores, leading to inefficiencies and missed sales opportunities.

  • 4

    Financial Tracking: Challenges with tracking financial performance, especially during promotions, as data was often out-of-sync across stores.

  • 5

    IT Dependency: Relied heavily on IT support to manage manual processes, increasing costs and causing operational delays.

Objectives

Decisions, tracking and management centralized at enterprise level.

  • Achieve real-time synchronization of data across all stores.

  • Streamline promotion management for faster, more accurate execution.

  • Gain full inventory visibility to avoid stock discrepancies.

  • Improve financial tracking for real-time insights during promotions.

  • Reduce reliance on IT support by automating manual processes

Retail Transformation Solution at Cloe Moda

Omnichannel NetSuite Point Of Sale (POS) for Retail: A powerful multi-platform app that allows unified operations and real-time insights across every store.

Inventory Management Application for Retail Stores: A robust app for store associates to manage stock levels, counting and inventory movement between stores, ensuring accuracy and visibility across the entire retail network.

Zoku Sync: An industry-leading cloud integration platform that allows seamless data harmonization and operational alignment between NetSuite, Zoku’s apps and across APIs and systems.

Multilingual Solution: To support Cloe Moda’s customer base, Zoku provided a Spanish language version of its platform, ensuring that all functionalities and user interfaces are fully localized for Spanish-speaking users. This allows Cloe Moda’s teams across Mexico to operate with ease and efficiency, using familiar language and terminology, which enhances both internal operations and the customer experience. The Spanish language support also extends to Zoku Engage, allowing sales associates to seamlessly assist customers on the sales floor in their native language.

In an exciting new phase of our partnership, Cloe Moda and Zoku have launched a project to integrate Zoku Sync with Cloe’s CRM system. This ongoing project underscores Zoku Sync’s scalability and adaptability, showcasing its ability to integrate effectively with 3rd party systems and APIs to support evolving business needs. By integrating CRM data, Cloe Moda will gain enhanced insights into customer interactions across stores, helping streamline customer engagement and providing a more personalized shopping experience. This further emphasizes Zoku’s commitment to growing with its clients, adapting solutions as their needs expand.

Zoku Retail Solution

Feature Highlight: Zoku Engage

Cloe Moda’s sales associates use Zoku Engage on mobile devices to assist customers on the sales floor, by accessing product and inventory data across all stores with the ability to add items to a customer’s cart to complete transactions at the checkout counter. Engage has been designed to empower store associates by giving them more freedom and fluidity. Cloe trialed Engage in 11 stores, before quickly rolling out to all stores.

  • Mobile POS on Tablets:
    Sales associates can check inventory and prices, access product information, and create orders without needing to return to the main POS system.

  • Seamless Order Processing:
    Orders created on the tablet are seamlessly sent to the main POS for payment processing, reducing wait times for customers and ensuring smooth transactions.

  • Empowering Store Associates:
    Team members are able to complete complex customer service and sales task wherever they are on the shop floor. Problem solving is no longer tied to the checkout. Empowering sales associates with accurate, rich product and inventory data at their fingertips, through apps designed with human factors engineering for ease of use and minimized errors.

  • Enhanced Customer Experience:
    By handling all interactions on-the-go, sales associates can engage customers more effectively, providing a personalized and efficient shopping experience.

  • Future Expansion:
    Cloe Moda plans to further leverage Zoku Engage by setting up the system to accept payments directly on the tablet, offering a fully mobile checkout experience. Plans to use Zoku Sync to integrate NetSuite with Cloe’s CRM, a third-party system.

Zoku NetSuite Integrated Commerce vs. SAP B1 With POS

One of the major challenges for retailers like Cloe Moda, operating in a competitive market, is finding the right technology to keep pace with the ever-changing expectations of customers.

“We considered other solutions, but Zoku’s ability to provide native real-time synchronization and an integrated platform made the choice easy for us.”

Cesar Cruz Castillo, Business Applications Manager

Faced with the need for real-time synchronization across over 50 stores and the complexities of a multi-store retail operation, Cloe Moda found that SAP Business One (B1) required significant customization and IT support to meet their needs. For their POS needs, Cloe used an additional POS system, but this setup lacked real-time data integration, often leading to delays in updating inventory and sales information across stores. This lack of integration made it difficult to deliver a consistent, up-to-date experience to their customers across all stores.

These challenges prompted Cloe to look to NetSuite for accounting, manufacturing, and procurement. However, this step still fell short of real-time synchronization across stores. That’s where Zoku’s integrated commerce platform came in. With Zoku’s platform, Cloe Moda could seamlessly synchronize inventory, sales, and customer data across all stores in real time without relying on separate systems or third-party tools. This allowed their operations to run smoothly, with accurate, up-to-date information readily available across all stores.

Comparison Table*

Feature SAP Business One (B1) with standalone POS system Zoku + NetSuite Unified Commerce Platform
Scalability Good for small to medium-sized businesses, but often requires additional customization and resources to scale. Natively scalable for multi-store retailers, with minimal customization required.
Real-Time Data Synchronization Natively scalable for multi-store retailers, with minimal customization required. Built-in, real-time synchronization across all stores and channels.
POS Integration Basic POS functionality, often relying on third-party solutions for multi-store operations, with delayed updates. Seamless, built-in POS integration with Zoku Engage, enabling associates to assist customers and manage inventory in real time.
Customization Requires significant customization and IT involvement to handle multi-store complexity. Pre-built features designed for multi-store operations, reducing the need for heavy customization.
IT Support & Maintenance High IT involvement for customizations and maintenance, especially for multi-store businesses. Having to manage multiple sources of truth in ERP and POS systems Low IT overhead with automatic updates, reducing complexity and cost.

NetSuite as the single source of truth for enterprise data
Customer Experience Limited omnichannel support, often needing third-party tools to bridge online and in-store experiences. Fully integrated omnichannel solution that provides seamless customer experiences across all touchpoints.

*Based on Cloe’s and Zoku’s experience.

Summary & Key Findings

While SAP Business One (B1) is a highly capable ERP solution for small to medium-sized businesses, it can struggle to meet the demands of multi-store retailers like Cloe Moda, which operates over 50 stores. For retailers of this scale, SAP B1 required significant customization and IT support to maintain real-time synchronization across stores, adding both complexity and cost. Additionally, Cloe’s standalone POS lacked real-time updates, which created further operational bottlenecks.

In contrast, Zoku’s integrated commerce platform, built on NetSuite, offers native scalability with real-time data synchronization across all stores. This means Cloe Moda can track inventory, sales, and customer interactions across its stores seamlessly, without relying on third-party tools or middleware to bridge gaps. Zoku Engage, the platform’s mobile POS solution, further enhances the customer experience, allowing sales associates to manage inventory, check prices, and complete transactions in real time directly on the sales floor.

By choosing Zoku, Cloe Moda was able to reduce the need for manual processes and IT interventions, streamlining their operations and improving overall efficiency. The fully integrated system provides a unified view of inventory and customer data, ensuring that all stores operate cohesively as one, rather than as fragmented units.

This case highlights that, while the previous solution can be a good solution for businesses with simpler operations, Zoku’s integrated commerce platform is a far better fit for multi-store retailers that require real-time synchronization, scalability, and an omnichannel approach to customer experience.

“Zoku’s platform has been instrumental in streamlining our operations. The integration of real-time data and enhanced customer engagement has allowed us to scale our business without the operational challenges we faced before.”

Cesar Cruz Castillo, Business Applications Manager