"Cross-sell/upsell prompts are a strong point of Arx, triggered by source code, SKU, customer type, and order total. Item personalisation, on the other hand, is done only with order-level notes (not even line-level notes!), and there is no support for sophisticated personalisation or fees and charges. There is also no support for personalised gift card messages. (Personalisation is slated to be re-engineered in 1Q06).

A nifty Special Offer Generator evaluates price elasticity and other factors of identified items, including stock availability, to suggested offers that will maximise profit. If a customer qualifies for multiple discounts, Arx selects the best-price option or can apply another business rule (you can establish a minimum order requirement for a discount to qualify). However, discount rules are somewhat limited (no ‘mix-and-match' discounts, for instance, e.g., ‘buy any three products on this page and get 20% off').

Arx supports rewards points programmes with management tools for points calculations and redemptions. There is also very robust management of premiums and bonus gifts, including the ability to make sure that a premium won't be despatched alone without the original qualifying item.

Customer notes can include scheduled follow-up actions assigned to a specific sales rep, with auto-fax or auto-email of personalised correspondence.

You can mark an order to despatch complete, or for future despatch. You can also force a back order to prevent one large order from depleting available stock. But P&P can be set only by item or by price brackets.

The system can handle trolley picking, but picking batches are managed only by the number of orders, rather than by criteria such as order channel, method of payment, number of lines on the order, order value, or SKUs on the order. Individual orders can be flagged as ‘rush' for expedited fulfilment. There is support for direct despatch, but not for continuity orders.

Arx handles returns efficiently, but there is no global order cancellation for out-of-stock back orders."

Multiple Warehouses
Arx supports multiple warehouses. There is rather robust receiving, QC, and put-away functionality, with support for directed or random put-away. You can assign multiple bulk and primary locations for an SKU, as well as assign more than one SKU in a given primary location, should you choose to do so. Stock is moved between locations using a Warehouse Modelling program that takes the dimensions of each product from the product file plus forecast demand to determine space allocations for the product on the pickface, adjusting continuously according to demand, thus minimising stock failures. You can print bar code labels for locations as well as for SKUs.

The system also has good supplier files and reordering functionality. The impressive Purchase Planning module evaluates sales figures for each product, taking into account whether it has been or will be on special offer, up-coming promotional campaigns, and seasonality (new products are treated differently from repeat products), then suggests quantities required based on the supplier's lead time, minimum safety stock, and so on. The system even takes account of unexpected sales, QC trends on products received by vendor, and usable/restockable returns. Using this module, Doll's House Emporium enjoys an order fill rate of 98% on a product range of over 2,500 SKUs.

Employee Clocking
Arx includes a comprehensive productivity tracking component based on hours worked or on user-definable tasks (using bar-coded employee ID badges). This can be set up to show real-time activity on a minute-by-minute basis so that managers can see picking or packing done and remaining, the hours available, and reallocation of resources required (if necessary) to meet objectives. You can do detailed analysis of labour hours, with efficiency of warehouse employees used to calculate bonuses.

Safewire has Standard Minute Value programs that generates works orders based on user-defined task elements. These are logged and compared to actual times from employee clocking.

Accounts, Customers, Etc.
Arx has a strong customer database and good list selection options, although there is no support for Nth selections or for selections by customer demographics. You can maintain list rental histories, and any list selection can be mail-sorted for any specified mailing rate.

The Safewire Accounts module is comprehensive and fully integrated, with Sales Ledger, Purchase Ledger and Nominal Ledger.

Documentation is online, with context-sensitive help for all 700 screens and 3,700 prompts. There is a full audit trail of all system activity, with user-specific or group-level security access. Each person or group can be limited in use of discounts, returns, purchasing, invoice matching, Master File access, and so on.

There is a messaging system that lets users send messages to each other, plus a user diary with alerts and message histories."

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