Comparisons
IRIS vs generic retail replenishment software
What a beauty and pharma platform does that grocery-first tools do not
Most replenishment software was designed for supermarkets and then sold to every retailer. It forecasts a box of cereal and a 50 ml eau de parfum the same way. This page lists, point by point, where a platform built for beauty, cosmetics, luxury and pharma distribution differs.
The differences are not cosmetic. They are the objects a generic tool does not have: testers, gifts with purchase, shades, lots with expiry dates, luxury thresholds, and a two-way connection to the ERPs used by mid-market distributors in the Gulf and North Africa.
| Generic retail replenishment tools | IRIS | |
|---|---|---|
| Designed for | Grocery and general merchandise chains | Beauty, cosmetics, perfume, luxury and pharma distributors |
| Testers | Not a concept; counted as stock or ignored | Allocated at order validation, tracked separately |
| Gifts with purchase | Handled as ordinary items | Campaign objects with dates, stores and quantities |
| Shades and sizes | Often aggregated to the product | Forecast and order at shade level |
| Lots and expiry | Fresh-food modules aimed at days, not months | Lot tracking with expiry windows in weeks, transfers before expiry |
| Luxury thresholds | Same rules for every value band | Service-level and safety-stock rules weighted by value and brand tier |
| Ramadan and Eid | Manual events | History aligned on the lunar calendar before training |
| ERP connectors | Built for large retail ERPs | Sage 100cloud, Sage X3, Odoo, Dynamics 365, SAP Business One, NetSuite, CSV/SFTP, REST API |
| Order write-back | Often a file export | Purchase orders created in the ERP with reference and status return |
| Network size | Hundreds of stores | 10 to 100 points of sale, 1,000 to 50,000 SKUs |
| Languages | English, sometimes French | English, French and Arabic with right-to-left layout |
| Implementation | Months, with an integrator | 2 to 4 weeks, run by IRISYS |
| Pricing | Enterprise quotes | Published plans from 800 USD per month, 30-day pilot |
When a generic tool may fit better
Several hundred stores in grocery or general merchandise
Fresh categories where shelf life is counted in days
A large retail ERP already integrated with the vendor
A dedicated IT and data team to run the implementation
How to evaluate
Ask any vendor to run a 30-day pilot on one or two of your stores with your real data, then compare service level, stock value and planner hours against your current process. That is the pilot IRIS offers free of charge.
FAQ
Yes for the categories a beauty or pharma distributor typically carries: accessories, wellness, baby care. It is not designed for fresh food or fashion sizing curves.
Yes. History is imported from the ERP, not from the previous tool, so a switch does not depend on the old vendor.
No. IRIS reads from your ERP and writes purchase orders back. Invoicing, accounting and warehouse management stay in the ERP.
Comparisons
A question the FAQ does not answer?
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