Our Software Review Methodology
The Retail Exec is a collective of experienced retail executives, founders, CEOs, and industry leaders. We share what we know through our articles, podcasts, newsletters, reports, and community—helping retail professionals navigate the evolving landscape of commerce.
When it comes to software, our goal is to provide useful, up-to-date reviews and insights that help retail decision-makers compare and contrast their options. Choosing a new software tool that best matches your retail business needs is no easy task—not to mention narrowing down the thousands of options available into a shortlist.
Our software reviews are designed to make this process easier by eliminating the endless research process and providing a single source of truth on the software that retail leaders use to run and grow their businesses.
What Makes Us Qualified?
Our parent company, Black & White Zebra, has been operating multiple professional publications for over a decade, including The Ecomm Manager, The Digital Project Manager, People Managing People and others.
In that time, we’ve worked with hundreds of professionals, researched over 2,000 software tools for different disciplines and use cases, and written more than 1,000 comprehensive and unbiased software reviews.
We apply that same level of expertise and rigor to The Retail Exec, ensuring that our recommendations are tailored to the unique needs of retail operators, from omnichannel commerce to inventory management and point-of-sale solutions.
How We Test Software
We know that every retail business has unique software needs depending on factors like business size, sales channels, operational complexity, and customer engagement strategies. That’s why we apply a stringent set of review criteria to evaluate each tool thoroughly.
When considering which tools to include in our lists, our process might include any of the following:
- Speaking with the software company directly to better understand features and functionality
- Reviewing demos and free trials
- Testing key features (which differ by software type; key features for each software type can be found directly on that page)
- Noting key features that might be missing or not up to snuff
- Weighing what other users have to say (not including testimonials directly from the software company)
Our Software Review Criteria
Here are the main criteria we use to compare and contrast each software tool:
- Usability. How intuitive the software is and what resources are available to learn the tool.
- Standout features. The quality and quantity of available features for a given plan and their usefulness for the average retail use case.
- Reporting & analytics. The ability to store and analyze data through dashboards, reports, and visualizations.
- Integrations. Whether the tool integrates with the rest of your existing tech stack, such as POS systems, ERPs, inventory management tools, ecommerce platforms, and CRM software.
- Support. The level of support and resources offered for onboarding, training, engagement, and continued post-implementation success.
- Price. Whether the price of the tool aligns with the value it offers.