• Merchandise team spending hours updating prices manually across multiple channels and systems?

  • Purchase order cycle taking days longer than it should because approvals are done by email?

RPA in Retail

Retail operations generate enormous volumes of structured, repetitive work: purchase orders to raise and track, inventory counts to reconcile, supplier invoices to match and approve, promotional prices to update across channels, and customer returns to process through multiple systems.
We build robotic process automation systems that handle these workflows automatically -- so your retail operations team focuses on buying decisions, supplier relationships, and customer experience rather than manual data processing.

  • Purchase order automation, inventory reconciliation, and supplier invoice matching

  • Price update automation across channels -- ERP, e-commerce, POS, and marketplace listings

  • Customer returns processing and refund workflow automation

  • Integration with Shopify, SAP, Oracle Retail, NetSuite, and custom retail systems

RaftLabs builds robotic process automation systems for retail businesses -- automating purchase orders, inventory reconciliation, supplier invoice matching, multi-channel price updates, promotional pricing, and customer returns processing. Retail RPA connects ERP systems, e-commerce platforms, POS systems, and marketplace listings so data flows automatically between them without manual re-entry. Most retail RPA projects deliver in 6--10 weeks at a fixed cost.

Vodafone
Aldi
Nike
Microsoft
Heineken
Cisco
Calorgas
Energia Rewards
GE
Bank of America
T-Mobile
Valero
Techstars
East Ventures

Retail operations run on data re-entry. Automation stops that.

Every time a buyer approves a purchase order and someone else has to re-enter it in the ERP is a manual step that takes time and creates errors. Every price change that someone has to push to five channels manually is a process that will sometimes be done wrong or done late. Every customer return that requires staff to cross-reference three systems and manually trigger a refund is a workflow that automation can execute reliably in seconds.

Retail RPA doesn't replace your team's judgment. It replaces the data entry that surrounds it.

Retail processes we automate

Purchase order automation

Automated PO creation from approved requisitions, supplier acknowledgement tracking, delivery schedule monitoring, and discrepancy flagging. Bots raise POs in your ERP when stock levels or demand triggers require them, track supplier responses, and flag unacknowledged orders for buyer review. Reduces PO cycle time and eliminates manual re-entry between requisition and ERP systems.

Multi-channel price synchronisation

Price updates propagated automatically from your master price file to every sales channel -- website, marketplace listings (Amazon, eBay, Google Shopping), and POS systems. Channel-specific pricing rules (MAP enforcement, marketplace pricing constraints) applied automatically. Promotional price scheduling -- bots activate and deactivate promotional prices on time without manual intervention.

Supplier invoice matching

Automated three-way match: purchase order, goods receipt, and supplier invoice matched for quantity and price. Matched invoices approved automatically for payment. Discrepancies flagged with the specific difference for accounts payable review. Reduces invoice processing time from days to minutes and catches supplier billing errors before payment.

Inventory reconciliation

Automated reconciliation of physical inventory counts against ERP stock records. Bots compare count data from your WMS or counting device with system records, calculate variance, and generate exception reports for stock room managers. Scheduled reconciliation runs without requiring staff to manually compare spreadsheets against system data.

Customer returns processing

Automated returns workflow: eligibility checking against return policy, return authorisation generation, refund trigger in the payment system, inventory update, and supplier return processing where applicable. Bots handle the structured portion of returns processing so customer service agents handle customer communication, not system data entry.

Reporting and performance dashboards

Automated daily, weekly, and monthly retail reporting -- sales by channel, inventory turnover, supplier performance, and promotional effectiveness. Bots pull data from your ERP, POS, and e-commerce systems, consolidate it, and deliver formatted reports to the right stakeholders on schedule. Reports that currently take a team member hours to assemble run automatically.

Retail automation built around your systems and your workflows

We analyse your highest-volume manual processes and automate the ones where the ROI is clearest. Fixed cost delivery.

How we build retail RPA

Process analysis and ROI mapping

We start by mapping your highest-volume manual processes, measuring the time and error rate, and calculating the automation ROI before writing a line of code. Retail operations often have 5--10 automatable processes -- we help you prioritise by impact and implementation complexity so the first automation delivers measurable results quickly.

System integration design

Retail automation requires connecting systems that weren't designed to talk to each other. We design the integration architecture for your specific system stack -- ERP, POS, e-commerce, WMS, marketplace connectors -- and implement the right integration approach for each: API where available, UI automation where not, database integration for on-premise systems.

Exception handling and escalation

Every retail process has exceptions: a supplier doesn't acknowledge a PO, a price update fails on one channel, an invoice has an unexpected line item. We design exception handling into every automation -- bots identify the exception, log it with context, and route it to the right person for review. The automation handles the 90% and surfaces the 10% that needs human judgment.

Monitoring and performance reporting

Automation dashboards showing bot performance: tasks completed, exceptions raised, errors logged, and time saved per process. Alerting when a bot fails or an exception rate increases above normal. Monitoring that gives your operations team visibility into automation performance without requiring technical knowledge to interpret.

Retail operations that scale without proportional headcount

Automate the high-volume data processing. Your team handles the decisions and relationships.

Let's talk about your project

Tell us which retail processes consume the most manual staff time. We'll analyse the automation opportunity and give you a fixed cost.

Frequently asked questions

The best RPA candidates in retail are high-volume, rule-based processes where staff are copying data between systems or following a defined checklist. Top candidates: (1) Purchase order management -- bots raise POs in your ERP from approved requisitions, track supplier acknowledgements, and flag delivery discrepancies. (2) Multi-channel price updates -- bots propagate price changes from a master price file to your website, marketplaces, and POS systems. (3) Inventory reconciliation -- bots match physical counts against system records and flag discrepancies for review. (4) Supplier invoice matching -- three-way match (PO, receipt, invoice) automated to catch exceptions without staff processing every invoice manually. (5) Customer returns and refunds -- bots process return requests, check eligibility, trigger refunds in payment systems, and update inventory. (6) Promotional pricing -- bots activate and deactivate promotional prices on schedule across all channels.

We integrate with the systems your retail operation already uses -- SAP Retail, Oracle Retail, Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, Amazon Seller Central, Google Shopping, and custom ERP/POS systems. Integration approach depends on what each system exposes: API integration where available (faster, more reliable), UI automation for systems without APIs (bots interact with the interface as a user would), and database integration for on-premise systems where appropriate. We document the integration architecture during scoping and tell you the right approach for each system.

Yes -- multi-channel price synchronisation is one of the most common retail RPA use cases. The automation runs when prices are updated in your master price file or ERP: the bot extracts the updated prices, transforms them for each channel's format and rules (e.g., Amazon has different pricing constraints than your own website), and updates each channel via API or UI. The bot logs each update and flags any that fail for manual review. Price changes that would take a merchandising team member 2--3 hours to push across 4 channels run in minutes. We handle channel-specific complexity: marketplace pricing rules, MAP enforcement, promotional price scheduling.

A focused retail RPA system -- one process automated (e.g., purchase order creation and tracking, or multi-channel price updates) with ERP and channel integrations -- typically runs $15,000--$40,000. A broader retail automation programme covering multiple processes (purchasing, pricing, invoicing, and returns) across multiple systems runs $40,000--$100,000. Cost depends on the number of processes, the complexity of the system integrations, and the volume of channels to connect. We scope every project before pricing it.