Store Operations Software for Retail Chains in India: What It Does and How to Choose

What the software replaces

Before the software, a chain of 80 stores runs on three WhatsApp groups per region, two Excel trackers at head office, a printed checklist on a clipboard behind the billing counter and an area manager who drives 1,200 kilometres a month to see with his own eyes what the photos in the group did not show. The store manager's day starts with "Sir, opening ki photo bhej di, group mein dekh lo" and ends with a daily sales report typed into a form at 21:00 that nobody reads before Thursday.

Store operations software moves all of that into one app. Each routine opens on the store phone at the right time, each item wants a live photo and an answer, each miss becomes a ticket with an owner and a clock, and head office sees a scorecard per store instead of a scroll of forwards. The clipboard, the groups and the trackers do not disappear on day one, but by the end of the first quarter nobody asks for them.

The category has three or four serious vendors in India, compared row by row at /learn/borentisops-vs-wooqer-vs-pazo-vs-amply/. This guide is the step before that comparison: what to look for, in what order, and how to buy.

The eleven modules and what each is for

Not every chain needs every module in month one. The table is in the order most brands switch them on.

Twelve questions to ask on the demo

1. Can a checklist item carry both a photo and an audit question, or is a photo the whole item? A photo without a question is a gallery; a question without a photo is a claim.
2. Is the photo live only, with GPS and time locked in? Ask the vendor to try uploading a gallery image in front of you.
3. Does the routine open at the right time in the right store by itself, or does someone at HQ have to send it every morning?
4. What happens to a failed item? If the answer is "it shows red on the dashboard", ask who owns the red and when it escalates.
5. Is the visual merchandising AI trained on windows, mannequins, display cars and demo units, or on general trade fixtures? Ask to see it score one of your own store photos against your own docket.
6. Does the app work offline in a basement showroom and sync when the signal returns, or does it fail the item?
7. Which languages does the floor see? Ask for Hindi and Hinglish on the item text, not only on the menu.
8. Can a store manager see only her store, an area manager only his patch, and a franchisee only his outlets?
9. Is there an end-of-day digest with photos, and can a dealer principal receive it without a login?
10. How does the daily sales report reach your existing CRM or DMS? Ask for the integration list in writing; the BorentisOps one is at /solutions/products/borentisops/integrations/.
11. Is pricing per store or per user? A showroom with 14 advisors and a per-user price is a very different bill from a per-store one.
12. How long from contract to the first ten stores live, and who builds the first templates, you or the vendor?

Pricing models you will be offered

The band most Indian brands report being quoted for the core modules in 2026 runs from a few hundred rupees to a few thousand rupees per store per month, with image AI and dashboards pushing a plan towards the top of that band. Treat this as a working range from buyer conversations and the public price pages of the category, not a quote from anyone.

Rollout: from pilot to network

1. Pick ten stores that are not your best and not your worst, across two regions and two formats if you have them. The pilot has to survive a store with no Wi-Fi and a manager who dislikes phones.
2. Start with one opening and one closing checklist and one weekly audit. Nothing else in month one. The store learns the photo habit before it learns tickets.
3. Move the docket broadcast into the app in month two, with read receipts, and stop posting dockets in the groups the same week. Two channels means the old one wins.
4. Switch on tickets from failed items in month two, with a real SLA ladder: store manager, area manager, regional head. Test that the escalation email actually arrives at 02:00.
5. Add scored audits and the visual merchandising AI in month three, once the photo habit is there. The AI needs decent photos to be useful.
6. Bring in daily store data and the integrations last. Re-typing the daily sales report is the item stores resent most, so make its removal the reward for the first quarter.
7. Roll out by region, not by module, after the pilot. Every new region gets the full month-one to month-three sequence, compressed to six weeks.

Where the vendors differ for own showrooms and EBOs

On the module list the vendors are closer than their websites suggest. The differences that matter for a brand with its own stores are three. First, what the image AI was trained on: the general trade vendors describe theirs in the vocabulary of planograms and share of shelf, because their unit of execution is a shelf in a retailer's store; a showroom brand needs a model that reads a facade, a window, a mannequin, a display car or an accessories wall against the docket. Second, the pricing unit, because a showroom has many staff and few outlets. Third, whether the platform knows anything about selling, or only about the store being right.

That third difference is the reason this category is starting to merge with conversation intelligence. A store that passes every audit and loses every walk-in is a common finding, and it is invisible to a platform that only sees photos. The join between execution and selling is described at /learn/conversation-intelligence-vs-retail-execution-software/.

The measured way: BorentisOps

BorentisOps at /solutions/products/borentisops/ is the store operations platform inside Borentis, built for brands that run their own showrooms and exclusive brand outlets. It carries the eleven modules above: checklists with a live photo and an audit question per item, scored audits and store visit reports as PDF, Drishti for visual merchandising from a phone photo, tickets with SLA escalation, approvals, broadcast with read receipts, documents, training, daily store data, role dashboards and a 19:30 digest email. It is priced per store, works offline and speaks Hindi, English and Hinglish on the floor.

The one thing it has that the rest of the category does not is the join: the operations score sits next to the sales-conversation score from Borentis Floor on one store scorecard, so head office reads whether the stores that look right are also selling right. A pilot of ten stores is typically live in the first month, following the sequence above.