In the early 1980’s Michael and his wife Carmen started an apparel retail operation in Mexico City. During that time, Michael became intensely interested in micro computers and conceived an application many years ahead of its time. Partnering with a Professor of Mathematics and Computer Sciences, Michael created the very first version of the program that eventually became Retail Pro ®. At the time, the concept of using a computer at Point of Sale to track inventory flow was virtually unknown to independent retailers.

Over the next two decades Michael and his team built that product.

In 2002, Intuit – one of the world’s largest and most successful software companies - purchased the Retail Pro technology and Michael Mauerer became part of Intuit’s leadership team in charge of retail systems development. There he designed and launched QuickBooks POS, used in tens of thousands of US stores. For his early and rapid accomplishments, Mauerer’s leadership was recognized by Intuit’s CEO and Founder.

Having successfully practiced the entrepreneurial and large corporate approaches to retail software development, Michael took time in 2004 and 2005 to pursue independent interests and research. Subsequently, he began to study in depth and with fresh eyes the current retail scene from the point of view of the customer – the retailer.

He concluded that despite massive advances in technology, there were large gaps between the promise of software and the benefits it actually delivered to the retail end-user.

Despite many successes, the full functionality needed by mid-size retailers is not satisfactory today. Retailers are not fully empowered by technology. The most common flaw stems from the fact that historically software has been developed by single function only -- the most economical way to produce software. Therefore retailers typically have multiple applications running one business – one application for merchandising, one for accounting, one for point of sale, one or more for human resources, etc. These systems typically do not “speak” to each other and their data models are not compatible, and they are separately supported.

Another common weakness: Retail systems available to small- or mid-size retailers don’t command sufficient power to manage the many fast-moving variables and complexities of today’s retail operations. And, most retail systems have largely proprietary components whose results are not readily shared across systems.

Mauerer also discovered that many retailers who embraced earlier IT solutions expecting unlimited future improvements were left instead with missing upgrades and un-resolvable legacy code issues, placing them at a competitive disadvantage.

What technology would be the key to building a fully integrated retail system that could deliver on the inherent promise of retail software?

In the past, retail systems lacked a supporting engine to facilitate and unify the functions common to ALL business applications as well as comprehensive retail functionality. Such a solution could bring about a level of functionality beyond what former retail solution only hoped to achieve.

It soon became apparent that Microsoft’s long-term program was to build universal business platforms by acquiring some of the best business solutions in the market and advancing them with the full development resources of Microsoft. Many billions of dollars have been invested to create Microsoft Dynamics, and more is being invested to take this family of advanced business platforms into a single platform.

And there’s more. With the Vista operating system being released together with the new open architecture of Microsoft Office 2007, software integration levels are being achieved that were never before possible.

Mauerer determined that the Microsoft Dynamics platform is the technology to resolve the limitations and dissatisfactions that most retailers experience today. With a unified business platform, “islands of automation” disappear and are replaced by all-in-one interconnected solutions, which have the familiarity of everyday Microsoft Office applications.

Microsoft Dynamics is built on the concept of the “People-Ready business” – a company whose people are empowered with the right tools and information to do their jobs. Mauerer put together a crack development team from his long experience in the industry and built Retail Teamwork on the Dynamics platform – taking the Microsoft concept to the next stage, People-Ready for Retail. A sophisticated framework and feature set was architected, built and tested, based on decades of industry experience and many thousands of conversations with retail system users. The resulting solution was certified by Microsoft, and Retail Teamwork became licensed as Microsoft Dynamics’ strategic partner for specialty retail worldwide.

The solution has been installed in several sites and the results are best expressed by early Customers. “Before this software, we were using one software for our Warehouse and Inventory, one for Accounting, one for POS and one for Sales Tax. We were piecing them together with different reports. With Retail Teamwork, I can handle all of the different aspects of my business with one software and that is just incredible!” Owner, Sports Chain

Already Retail Teamwork has received dozens of demands from retailers to see and experience this new solution. The word is out that Retail Teamwork resolves old-style polling issues, resolves data integrity problems, provides a unified, integrated, interconnected business environment, provides inventory control features second-to-none, and is so easy to use and learn at POS that untrained users can ring up sales in a few minutes on their own. And, it does not require a large investment. Several midsize chains have already requested early ’07 implementations and virtually every retail business who has seen Retail Teamwork has wanted it.