Month: January 2018

If you don’t have a full-blown POS system for your retail business, you are losing money — guaranteed!

The following are 10 reasons why,

1.Time is money.

As you sit at your desk, head in your hands trying to reconcile your balance sheet, the store next door, the one with the full-blown POS system has accomplished the same task in less than 5 minutes.

Most POS systems automate a wide variety of functions that normally take retailers tons of time to accomplish. Tasks like inventory and sales reports, end of the day balancing, purchase orders, and more. A full-blown retail POS system will automate all of those functions making hours of work take virtually seconds. As long as it takes you to push a few buttons. This saved time means hours on the clock, hours that you’re paying employees, hours that could be spent making sales.

2.Inventory shrinkage.

Stores without a POS system are more susceptible to employee theft; nearly 50% of retail shrinkage comes from employee theft.
POS software can help to significantly reduce or eliminate incidents. With instant access to “voided/cancelled/deleted sales reports,” “returned transactions” reports, and “inventory adjustments reports” you can easily tell when something fishy is going on. Additionally, with many POS systems you can password protect any area that you do not want employees to have access to.

3.Poor customer service means lost money.

Customer loyalty is fleeting, especially if you don’t give them anything to remember you by.

Your business and your customers can significantly benefit from a POS system. The most basic customer service benefit is the amount of time that is reduced at the checkout counter. But imagine being able to call up your customer’s profile based on your caller ID or being able to instantly check the status of a layaway or special order.

Additionally, digital copies of your receipts allow you to modify your return policy and take returns from customers without receipts.

4.Missed upselling opportunities and decreased sales.

Do you know what your customers are buying? It’s impossible to remember everything but your customer remembers and if you had a POS system, you would too.

POS systems enable sales associates to access information about customer’s previous purchases so that they may assist them better or provide them with information for upselling opportunities at the point of sale.

This excellent customer service means that you’ll increase your sales too. If for example a customer enters the store looking for an item that is out of stock, a quick check of your inventory on your POS system will show you what complimentary products are available.

5.Missed client marketing opportunities.

Do you have a customer loyalty program?

Did you know that many POS software systems offer client management and marketing features? These features enable retailers to send targeted letters, emails, and direct mailers to their customers based on demographics and past purchases.

Many POS software packages can easily produce a list of your top customers in minutes. Imagine being able to personally invite your top customers to a sale or offer them a discount for being such good customers. Some retailers use their systems to send thank you notes to customers after they’ve made a large purchase or letters to customers that haven’t made a purchase in a long time.

6.Ineffective check verification systems mean lost time and money.

The benefit to having your check verification system tied directly into a POS system is that the transactions, information, and all necessary tracking of the accounts are done automatically, thus eliminating the many steps of paperwork that would still be required if you operated a check verification system independent of a POS software system.

Steamlined systems mean that your time is spent making sales instead of handling paperwork. Each point of sale transaction is speedy and all information is available from one location — your POS terminal. Additionally, you’re adding the extra security that your customers deserve by having your transactions, check verification included, run through a secure point of sale software system.

7.Pricing mistakes and missed profit margins

Do you know what products are selling and at what price they sell the best?

POS software enables you as a retailer to easily determine which products are your fastest sellers and at what price point. This makes it easier to find that ‘ magic price point that allows you to maximize profits. Additionally, regardless of the size of your inventory, prices can be updated in a matter of minutes.

Additionally, pricing mistakes are virtually eliminated because you don’t have to rely on your employees to calculate the price of items. The computer has already done this, and your sales tax, and any discounts that may be applied.

8.Unhappy relationships with suppliers

Many retailers fail to ask for discounts because they don’t feel like they have the leverage of the big boys. In many cases, that’s simply not true. And if you have the facts and information to justify your request it’ll make your pitch all the more convincing.

If you utilize your POS inventory system to track markdowns and clearances, you can print a report that shows your supplier that your profit margin on their products is 6% lower than your profit margin from competing products. That should get their attention! Take advantage of that information and use it to negotiate better prices for future orders.

9.Website shopping carts?

If you currently sell your products online or ever plan to, then an integrated shopping cart POS software solution can save you a huge amount of time by automatically creating orders and new customers for you. An integrated shopping cart – POS software solution can also reduce errors because human data entry is always prone to more mistakes. These mistakes can make frustrate customers, eat valuable time, and mess-up your inventory. An integrated shopping cart – POS software solution can save you loads of time by synchronizing the inventory information and pricing in your POS software with your website.

Imagine for a moment that you want to start selling a brand new product line on your website. How long would it take you to manually add all those new products added to your website? With the right technology, all you have to do is check a box in your POS system and that inventory will be uploaded to your website. Your POS system will send product numbers, descriptions, images, pricing and other various inventory information to your website.

10.Inaccurate inventories and tedious ordering processes.

Ordering too much or too little of a product can create huge problems for retailers. POS software inventory control features enable you to keep your inventories streamlined by automating the ordering process. As soon as a product reaches a designated level, a purchase order can be automatically generated and sent to your distributor. Imagine the time you’ll save with that feature!

One of the biggest challenges facing any retail business, large or small, local or high street, is that of controlling the overhead. It is amazing how expenditure can add up and probably only hits home when its time to prepare the annual accounts. And one of the biggest areas in which many businesses leak money is with consumable products.

Consumables are those products that on the face of it are cheap to buy but which we use every day and without which our businesses couldn’t function. Those products which we don’t even think about but which account for a significant part of our outgoings.

In the world of retail consumable products include till rolls, labels and packaging. These are products, used every day in large quantities, that a retail business just cannot do without. Yet often we scramble about at the end of the day, or sometimes at the start of the days trading, knowing that we are going to run out of one or more of these important products and then spend time getting in new supplies and probably paying more than we need to because we need a rush delivery from the supplier.

Paying over the odds because we need an emergency supply of consumable products is a common scenario amongst retail businesses and can have a surprising effect on our overhead. Yet it is so easy to trim those costs right down and also to never have to go through the panic of trying to secure last minute supplies.

The answer to cutting costs on consumable products is of course to buy in bulk. Most of us know that but surprisingly few actually do it. By finding a good supplier who gives excellent discount on bulk orders we can keep a good stock of consumables on the premises but the key is to have a standing order so that a delivery is made every month and always order more than you expect to use. Just by the simple expedient of setting up a regular discounted order is such an easy way to save consumable spending in the long term and you will notice the difference in your annual expenditure.

Starting a retail business means youre excited. Did you know by adopting Best Practice Retail Sales Performance Standards you can immediately increase your sales and profit expectations by as much as 30%!

Why because achieving sales objectives is more than just about whats on your shelves and what your store looks like its about having a customer focused mentality driven by key performance indicators (KPI) to inform staff at every level about the condition of the playing field.

Complicated? Not at all. Retail Sales Performance is just like Sports Coaching. How would sports coaches know how to focus their athletes without statistics? How would racing car managers know how to fine tune their engines and performance its all about statistics. When last did you watch a game on TV without them? They tell us about trends, behaviors, opportunities to increase performance, and they forecast the short to medium term future enabling us to understand why and where we are heading.

Statistical measurement of fundamental sales performance drivers for any retailer is a prime need. With all manner of spreadsheets, POS systems reports, Dashboards and Scorecards, we use Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to communicate the strategy of the shareholders to the individuals in the company and we employ feedback systems to report the results. It is common practice to compare what we have forecast with what has actually taken place statistically so we can make judgments, changes and plans.

It is important to recognise that the standard (senior level) business indicators such as profit margin and wage costs do not drive bottom line sales on the shop floor. You cannot walk up to a Salesperson and say We did 80% of budgeted sales please increase your performance. Thats like the manager of a football team saying to a player We lost the past few games you have to do better. To the salesperson or player the information is useless they cannot see a clear reason for their under performance.

What sports coaches do is take the Team Managers expectations (of winning) and filter them down to each individual player on the team so each player can win for them (and the team). The coach measures performance of a few highly enlightening KPIs that tells the players exactly in which areas to improve. In soccer it may be recording the number of times a player touched the ball, or number of attempts at goal. In baseball the coach could track number of players on 3rd base or number of strike outs etc.

It is common practice in retail to employ only five (5) KPIs to track individual performance and deliver the on-target information for coaching purposes more than five and the reporting system is too complex, confusing, and ambiguous. The five KPIs for retailers are:

Sales per hour – a statistic tells us about the speed at which each individual salesperson is selling or attending to customers compared to everyone else on the shift.

Average Sale the average selling price of each individual salesperson compared to everyone else on the shift higher averages show a greater knowledge of product as the salesperson is able to sell higher ticket items. Low statistics reveal the salesperson lacks skill in either product knowledge or effective probing.

Items Per Sale tells us about the ability of the salesperson to add-on to a sale.

Conversion Rate tracks how many visitors to the store are turned into customers.

Wage to Sales Ratio compares a salespersons hourly wages to hourly sales. This KPI identifies your clear performers and underperformers and their value to you.

The most common reason retailers do not track the five vital KPIs at a staff (team player) level, is their inability to easily and quickly, record and calculate data, to create meaningful reports. After all, one needs to track hours worked, set goals, track planned versus actual performance, and somehow level the playing field for all Salespeople. It can be a lot of work.

In a sports match the playing field is level at all times because everyone is simultaneously on the field. In a retail environment some salespeople will work during fast periods and others during slow periods of the day. A salesperson working during the lunch hours should be expected to sell more than a salesperson working early morning or late afternoon. So any realistic reporting system is going to have to weight individual sales targets otherwise the data becomes ambiguous.

Critical to any Retail Sales Management Solution is the ability to determine the most deficient statistic of the five KPIs because it is logically understood that improving the worst KPI first will have the greatest increase in sales and staff motivation.

Imagine if you had a really simple to use Staff Roster (time and attendance software) that automatically assigned individual, weighted, sales targets to each salesperson, based on when they were working then integrated with your POS (point of sale) terminal to instantly calculate the five (5) key performance indicators, and figure out the most deficient KPI – on demand! What if that software went further by having integrated sales behavior coaching tips built right into the system?

Playing the retail sales game to win means knowing why you are losing and how to go about fixing problem behavior areas. It’s easier to improve retail sales skills than it is to re-stock a new product or brand.

To win in retail, measure the five principal KPIs using an affordable solution and put Best Practice in place for your fast track to success.

Good luck with your brand new store!

With the unorganised retail sector set to touch $496 billion mark in 2011-12, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the sector can hope for a better future. According to a recently conducted survey by Delhi-based Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), the unorganised retail sector is projected to grow at about 10% per annum in the coming years. The growing unorganised retail market is expected to encourage new small scale players to venture into this space and carve a niche for themselves.

The study by ICRIER also indicates that despite the impressive growth of the organised sector, the unorganised sector, mostly dominated by SMEs, will continue to remain pertinent across the country. Even though ever-increasing shopping malls and branded retail outlets are making it difficult for small retail stores to survive, these outlets have continued to maintain their stronghold in the domestic market.

The high retail growth envisioned by industry experts and research firms has further prompted SMEs in the sector to embark on their expansion plans, and take advantage of the projected boom. Some of the unorganised retail players have already begun implementing their capacity building strategies in order to reap maximum benefits from the growth. A large number of mom-n-pop stores and kirana stores are planning to put into effect new strategies to gain a significant share of the market and beat competition from the organised players.

Despite the growth predicted for the unorganised sector, there is a need for small players to focus on developing innovative formats and introducing smart pricing policies to capitalise on the sectors growth. These stores should look for ways to create an efficient retail environment and come up with attractive promotional campaigns with the help of smart marketing tools to gain an edge over branded retail stores.

POS retail is being used by several large companies to help them better manage their inventory at multiple locations. By using POS retail software or services it takes the stress off of the business owner to manage the operations of every store, and rather lets them focus on other aspects of their business that need more attention. POS retail is a relatively new technology that has brought success to several large corporations worldwide. If you are a business owner that is looking for a way to better manage your business, POS retail is definitely worth using. It can give you the competitive edge you need to better organize your business, and become more successful in the future.

There are a few things that you need to consider before starting to work with any POS retail service provider. You need to make sure that the company offers a service instead of software. Several POS retail providers offer a type of software, but only a select few offer a service where all POS is managed in real-time. You certainly want to purchase a service versus software because it is more efficient and the results are more positive. You will want to look for companies that offer software as a service or (SaaS).

The next thing you will want to look for in a POS retail service provider is their past history. You will want to make sure that they have a long track record of doing business with several companies. You may want to investigate the type of companies that they have worked with; this can help you narrow down your choices. You should also make sure that the POS retail service provider has installations worldwide. Some companies have only worked in the United States, while other companies have worked all over the globe. You want to make sure that your service provider has international experience and has several installations not only in the United States but other countries as well. The next thing that you should look for in a service provider is the type of technology that they use. You want to be sure that the POS retail service provider that will be working with your company is using the most advanced technologies in the industry. You can find this information out online. If you search for POS retail service providers through a search engine you will find results that can help you decide the best company to go with.

POS retail companies should also be affordable. These companies should not be so out of your means that you cannot afford them. Make sure that the company that you hire is a powerful and easy to use retail system. You should also make sure that the POS retail service links all of your locations together. This is one of the biggest benefits of using POS retail; you can easily manage your operations at every store with the help of POS retail services. The last thing you should look for in a POS retail service provider is how secure their Internet connection is.

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