Tag: POS

Increasing Profitability Using Retail POS System Software

If you are a retail company with anywhere from three to fifty stores, you might be very interested in the new wave of retail point of sale software. Many retail chains appreciate having real-time information from each of their locations. It is also important to maintain an inventory matrix that allows one the ability to view all facets of the items that you sell and purchase. Some retail point of sale software systems offer one of these items at the expense of the other. However, what you want is the combination of live information and current inventory so that you are highly informed about what is going on in your business.

If you have looked into retail point of sale information systems in the past, you may have felt that they are so expensive that there is no way you could afford this necessary business tool. Especially for small companies on their way up, cost is a factor that can determine whether or not new systems can be tried. It is exciting to know that there are companies that provide retail point of sale system software for very reasonable prices. Looking for a company that doesn’t require a long-term commitment is also essential. If you are unhappy with the services you are receiving, you don’t want to be stuck paying high prices for a long-term contract.

Some of the benefits of retail point of sale system software include reduced costs, increased sales and higher profitability. Knowing in real-time your stock on hand as well as that on order or in receiving docks helps you maintain better control. If you have ever experienced a time when the information was slow, you will know how expensive it can be to order something that hasn’t been received yet, just to find out it was sent to another location or was simply in transit. By having real-time information connected to all your locations, you will immediately know what you have and where it is, thus reducing costs.

If you have ever lost a sale because a customer wanted something that wasn’t at a certain location and you had to take several days to find out which other location might have it, you will see the benefits of this type of system. No more sales will be lost simply because of the lack of information about item location. Obviously, if your retail point of sale system software is keeping you updated on all items and their locations, you can’t help but have a higher profitability margin.

One who is looking for such a system might be wary of all the hardware that is usually required to be able to have such immediate information. However, there are some software system companies who do not require the expensive POS terminals. There is a new generation of ?Thin Client” platforms that are available to serve retail chain businesses. Software support is a big part of what a retail point of sale system should include. Having to pay extra for technical support makes such a system difficult to swallow, so be sure to do your research on what exactly is included in the packages offered. Soon, your retail point of sale business will be integrated and smoothly informing you of the things you need to know to improve your bottom line.

point of sale software, retail point of sale, pos retail

Choosing a POS Retail Software

Organization is one of the most important concepts that business owners need to understand if they wish to be successful. Multimillion-dollar companies realize that if they do not have a great organization system set up, that it could become extremely difficult to manage all of their locations. Several large corporations have used the POS retail system to help them manage their business locations more efficiently. If you wish to operate a successful business, and be a competitor in the world of business, it might be wise to look into a POS retail service. This could greatly benefit the future of your business and make your job much easier because all of your inventory will be managed properly.

If you are interested in working with POS retail company, you will need to consider a few different factors. For example, POS retail works best for retailers with 3-25 locations. If your business specializes in clothing, footwear, electronics, or even various gifts, then POS retail could be a great benefit for your company. With the help of POS retail you will be able to easily manage your entire inventory from multiple locations across the world. This becomes a huge benefit for individuals who own companies that have a lot of inventory in several locations.

While there is POS retail software available, there is also something known as Software as a Service (SaaS), which uses a hands on approach to helping you manage operations at each store. The benefits of using a POS retail service versus a POS retail software are quite significant. With the help of a POS retail service, everything will be managed in real-time. This is a huge benefit for corporations who have locations worldwide. It also lets business owners worry more about running their business, while the POS retail service can handle the system. With software, the business owner is responsible of managing the business and the software. If you are looking for a way to break away from your competitors and have an efficiently run business, POS retail is the way to go.

You will need to research various POS retail companies before you settle with one. This is one of the most important steps in the process of having your company become a POS retail user. While you are conducting your research, you will need to make sure that the company has a reputable background. Look for their track record. What kind of experience do they have in the field? How long have they been in business? What companies have they worked with? What is their target audience? You will want to be able to answer all of these questions before settling on a POS retail company. You will also want to look at how many installations they have worldwide. For example, if a company has 3,000 installations worldwide, they most likely would be a very reputable company to hire. Remember that one of the biggest keys to look for though is the difference between services versus a software.

point of sale software, retail point of sale, pos retail

Point of Sale Software – For Speedier and Smoother Retail Transactions

Point of sale is the place where a transaction takes place. A retail point of sales system usually includes a computer, monitor, cash drawer, receipt printer, customer display and barcode scanner. Point of sale software is used to calculate sales and operate the cash drawer. It sums up the sales total, figures the official sales tax, calculates the change back from the amount tendered and automatically adjusts the store inventory levels to debit the amount of inventory sold.

The POS software is also programmed to handle functions such as pre-planned promotional sales, manufacturer coupon validation, foreign handling and multiple payment types. They are certainly cruicial for large department stores that handle hundreds of customers everyday. However, their importance cannot be undermined even for small retails as they help to streamline the daily transactions and make it simple for the business owners to keep a regular tab on their revenues. By extracting the up-to-date data from a POS software, the calculation of profits is made simpler and precise.

ERP software, Accounting software and Distribution software are also quite useful for retail stores. Along with the POS software, these additional units help to consolidate the complete business transactions and enable the retailers to record their staff salary, their inventory levels, their vendor payments and the over all maintenance of their store operations. A brief description of these software may be put as:

ERP Software: ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. The software is used to take care of important aspects of retail operations including estimation, order entry, scheduling, purchasing (from wholesalers), inventory management and maintenance of financial records.
Accounting Software: This software records and processes accounting transaction such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll and trial balance. A record of all vouchers, financial statements and the business balance sheet are controlled through accounting software.
Distribution Software: This is an integrated software to manage order purchasing and inventory control as well as accounting, purchasing, sales and financial management.

An integrated retail software system can be customized with all or any of the products described here and help retailers in accessing crucial business information at any point of time.

Esuite is a Sydney (Australia) based company that provides business software solutions to different local and international companies. A fashion software for retail stores in garments trade, a franchise software for a restaurant or any other kind of business software can be programmed to suit your needs by esuite. You do not have to import and export data between different sections of your business activities as these are incorporated into one system. They provide totally flexible solutions to ensure that you have real time access to your business information at anytime, from anywhere!

Retail Point Of Sale System Effectiveness And Pos Solutions

The effectiveness of retail point of sale system and POS solutions are common concerns of retail stores. They want the most efficient retail point of sales management system. The software can be a powerhouse.

Retailers are constantly searching the most cost efficient retail point of sale system. They want POS software that is easily integrated with various modules. Many retail organisations use POS software.
Retail Point of sale system software are designed to raise profits and for managing. The system can manage inventory, customers, and other transactions. Management can track orders and sales.

There are many retail point of sales software that can be configured. It can be deployed to most retail stores. The features are magnificent including the system configuration and security.
Do you have POS solutions to effectively run your retail business? If not, there is management system software that has modules. The modules are very important and are used by managers, staff and management.

The various modules may consist of customer and supply chain management. The general ledger and bank reconciliation are modules used by managers and management. Retailers need reliable information and data.

The features of retail point of sales management systems ensure security and control. Internal and external control is very crucial in retail organisations. Accurate reports can be generated in POS systems.
The perfect retail point of sale system can be the key to all retailers POS solutions. Advanced technology of POS software has made that possible. A system with operable modules is the best thing for retail.

Customers can experience faster services with a retail point of sale system. The waiting time is reduced tremendously for customers. There are POS solutions to speed up the process of customers transactions.

The staff, managers and upper management of retail businesses can work effectively. The POS solutions to most retail point of sales systems can produce accurate information. The reliability of data is ensured.
When a retailer purchase new retail point of sales software, training is necessary. Staff, management, and employees should be trained to use the system. Certification is also offered to retail businesses.

Retail businesses should always stay current with the latest retail point of sales management system software. It can increase your sales, profits, and business growth. Most of all it saves time and expenses.
Every retailer wants accurate, reliable information and data from their POS system software. It is the greatest power tool used today amongst thousands of retail stores.

Retail Executive Dashboard Does Not Serve Front Line Sales Managers

Retail Dashboards are pictures of spreadsheets used by executive managers to visually identify around five key performance indicators. Dashboards have gauges, like the speedometer in a car, and graphs and colour, to draw attention to areas of strong and weak performance of each retail store and the organisation as a whole. They may display: sales per hour, items per sale, average sale, conversion rate, and wage to sales ratio at the store, regional, and national level.

The purpose of the Dashboard is to enable executive managers to effectively communicate strategy and objectives to area managers who then reinterpret the strategy into actions for each store manager. Ultimately it is the Salespeople on the shop floor who carry out the activities that satisfy the objectives of the company.

Sophisticated Dashboards allow executives to produce what if scenarios, save them, and send them down the line to their area managers. But mostly, there is an upward reporting of numbers and a downward communicating of strategy – meaning that the statistics are lost at the individual Salesperson level.

For example, an executive dashboard may show each stores sales per hour KPI (Key Performance Indicator) compared to each other store but it does not show each Salespersons sales per hour compared to each other Salesperson within the store. Therefore it is impossible for the executive to know at the individual Salesperson level how to improve sales performance.

Particular to the retail industry sales are made on the shop floor. Not by telephone or meetings, or online purchase. While branded merchandise and store design attracts customers to the shop it is almost always the Salesperson who makes the sale. But in almost all cases Salespeople have no individual daily sales target because there is no system in place to generate objectives, goals, targets at the individual sales level.

This represents a problem because area managers, who have been tasked by executive managers to improve sales performance, have no further information about the KPI activities within that store.

Once the merchandise and store displays have been checked by the area manager, the next logical step is to look at the POS (Point of Sale) reports to identify poor areas of performance. And here comes the surprise! – Not a single POS system is able to tell managers which Salespeople performed better than others. Why, simply they do not have a time sheet (roster) attached to Sales Targets so have no way of calculating predicted or actual individual sales goals.

Some attempts use spreadsheets to figure out individual sales goals but spreadsheets fall over. They inaccurately produce goals as they do not weight fast and slow periods of the day. They are not connected to a dynamic time sheet meaning if the roster changes the goals do not, but should. Spreadsheets take time to copy, past, edit, modify, and correct mistakes. And there is no feedback system for comparing actual performance compared to everyone on the shift.

While an executive manager can see that a particular store is underperforming, because a KPI is lower than the other stores, they cannot determine who in the store is underperforming on the same KPI.

So whats the big deal? If you cannot determine low KPIs at the individual Salesperson level in retail then you cannot improve individual sales performance based on statistics and dashboards are pretty pictures about statistics – which we interpret as instructions for changing behaviors. Dashboards cause executive mangers to want to change behaviors across the organisation but, as you can see, they do not help front line store managers change behaviors at the individual staff level.

Effectively increasing sales in retail by focusing on the sales skills and behaviors of each individual salesperson, requires a sophisticated, easy to use, web-enabled system, that communicates the objectives of the organisation to each individual salesperson on a level playing field. Such a system will report both up and down the organisation so that staff at every level can understand the objectives of the organisation clearly, statistically, and fairly.