Fixed Point of Sale for Retail Stores
Mobile Point of Sale & Line Busting App
Dashboard and Analytics Mobile App
Free Inventory Management App
Full Service Inventory Management App
Order Management Solution
House Accounts and Invoicing
Premium Suites Catering & Pre Order Management
Centralized Management Platform
Workforce Empowerment App
Hospitality Point of Sale App
E-Commerce Solution Platform
Table Mangement for Restaurants via Mobile or Tablet
Kitchen Display System
Seamless Sales Across All Channels
Elevating Sports & Entertainment Transactions Effortlessly
Streamlining Retail Transactions for Seamless Shopping
Optimizing Transactions for Vibrant Festival Experiences
Transforming Hospitality & Suite Service Management
Smart Inventory Management with RFID
Building Relationships, Rewarding Loyal Customers
Insights-Driven Decisions for Business Growth
SMS marketing is a powerful tool that can be used to reach a wide audience, increase sales, and boost customer engagement.. In the digital landscape of today, businesses strive to stay ahead of the competition by embracing innovative marketing strategies. While email campaigns and social media advertising have long dominated the digital marketing platforms, SMS marketing has been overlooked as a marketing campaign.
SMS marketing presents a unique opportunity for businesses to connect with their target audience directly through text messages. These text messages can be used to drive traffic to a business’s website. Businesses can include a link to their website in their text messages. This will allow customers to easily visit the website, learn more about the business, and play a pivotal role in driving organic traffic, improving website visibility, and ultimately boosting your online presence.
According to the following statistics, for every 100 text messages sent:
These statistics are much higher than any other marketing campaigns as SMS marketing is personal, timely ,quick and optional.
Collect and analyze customer history: To send targeted text messages, retailers need to know what the customer has purchased in the past or which store they have visited. This history tells you about the customer preferences to leverage and increase conversion rate.
Opt-in and opt-out options: Give customers the option to opt-in or opt out of receiving SMS messages from your retail business. This empowers them to control their communication preferences and ensures that you’re targeting individuals who genuinely want to hear from you. Make the opt-in process seamless and straightforward, and respect customers’ choices to foster trust and loyalty.
Keep your messages precise and include a CTA(call to action): Text messages with CTA should be short and precise to encourage customer engagement an example of CTA will be “ Limited time offer- shop today and get 10% off on your purchase”
Use a variety of messages: SMS marketing is not just about promotional offers but these messages can be reminders to use up loyalty points, birthday wishes or just a hello message to remind customers about your business.
Track your results: It is important to track the results of your SMS marketing campaigns so that you can see what is working and what is not. This will help you improve your campaigns over time to increase engagement and conversion rates.
Customer history can be used to create more targeted and personalized SMS marketing campaigns. By understanding what the customers’ preferences are. Retailers can send them more relevant suggestions and timely messages that are more likely to be opened, clicked on, and converted.
For example, if a customer has previously purchased a dress from your store, you could send them a text message with a special offer on a new dress or matching shoes that you just received in stock. Or, if a customer has recently viewed a product on your website, you could send them a text message with a reminder to complete their purchase. Here are some statistics on why you should use customer history for your text marketing:
The most effective and sustainable way to collect customer history is by using a cutting-edge Point of Sales solution, retailcloud POS solution offers an SMS marketing platform that can help you create and send effective SMS marketing campaigns. retailcloud’s SMS marketing platform includes features such as:
With retailcloud solutions you can even personalize text messages further by offering customer loyalty points for their birthday and also have the ability to see customer responses and respond to them to strengthen customer relationships. With Retailcloud, you can create and send effective SMS marketing campaigns that will help you reach your target audience, increase sales, and boost customer engagement.
SMS marketing is a powerful tool that can be used to reach a wide audience, increase sales, and boost customer engagement. By leveraging customer preferences and integrating them into your SMS campaigns, you can create highly targeted and personalized messages that are more likely to be successful.
Additionally, SMS marketing campaigns can generate user engagement and social signals. When customers receive a compelling SMS offer, they may share it with friends or on social media platforms, thereby increasing brand visibility and potentially attracting new customers. These social signals can positively influence your SEO rankings, as search engines consider them as indicators of brand authority and popularity.
The new rules in Major League Baseball aimed at shortening average game times can have several impacts on merchandising and concession sales at stadiums: MLB revealed the pitch clocks have shaved an average of 26 minutes a game to 2 hours and 36 minutes. The following are some of the ways that game day sales have been impacted.
Reduced sales volume: With shorter game times, fans will spend less time in the stadium, which could lead to fewer opportunities for them to purchase merchandise and concessions. This may result in a decrease in overall sales volume.
Shift in spending patterns: As fans adapt to the new game duration, they may alter their spending habits. For example, they might make quicker purchases before the game or during breaks, rather than casually browsing and buying items throughout the game. This could lead to increased sales in specific periods, such as pre-game or between innings.
Focus on efficiency: With a shift in buying habits, stadium operators can increase the efficiency of their merchandising and concession operations with sports and entertainment POS systems. This could include streamlining product offerings or offering item of the day promotions, optimizing staffing, and adopting technology to speed up transactions.
Changes in pricing: Stadiums may adjust their pricing strategies to compensate for the potential decrease in sales volume. This could involve offering discounts or promotions to encourage fans to spend more in a shorter time frame, or even increasing prices to maintain revenue levels.
Increased emphasis on fan experience: To keep fans engaged and spending during shorter games, stadiums may invest more in enhancing the overall fan experience with premium suites in seating. This could include offering unique or limited-edition merchandise, creating innovative food and beverage options, or providing interactive experiences that encourage fans to visit concession stands and merchandise outlets.
Off-stadium sales: Teams and stadiums might also increase their focus on online and off-stadium sales channels to offset potential losses from decreased in-stadium sales. This could involve improving their online stores, offering exclusive online deals, or partnering with local retailers for co-branded merchandise.
Ultimately, the impact of the new rules on merchandising and concession sales at a stadium will depend on how well teams and stadium operators adapt to the changes and implement strategies to maintain or increase sales in the new environment. Improving the fan experience with improved checkout efficiency, allowing fans to return to their seats will be paramount.
To speed up transaction times in merchandising at stadiums and improve the overall fan experience, there are several technologies that can be adopted:
RFID technology: Integrating RFID tags into merchandise and using RFID scanners at the point of sale can expedite the checkout process by instantly updating inventory and allowing for quicker transactions.
Mobile ordering apps: Fans can use their smartphones to pre-order and pay for merchandise, allowing them to skip lines and simply pick up their items at designated locations or have them delivered to their seats.
Self-service kiosks: Equipped with touchscreens and payment processing systems, these kiosks enable fans to quickly place orders and pay for merchandise without waiting in line at traditional counters.
Automated inventory management: Smart inventory systems can help ensure merchandise is always in stock and readily available, reducing wait times for items to be retrieved from storage.
In-seat merchandise: Installing small vending machines or merchandise storage lockers near seating areas can allow fans to quickly purchase items without leaving their seats.
Digital wallets: By creating a digital wallet or a stadium-specific currency, fans can preload money onto their accounts for faster transactions at merchandise stands.
Queue management: Implementing queue management systems, like virtual queuing or line-monitoring apps, can help distribute customers evenly among available service points and reduce wait times. Giving fas access to approximate wait times at different stands can also help them plan their purchasing trips
Augmented reality (AR) shopping: AR can allow fans to virtually try on merchandise and make purchases from their seats, eliminating the need to visit a physical store or stand.
By adopting these technologies, stadiums can create a more efficient merchandising experience for fans, allowing them to spend less time waiting in line and more time enjoying the event.
Determining the Item of the day sales can be complicated, ideally they should create an urgency for fans to buy a specific item without cannibalizing existing sales, you can follow a systematic approach that leverages data and considers various factors. Here’s an algorithm to help you identify the “Item of the Day” for each game:
Collect data: Gather historical sales data for all items in your inventory. Ideally, you should have data for the past few seasons to better understand sales trends and customer preferences. Also, take note of any special events or promotions that might have influenced sales.
Determine item popularity: Calculate the average sales per game for each item. Rank them according to their popularity. This will help you identify the items that are selling well and those that need a boost.
Identify slow-moving items: From the ranked list, identify items that have a low sales volume per game and could benefit from being the “Item of the Day.”
Factor in seasonality and trends: Consider the time of the year, special events, or other trends that might affect item popularity. For example, if your team has a rivalry game coming up, you might want to promote items related to that rivalry.
Create a non-repeating schedule: Once you have identified a pool of items that can be featured as the “Item of the Day,” create a schedule for the 81 home games that ensures no item is repeated.
Set a discount strategy: Determine the discount percentage or pricing strategy for each “Item of the Day.” You might want to offer a higher discount for slow-moving items or lower discounts for more popular items to avoid cannibalizing sales.
Monitor and adjust: Track the sales performance of the “Item of the Day” and compare it with historical sales data. If you notice any negative impact on overall sales, adjust your strategy accordingly.
Quickbooks desktop alternatives are more essential as businesses evolve. While QuickBooks Desktop has long been a trusted tool for accounting, many companies now seek flexible, cloud-based solutions that provide greater accessibility and collaboration options. With the growing trend towards remote work, cloud accounting software enables teams to access financial data securely from anywhere, eliminating the need for local installations and maintenance. Additionally, some businesses find that QuickBooks Desktop lacks industry-specific features or scalability options as they grow, leading them to explore other platforms that offer specialized functionalities.Alternative accounting software can also provide a more budget-friendly option for small businesses or freelancers who need streamlined features without the higher costs. Consequently, there’s a strong demand for QuickBooks Desktop alternatives that offer robust, scalable, and mobile-friendly accounting solutions to meet today’s dynamic business needs. retailcloud’s ZeroPOS is an all in one point of sale software that has been designed with today’s retailers in mind. Conduct and manage all aspects of your business with the one, easy to use system. retailcloud gives you less to worry about and more time to spend growing your business.
-Processor-agnostic Solution with Dual Pricing Capability
-Multiple Support Channels i.e. Phone, Chat and Email
-Intuitive Cashier Experience
-Multiple Tender Options and Tap Pay
-Robust Inventory Management
-Powerful CRM with In-house Loyalty and Gift Cards
-Dynamic Employee Management
-Muli-location Capabilities
-Insightful Reporting
-Mobile App and Clienteling Toolkit
-Cloud-based Back Office with Real-time Updates
ZeroPOS, a cloud based pos system, is a full suite of management tools that streamlines payment processing, inventory management, and other business operations. Integration to QuickBooks Online allows you to manage your finances with ease.
ZeroPOS pushes all data to QuickBooks Online as transactions are processed throughout the day. This allows you to view sales activity in QuickBooks and effectively gauge your business’ performance based on accurate financial reconciliation.
With ZeroPOS you have a full suite of inventory management in one system. From purchase orders, to receiving, selling and adjusting, you can track where your inventory is at all times. Integrated with QuickBooks Online, you can make more informed decisions with your inventory management and increase profits.
Tracking your profits and losses, as well as your invoices and house accounts has never been easier with ZeroPOS and QuickBooks. Streamline your accounting activities and record-keeping!
retailcloud’s integration with QuickBooks Online makes it the ideal cloud POS solution for those who have worked with QuickBooks Desktop POS. As QuickBooks moves to discontinue their POS, retailcloud is proud to offer a turnkey solution that allows merchants to gain sales reporting, simplify inventory management, and accurately track income and expenses: allowing them to take advantage of the accounting and financial management tools in QuickBooks Online.
“If there was ever a time for brands and businesses to integrate services across numerous digital platforms (touchpoints) to better satisfy customers’ constantly-changing wants and demands, it is now.”
The Head (frontend)
When a client opens an app or a web runner, engages with an audio voice adjunct, an AR or VR operation, a chatbot, or indeed a game, he’s interacting with the head aka the UI ( stoner interface). The specific system of commerce is inapplicable, as what matters for businesses and brands are the platform guests use to interact with your service and the need for a head in each platform out there.
The Body (backend)
Computing needs to be done in the background along with, data analysis, and data arrangements and, principally, that’s what the body does. As the functional subcaste of the digital service being rendered, it manages the data ( storehouse and processing). Guests don’t get to interact with the body, because it stays inaccessible
The Neck (API)
The Neck (API, application programming interface) serves as the link between what the client sees and interacts with and the data the business or brand gets and organizes in the backend. In other words, the neck is the multi-platform processor acclimatized to help process data between the frontend and backend quickly.
Similar to how slow service often results in poor restaurant reviews and fewer future customers when a customer sits down to eat at a restaurant, slow site speed can lead to poor search engine rankings, lower overall site traffic, and negative user experiences.
Site Load Speed Matters!!
Here is a look at how site speed affects conversion rates;
According to a study conducted by Google/Deloitte; Improving your load time by 0.1s, boosts conversion rates by 8%
Another survey by bytes.co clearly says 56% of customers abandon websites that take more than 3 seconds to load
&
20% users will never return to a website after a bad load time experience
Yet one more hammer on the nail was when amazon came up with a stunning piece of statistic that said A slow down of just 1 second of amazon.com would cost $1.6 billion in sales each year
First and foremost, a headless content management system will assist you in getting your content to where it needs to go. For an eCommerce business, this means delivering your products, product videos, and blog posts to any new or emerging channel.
Prepare to sell through Alexa Skills, digital signage, progressive web apps, and even touchscreens in our vehicles!
The best part is that you don’t have to re-architect your platform to publish across channels if you use a natively headless commerce platform like Core dna. It’s all part of the same comprehensive, future-proof package.
Every few weeks, major commerce brands that use a traditional platform release an update. In comparison to Amazon, which deploys updates every 11.7 seconds on average, they reduce both the number and duration of outages.
You can deploy rapid updates without affecting your back-end system with a headless commerce platform. And you can easily adapt your front-end to keep up with the rapid pace of consumer technology.
When a front-end system is loosely coupled with the back-end, you don’t have to update the entire system; only a portion of it needs to be updated. As a result, you’ll be able to deliver what your customers want faster while still remaining competitive.
You can experiment with different templates and approaches once you have a headless commerce system in place. For example, while running the same front-end search, you could try out a different back-end search solution.
As a result, headless commerce enables you to run continuous tests and optimization cycles, allowing you to gain a better understanding of your customers while learning at a faster rate than most retailers.
To sum up, headless commerce is the way of the future, and getting on board is the best option for brands and businesses.
One of the most difficult aspects of being a retailer is inventory management. It is, however, one of the most crucial aspect. It’s impossible to understand your company’s financial situation unless you have a good understanding of how much your inventory is worth.
Retailers can build an accurate picture of how much their inventory costs them over time by performing regular inventory valuations — and how the value of this asset affects their tax obligations and profitability.
In this post, we will define inventory valuation and the various inventory valuation methods that retailers can use for inventory accounting.
The majority of merchants will have a significant amount of capital invested in their inventory (particularly if they use a Just in Case [JIC] inventory management approach), so knowing the worth of your present assets and how they affect your profitability is critical.
Inventory valuation is an important aspect of inventory accounting that allows you to determine the worth of unsold inventory. Understanding inventory value is crucial when generating end-of-year financial accounts for cash flow and tax purposes, among other things.
In conclusion, inventory valuation is used to determine your total gross profits, which are influenced by your total cost of goods sold (COGS). This will either inflate or deflate your profits, depending on how your inventory is priced and the cost flow assumption you apply.
To properly value your inventory, you must account for all costs associated with acquiring and preparing goods for sale, as well as the purchase price (excluding indirect costs such as marketing or administration). This includes the following:
Understanding the value of your inventory goods will help you make future purchasing decisions and establish whether your present inventory management strategy is effective. To help control changes in the market rate of your inventory, there are a variety of inventory valuation methods available, albeit the most appropriate strategy will depend on the type of your organization
COGS is a term that refers to the cost of goods sold. Depending on which inventory valuation technique your retail business employs, COGS will vary.
The less you can assign to the cost of goods sold, the higher the closing inventory valuation. This is why it’s critical to ensure that you’re appropriately pricing your inventory, otherwise your entire profitability will suffer.
Making the best markdowns/restocking decisions. You need to know how much your inventory costs you in order to price your products appropriately and make a decent profit margin. This has an impact on markdown decisions, especially if you have surplus inventory that needs to be sold before depreciation sets in. You may calculate your business’s minimum profit margin by using the correct inventory valuation method.
It’s crucial to understand the difference between using an inventory valuation method for accounting and using it as an inventory system. For example, in order to employ FIFO for inventory valuation, a company does not have to sell things on a first-in, first-out basis.
Choosing the best inventory valuation method for your retail firm is dependent on a number of criteria, including:
Inventory is one of the most important parts of the jigsaw when it comes to running a business, and it’s crucial that you adopt the correct valuation plan to help your company expand and profit. You may acquire a strong handle on your business’s profitability and be better by employing one of the four inventory valuation methods discussed above. When it comes to making important decisions about your brand’s future, you should be well-informed.
Retail is a tough business and hiring the right people to help you meet your goals is seemingly impossible. It can feel like there’s a revolving door in retail where everyone is always looking for their next job opportunity. Employees are looking for more than just a paycheck — they’re looking to be engaged, productive, and happy on the job. This article will discuss 10 tips that any retailer can use when hiring new employees.
Section: 1. Hire for attitude and train for skill
What should you look for when hiring retail workers? Experts advise you to keep an eye out for people who are (or have been):
It’s a tall order, but many of these characteristics overlap, so finding people who exhibit a few of these attitudes may not be as difficult as you think.
Section: 2. Go beyond traditional interviews
Now that we’ve identified the qualities to look for when hiring, let’s talk about how you can bring these qualities to the surface in your candidates. People tend to put their best foot forward during formal interviews, so determining whether someone truly possesses the right attitudes can be difficult.
Going beyond traditional interview processes and getting a little creative with how you vet candidates is a good way around this. Here are some suggestions:
Section: 3. Strengthen your online presence
Top performers are always doing their homework, so make sure they like what they find when they Google your business. Make sure your website and social media accounts are well-designed and contain sufficient information about your company.
Go to Glassdoor.com and complete your company profile if you haven’t already. Include photos and as much information as possible. Read the reviews that your employees (past and present) have written about your company. If you notice some negative reviews, discuss them with your team and see what you can do.
Before bringing on new employees, it’s best to resolve any internal issues first. The last thing you want to do is invite people in.
Section: 4. Hire your biggest fans
Look for candidates who show a genuine interest in your brand. Brand ambassadors have a lot of clout, and your customers will notice!
Plus, because they are likely already familiar with your company’s culture and product line, onboarding will be easier.
See if you can apply this strategy to your own company. If you’re looking for new employees, reach out to your customers and fans to see if they’d like to work for you.
Section: 5. Highlight your company values
Putting your values on display aids in attracting the best candidates. So, talk about the causes you care about. Communicate what makes your company stand out and what it stands for.
Section: 6. Be realistic about the job
Both you and the applicant will be able to determine if they’re a good fit for the job if you paint an accurate picture of your company and the position. So, while it may be tempting to only talk about your store’s positive aspects, don’t oversell the job or misrepresent your business. Be open and honest about the job’s requirements and your expectations.
Section: 7. Motivate your current employees
Encourage your employees to assist you in hiring more people. Your current employees are familiar with the requirements of the position. They have a vested interest in bringing in people who will lighten rather than add to the workload.
Birds of a feather, as the cliché goes, flock together, so they are very likely to know others who are similar to them. As a result, you should consider the recommendation of the employee when considering the person they’re recommending.
Section: 8. Implement 24/7 hiring—aided by technology
The job market in retail is more competitive than it has ever been. Hourly and front-line workers have resigned due to health and safety concerns raised by the pandemic. Furthermore, employee expectations have skyrocketed, and candidates have more options than ever before.
As a result, retailers must make an extra effort to find and hire employees. Part of that entails being on the lookout for new candidates 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
But what does it mean to be “always on”? Use technology, in a nutshell.
By allowing you to schedule and conduct interviews more efficiently, video platforms help you streamline the hiring process. Recruiters are aided by solutions such as chatbots and AI-powered tools when conducting online or SMS-based interviews.
You can also use natural language processing and machine learning to display job interviews in front of potential candidates as they browse social media sites. The company is also sending notifications to people who “like” their page.
These tools and tactics enable retailers to automate steps in the recruitment and effectively get in front of potential employees at the right time.
Section: 9. Establish some system for employee performance
Developing a performance system for employees is one of the most effective ways for retailers to attract and retain the best people.
It’s a transparent tool for setting performance expectations that can be used at any point during a person’s career, from the interview to promotion. This clarity also provides a unified framework for store owners and employees, which is beneficial to teams of all sizes.
Develop rules of conduct, procedures, or employees, if you haven’t already, and document them for easy reference when hiring and evaluating your team.
Section: 10. Be a multi-channel recruiter
Today’s retailers operate in a competitive environment that necessitates foresight as well as online and social savvy. If you want to attract candidates who possess those characteristics, you should look beyond traditional channels like job boards.
Social media is well-known for its effectiveness as a recruiting tool. For example, LinkedIn has several talent solutions that can help you find, vet, and contact candidates.
While Facebook and Twitter aren’t specifically designed for recruiting, they can help you find new hires. Make a special careers tab on your Facebook page where your fans can browse and apply for jobs and use Twitter to spread the word about your openings.
Takeaway: A thorough and effective hiring process is the key to finding great employees for your retail store.
Omnichannel and multi-channel are two distinct approaches to marketing and customer engagement, each focusing on connecting with customers through multiple platforms. The primary difference lies in their level of integration and the customer experience they aim to deliver.
Adopting an omni-channel approach in your marketing, sales, and service strategies has plenty of benefits. It helps you build a unified customer experience and streamline data collection, which makes it easier to generate high-quality leads, close deals faster, and deliver the best possible customer service.
The term multi-channel refers to several different channels working independently from one another. For example, a company may use email to send out newsletters while simultaneously running an AdWords campaign and posting on social media. The success of each channel is measured separately as well. Multi-channel also means that customers may have an experience with multiple channels at once.
Omni-channel refers to all channels working together in harmony to provide a seamless customer experience. The goal for companies using omni-channel is to deliver a consistent message across all channels.
The terms omni-channel and multi-channel are often used interchangeably, but there is a big difference between the two. Multi channel marketing refers to using multiple channels or platforms. You may be using email marketing to nurture leads, social media ads to drive traffic to your site, and a chatbot on your website to answer questions and provide support services. These are all different channels that you are using, but there is no integration between them. They operate independently of each other.
Omni-channel is the strategy of using multiple channels to deliver a consistent brand experience to customers. Multi-channel, on the other hand, is a way to describe the interconnectedness of customer interactions with brands across different touchpoints. These touchpoints include mobile marketing, engaging social media campaigns, and a well-designed website. All omni-channel experiences will use these channels, but not all multi-channel experiences are considered omni-channel.
There are a ton of benefits to using omni-channel and multi-channel:
Cater to more customers
This is a customer-centric approach that’s focused on the experience. It means you’re not just creating a strategy for a single channel, but instead, one that will work across multiple channels. This means you need to be present wherever your customer is present. Your customers can be at home on the couch, at work in the break room, or out and about at a local store. As they move from one place to another, they can still find you there, too.
The retail experience is about to undergo a major shift as consumers are going to be able to shop anywhere, anytime. Consumers want a unified shopping experience when they’re ready to make a purchase, and will expect their favorite brands to offer a consistent shopping experience across multiple platforms and channels. By offering a seamless service across multiple channels you’ll be able to attract more customers, but also build a stronger relationship with them, making it easier for them to buy from you again and again.
Omnichannel ecommerce is about creating a seamless and consistent experience for the customer across all channels, both digital and physical. The key to a successful omnichannel strategy is consistency in delivering the same personalized experience to customers across all touchpoints and channels.
Multi-channel is about offering your customers options when it comes to how they want to interact with your brand. Enabling customers to contact you through multiple channels such as the phone, email, or social media, or allowing them to purchase products through your website, mobile app or in-store. Multi-channel allows customers to get in touch with you on their own terms.
With the rise of ecommerce and new channels, an Omnichannel POS Solutions has become imperative for retailers. It’s a system that allows direct sellers to provide customers with an integrated shopping experience that crosses multiple physical and digital channels. This is the future of retail customer experience.Don’t know where to start? Contact our team info@retailcloud.com to get your own omnichannel solution.
Although retailers are increasingly using the digital channel to reach consumers, they’re not closing their physical stores—which is where an integrated solution comes in. New technology makes it possible to shift digital and physical inventory seamlessly and deliver a seamless buying experience to shoppers.
What’s more, an integrated solution can help you streamline your back- and front-of-house operations. An omnichannel sales system will help you expand your market reach and keep items moving through your distribution channels. Some business owners and marketing managers are daunted by the prospects of trying to reach out to customers using multiple channels and media, but an omni-literate strategy can change all that.
Many online shoppers would rather have products delivered than picked up locally, but only a small percentage of eCommerce retailers offer same-day delivery and most retailers are missing out on the opportunity to deliver quickly.
Most of us are busy and don’t have time to run all over town, so we’re getting more and more of our stuff delivered right to our doorsteps. But if you want to gain the highest possible number of loyal customers, you need to offer flexible pickup and delivery options so that you are able to cater to more customers!
Retailers have a big challenge ahead as a lack of workers could make it harder to keep up with increased demand. To make sure they can handle more customers, many retailers are turning to technology to do some menial tasks as they try to find ways to reduce their cost.
Three areas where retailers say they will most benefit from automated technology are: streamlining the way they manage orders, running customer loyalty programs, and communicating with customers. Retailers who want to hire more employees should consider investing in software that helps automate these tasks.
If you’re a retailer, it’s important to make a good impression on your customers by providing an excellent selection of products in your store and creating opportunities for shoppers to connect with you online.
Today, the number of shoppers who shop online are in a steady incline so establishing an online presence and maintaining a local presence is key. E-commerce is a powerful tool for retailers, who can benefit from the reach and convenience that Internet sales provide.
As social media becomes the primary place for consumers to shop, retailers are increasingly selling through channels such as Instagram and Pinterest. Retailers are bringing together multiple sales channels to stay competitive in today’s evolving retail landscape.
Social shopping trends show no signs of slowing down, Facebook and Instagram continue to be the most lucrative platforms for retailers to sell on. As consumers continue to connect with brands and retailers on their favorite social media platforms, more retailers are turning to those platforms in order to drive inevitable increases in sales.
retailcloud is pioneering omnichannel order management solutions that provides businesses of all sizes access to tablet, windows and phone solutions with API integration to ERP and ecommerce systems. retailcloud provides retailers a way to increase sales, better manage inventory, collect valuable data on the shopping habits of their customers and much more. The system is scalable and grows with your business. Interested in knowing more about retailcloud’s solutions? You may contact us directly at sales@retailcloud.com
Setting up a point of sale system, or POS, is something that most people in retail or any brick-and-mortar company will do at some point. POS systems are one of the most basic parts of any business and have become essential to seamless transactions.
But it has changed through the years to adapt to evolving trends in business and commerce.
Particularly, the rise of digital and e-commerce changed the landscape of point-of-sale systems. POS software now has to adapt to the growing digitization of business practices and technologies. Sometimes, it might not be that easy.
Still, we need to move with the changes if we want our businesses to stay efficient and relevant in this new era of technology.
Point-of-sales software should generally be straightforward, but much like any solution, it can come with a few hiccups. Let’s discuss some of the most common POS software challenges today and how to overcome them.
Before learning how to set up a POS system and maximize it, we first need to choose the right system for the business. Choosing the best fit for your operations is a crucial decision to avoid headaches switching systems too often. While it’s not a crime to change POS software every year or so, it can become quite inefficient at some point.
To get the best system for your context, research is your best friend. Get up to three options that fit your business best and make a comparison.
Not all POS systems are created equal. Sometimes the best solution for another business might not be the best for you. Know what your non-negotiables are in terms of feature, pricing, and support, and decide based on your contingent needs and requirements.
Mobile POS systems are slowly becoming the norm. The volume of mobile POS transactions was expected to reach US$2,466,606 in 2021.
Traditional POS systems were bulky, and they only stayed in one location. If that system gets broken, it’s difficult to gain its data back.
Using a mobile system that can connect with a tablet or phone has all kinds of benefits. Personnel can carry the POS system around and bring them to the customer instead of having the customer come to a counter. It also takes up less space and weighs less, which could provide some flexibility to our employees.
Given that mobile retail is up like never before, it might be good to consider switching to a mobile POS system. However, mobile devices do have their downsides. For instance, they’re easier to steal or misplace. To avoid this, policies should be in place to steward the hardware better. Have a safe place to store the POS system to avoid theft— somewhere out of sight and preferably with a fastening or enclosure.
Part of any POS implementation checklist should be security. And that shouldn’t only include the physical security of the hardware but also the data and digital aspects too.
Cybersecurity is becoming a prevalent form of crime in today’s digital era. Identity theft, data breaches, and malicious hacking are becoming more of a threat.
To avoid any data or cybersecurity threats, business owners and retailers should always choose a POS system with basic security features, such as data encryption and two-step verification. Use complex passwords for logins and enable any pin number setups where possible. There’s no such thing as “overkill” when it comes to data security.
Integrating day-to-day sales and transactions with marketing campaigns is a must for smooth business operations to avoid confusion and customer concerns. One of the basic POS features every retailer should require in a system is a promotion and offer tracker. It’s always best practice to connect promotions with POS systems. Find a system that has an in-build promotions tracker. This feature will take care of applying any discounts or offers to ensure that they’re tracked accordingly for accounting and inventory purposes, which leads to the next challenge that business owners and retailers face with POS systems.
Dealing with inventory management can be an arduous task without the help of tools and systems. The key to saving time and getting more accurate results in inventory counting and management is to ditch manual systems and automate it. POS systems can actually be a great way to streamline this process. Most, if not all, of the best POS systems today have an inventory management feature that helps log product inventory and update it as sales go out.
For any business with product inventory, the temptation is to skip this feature in your point-of-sale systems. But doing so is doing your business and employees a huge disservice. Inventory management can help save a lot of time from manually tracking product stocks. It also removes any errors that could lead to deadweight loss and sales discrepancies. Set up your inventory tracker and integrate them with your inventory systems to keep a better account of product stocks.
In this day and age ruled by big data, businesses need to learn to leverage data and analytics to make better business decisions. The numbers don’t lie, and they can help point out what’s working and what’s not. Data around sales, purchase returns, customer feedback, and so on can provide valuable insight to help businesses delight customers and improve business metrics. Leverage your POS system’s data and analytics by using them as benchmarks in strategy meetings and planning sessions.
E-retail sales are now hitting $4.2 trillion worldwide. So it only makes sense that POS systems should integrate with e-commerce platforms. Seamless integrations to an online shop will allow POS software to automatically gather and track sales data, order details, and fulfillment requirements in one platform.
This way, it becomes easier for staff to stay on top of orders, given that all transactions land on one platform instead of two. This integration also makes it possible to make comparisons between brick-and-mortar performance with online ones.
Recently, POS systems have also started integrating with live chat software to streamline customer service and feedback channels with point-of-sale tools. This integration allows businesses to respond more proactively to complaints and concerns for faster resolution.
Customer support is a vital part of business growth and operations. It helps extend the customer lifetime value by ensuring long-term trust-based relationships with clients. Leveraging on any software, systems, or features that can help improve customer insight and feedback gathering can equip businesses with the necessary information to build those long-lasting business relationships.
The far majority of businesses today still use on-site POS systems. But up to 28% of retailers said that they would be switching to retail cloud-based POS software in the near future. Accordingly, your business might want to consider learning how to implement a POS system on a cloud-based solution as it provides an array of other benefits and advantages to your business like flexibility, data access from anywhere, and seamless communication between POS systems from multiple sites.
All this to say, point-of-sales is changing fast along with the needs, priorities, and challenges that businesses today face. We need to be on the lookout for where e-commerce and business solutions will be going this 2022 and beyond to stay ahead of the innovation curve. Doing that will keep your business relevant and competent in the immediate and beyond.
Layaway is a popular option for many retailers that want to sell more items to their customers. According to a recent survey, over ¾ of the people agreed that layaway was very important for large-ticket purchases. They liked this option because it allowed them to avoid borrowing money from credit cards, since the large purchase items could be paid off in installments.
What is Layaway?
Layaway is a program through which shoppers can reserve items that aren’t immediately available at the time of purchase, paying a set amount over a period of time until they pay off the item. If a customer fails to pay off the full price of an item by the end of the term, then it is usually either forfeited, and storage and other costs are incurred.
When deciding on a layaway plan, ensure you balance several factors. First, layaway duration should be proportional with storage needs. Next, the costs associated with layaway must also be considered: it could lead to losses in your margins. Lastly, consider allowing customers to place both sale items and non-sale items on layaway; but carefully consider that service fees may need to be collected. Overall, understand that there are state laws regulating these types of plans.
Why is offering Layaway beneficial?
Layaway programs provide customers with a unique option to shop—they can have what they want, when they want it. By providing layaway options, retailers are able to increase revenue and improve the overall customer experience. Let’s take a closer look at the benefits it offers:
No interest charges make layaway cheaper than using a credit card. That is always the better option than swiping a card that has high interest rates, with a layaway option they can make smaller payments without paying extra.
Installments are a great alternative to offering a store credit card or credit plan because offering different payment options makes your business look generous and trustworthy.
Since offering installment payments are attractive to consumers, it will help in your brand’s image as well as making your products more affordable for more people. Offering different types of promotions or incentives such as gifts with purchase to people who spend a certain amount or purchase a certain item at your store can also be a great way to boost your customers’ spending.
There are plenty of different online payment programs available in the last few years with fintech companies offering interest free payments with increased limits after customers pay on time after a certain amount of time which has been proven to be an effective method to increase sales for businesses. Offering your own payment plan is a great way to keep all of your profits instead of losing a percentage to third party payment companies.
In today’s economy, offering a layaway option can help your business stand out from the competition as well as provide your customers with more payment options.
Customer service is one of the most important factors in the success of the retail business. Positive customer service will contribute to the overall growth of a business. Improving customer service can help a business grow, increase sales and profits, and lower operating costs.
Businesses that deliver poor customer service often have unhappy customers who will not return or recommend them to others. That means they also have lower chances for expanding their business by word-of-mouth marketing. Moreover, the price businesses must pay for poor performance is actually high since they don’t get repeat visits from their customers and consequently lose out on opportunities to make more money through repeat purchases.
Here are 7 ways to improve your retail customer service:
Customers are the experts of their own needs and they know the best way to solve those needs. Make sure you listen to what they have to say and then work on fixing those problems.
Aim to satisfy your customers as best as you can by getting their satisfaction surveys to see what you are doing right or wrong, then make changes accordingly.
When your customers have any questions or concerns, it is very important that you keep them informed about the progress of their orders. If you cannot respond immediately, assure them that you will get back to them soon.
To improve the customer service of your retail business, make sure your employees are trained on how to deliver outstanding customer service. Make sure they include what to say, how to say it, and what not to say in their training program.
Creating a positive first impression will help set the scene for building trust with new customers or clients with whom you are working towards building long-term relationships. The key is that it must be consistent throughout the company’s operation.
Personalized service builds a good foundation of customer loyalty. This is especially true when it comes to retaining your existing customers and acquiring new ones. Consider each customer as an individual with a set of unique needs and wants that will determine the way you work with them.
You can use technology, such as online ordering systems, to improve your customer service operations and increase efficiency. Online shopping has been increasing in popularity these days, so it is important to keep things simple and easy for the customers while they shop online or over the phone. Make sure you have a website that represents your brand values and vision.
Without professional help and smart tools, it is almost impossible to improve customer service. A little investment in the right tools can help you to take your business to a whole new level. Giving your customers the needed information and service is the only way to make things better for your business and the customers.
Each year, over $1 trillion worth of goods and services are shipped by businesses across the globe with help of different order fulfillment technologies and strategies.
But not all companies can afford to hire a call center or follow up on every order manually. This problem is especially severe for growing e-commerce companies and smaller brick-and-mortar stores. As a result, many owners turn to humans who work at home as virtual assistants (VA). These operatives answer customer calls or handle orders that come into their inboxes via email or automated voice system; however, there’s one simple step they often neglect: little things like storing the information about each order in your database.
Instead of sticking to these traditional methods of order fulfillment, retail stores should consider the latest and improved solutions. The use of affordable online ordering solutions and many other advanced solutions can make the whole process a lot more efficient and easier. Here are a few steps that retail stores should implement for easier online order fulfillment:
There is one thing that most modern order fulfillment systems have in common: better and faster communication with customers. With these solutions, each retailer can build its own website and integrate it with the most popular online shopping carts and inventory management systems. They can even make it open for mobile devices, thus making the whole process of order fulfillment easier and more pleasant for the customers.
Many online retail companies still stick to traditional ways of showing off their products to customers by posting them on a website or sending brochures in mailboxes. They do not realize that every new customer is an opportunity to expand your business and generate more sales. Instead of wasting time and effort on paper, coupons, and other marketing materials, online retailers should integrate a fully automated voice system in their ordering software.
Customers love being informed about their order’s progress, but many retail stores have not yet adopted this idea. Instead of using a traditional desktop solution that sends an email to the customer when an order is placed, online shops can choose automatic notification systems that send text messages or show notifications on mobile devices within seconds after a customer enters their credit card details or selects a delivery method. The convenience provided by this technology makes users feel less rushed and generate more sales for companies.
By making these simple changes online retailers can increase their sales and cut down their costs. There is a lot to discover about improving the eCommerce order fulfilling process. It’s time for the retail store managers to adopt the new trends and strategies that can boost the business. Apart from these steps, don’t forget the shipping fees because 61% of the online shoppers abandon the shopping carts due to higher shipment charges and delivery fees.
Now that you have set yourself up for success by following all of the recommendations from Day 1 and Day 2, it is onto Day 3. Today you will begin the counting process, one of the most important steps of a successful inventory. Following these simple steps will help you in completing your inventory correctly and efficiently. Make sure you schedule a time to do this when the store is slow or closed – if doing it while closed, it’s best to section off areas as they are being counted – so you are not selling items from the counted inventory.
What to do on Day 3
Using the mInventory app you will need to go to Inventory counts and start a new project. It is best practice to name the project based on the locations you are counting.
Once you have created the project it is time to start scanning. The scanning can be done two ways. The first method is to scan every item individually, this will be the most accurate way to scan as it will make sure you are counting similar items as the correct UPC. The second method would be to scan the item once and then type in the total count for that item. If you do have similar items with different UPC you will need to make sure that you separate them before attempting to scan your inventory with this method.
Once your whole section is counted you will export the project and email it to your manager.
The manager will receive all exported project files which will contain the details of who counted each section and what was counted.
After all projects have been consolidated, the manager will compare these counts to the current quantity on hand using an IBR from the CAS Portal to find any large discrepancies.
These large discrepancies will then need to be recounted to verify that all pieces have been accounted for.
As a best practice, you can randomly select products and recount them – assuming there is no variance, you can be confident of the counts. If you see substantial variances, you may want to determine if the errors were with one counter or section and expand the recounts accordingly. Some stores keep counting until all items have been verified (the same count appears twice). The comfort you have with inventory counts is not decided in the annual count – it’s typically achieved in periodic cycle counts.
Review all the adjustment reports and confirm the count once you are satisfied that you have an accurate count.
In the next blog, we will discuss best practices in analyzing your inventory and maintaining accuracy of your stock levels throughout the year. For more details on Key Performance Indicators you can read our blog post on Retail Math.
Hopefully you have had a chance to get through all the Day 1 Activities, to review here is a list; don’t be tempted to skip through the steps in the interest of saving time today as it will result in a lot of extra time being spent on the count day to reconcile the inventory. You will be pleased to know that Day 2 is much easier than Day 1, but equally important to a smooth count.
What to do on Day 2
Have your team download and familiarize themselves with mInventory, especially the section on Inventory Counts. Make sure that each team member has their own user name and password and can log into the app; if passwords need to be reset or user created you should do so now using nGauge or the CAS Portal
On Day 1, your team would have organized the product and checked for damages, during the course of doing that they might have run across items that did not have barcode labels, this would be a good time to print those and resticker the product; if you are using CAS to print the labels you can use roll or Avery labels on your laser printer (money saving tip) or you can use Label.It for more printing styles and options.
Tomorrow is day 3, we will go through the best counting practices.Don’t forget to share your feedback and don’t forget to subscribe so you can see the next post, or you can join us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
It’s that time of the year!
No, I am not talking about New Year’s resolutions – I am talking about getting your inventory done and putting in some best practices to keep your investment in inventory efficient year round.
I will be posting 5 blogs that will get you ready for your annual inventory counts – the first 3 will be to break down the activities you do to prepare for the counts and the last 2 will be on the best practices that you can implement to keep inventory managed year round. You may have already had a chance to read about how to do ABC Cycle Counts by Justin McCollom from our Major Market Team, which discusses the importance of having good inventory management to support your Online Ordering/eCommerce sites. My approach over the next 3 posts is to take you through a more granular list based process. So don’t forget to subscribe to new blog posts over on the right panel.
So let’s get into the tasks – this is really meant to be a checklist that you can share with your team, and since many of you reading this will be retailcloud customers, I will occasionally refer to specific processes within the CAS Portal.
What to do on Day 1
Almost done!
From the back of the house perspective you have accomplished a lot today, and built a foundation of success for your full inventory count.
Start organizing the inventory in the store so that it will be easy to count, have your team prepare a floor map by Department or Category of where the product is and to begin to place it. If your store is not organized and ready to be counted, then this is a good place to start getting it prepped for inventory and gather like items together.
While organizing, take some time and look out for damaged items, these should be inspected and discounted or adjusted out of inventory as needed. Good luck, please share your feedback and don’t forget to subscribe so you can see the next post – if you don’t want to subscribe, you can join us on Facebook or Twitter.
Inventory counting is the process of systematically tracking and verifying the quantities of products or materials on hand within a business. With the start of the new year upon us what better time than now to start thinking about inventory?. Year-end inventories can be a thing of the past if you incorporate cycle counts into your operation. Utilizing the tools we provide at retailcloud you can have more accurate records year-round instead of waiting until the end of the year to do the typical tedious full year-end inventory. With a multitude of backend reporting, innovative and completely free inventory management apps we will help you through the process. Whether it’s running analytics like real time inventory tracking system, nGauge or utilizing retail inventory software, mInventory for all of their inventory needs, we got you covered. Users can use our apps to scan inventory for your cycle counts using the camera on your phone and complete inventory adjustments all from the palm of your hand.
An inventory count, also referred to as a stocktake or physical inventory, is the process of manually verifying and counting the items or materials a business holds in its inventory at a particular point in time. This procedure is carried out to confirm that the actual stock matches the recorded inventory levels and to detect any discrepancies.
Performing an inventory count allows businesses to evaluate their stock levels, identify any problems like overstocking, understocking, or inventory shrinkage, and uncover potential weaknesses in their inventory management system, ultimately helping to improve operational efficiency.
There are four main types of inventory counts, each serving a specific purpose to ensure accurate tracking of stock levels:
Periodic Inventory Count: This method involves counting the entire inventory at regular intervals, such as annually, quarterly, or monthly. It is commonly used by smaller businesses that do not have the resources for continuous tracking. After each count, inventory records are updated based on the physical count.
Perpetual Inventory Count: This system involves continuous tracking of inventory in real-time using technology like barcode scanners or RFID. As goods are sold or received, the inventory count is automatically updated. It provides a more accurate and up-to-date view of stock levels, making it ideal for businesses with high turnover or large inventories.
Cycle Count: A cycle count involves counting a portion of the inventory on a regular basis rather than all items at once. This method allows businesses to keep inventory levels accurate without disrupting operations. The items are counted in cycles, often on a rotating schedule, ensuring that every item is counted periodically throughout the year.
Spot Inventory Count: This is an ad-hoc count where specific items or categories are counted randomly or in response to a particular issue, such as suspected theft or discrepancies in inventory. It is usually a targeted approach used to verify specific parts of inventory rather than a full count.
Each of these methods offers a different approach to inventory management, and businesses choose the type that best suits their needs and resources.
There are many benefits that come along with cycle counting as opposed to doing the full end of the year inventory including:
ABC analysis is an inventory categorization technique, that divides an inventory into three categories. These categories will be cycle counted throughout the year based on the rules set by ABC. Putting your focus on the higher valued items first.
When determining your ABC categorization, it is important to factor in these 5 key pieces of data to give an overall idea of the value of each item. Once you have all these factors determined you will be able to assign them to the ABC categories based on their ranking in each field.
Once you have your ABC analysis completed you will be able to sort your inventory based on these factors and determine which items you need to focus on first. Your A inventory items will be counted more often and can even be added into your warehouse staff’s day to day operations. Once you complete all of your A inventory items you can move on to the B category which should be counted semiannually, and then onto the C category, with the least effect on your business these items can be counted annually. Utilizing your own staff is best practice as they will have a vested interest in the inventory and the accuracy of their counts. They will also be familiar with the many tools retailcloud offers to make these tasks simple.
Streamline your inventory counting with retailcloud’s powerful tools! Using mInventory and nGauge, you can simplify and accelerate your inventory management. With mInventory, manage your inventory directly from your mobile device, making stock counting and adjustments quick and efficient. nGauge, retailcloud’s integrated analytics platform, provides you with real-time insights and actionable data to optimize your inventory management. Don’t let inventory take over your valuable time—use retailcloud’s solutions to gain control, reduce discrepancies, and make smarter, data-driven decisions. Start using mInventory and nguage today and transform the way you handle inventory!
With different types of products and customers from different places there is no one-size fit for all orders. Getting these details right is important to have options for customers. Providing various fulfillment options is one of the most important steps. While eCommerce and Online ordering have traditionally operated on shipping only, there are various options that are available today. Customers can use Curbside Pickup, Instore Pickup or even have your own crew do the local delivery. This can sometimes save a significant amount of cost when you can control these
offering various shipping options are very important as well. It is a well known fact that customers prefer to have free shipping options. While it may not be cost effective to provide free shipping options for every single order, custom shipping rules come handy in those situations. Free Shipping based on a certain threshold, Custom Shipping Rules based on Weight and specific products are very commonly used approaches which balances business and customer satisfaction. Local businesses should be able to set up a nominal fee for local delivery along options for Delivery zones and rules.
When an order is placed it is utmost important to take care of it or keep the customer appraised of the progress. When a customer shops in store they already have the products on hand and customers are anxious to get what they bought as soon as possible. Delivery Windows , lead fulfillment times can help to set these expectations realistically as much as possible. Email Alerts or notifications will also improve when the orders are getting shipped or being processed.
It is very important to have the order processing streamlined as business. Right from Accepting orders, Keeping track of inventory all the way to fulfillment and delivery are key steps in streamlining order processing. Usage of proper tools at each stage is important for this.
A system which can track all the inventory when an order is placed or processed is important. Most of the small and medium sized businesses use one of their locations with a shared inventory pool for the fulfillment.
Solutions such as the Orderup app which allow you to manage the fulfillment lifecycle is very important where you can see all your orders, notified and processed even without having a Point of Sale or Browser. OrderUp can print delivery receipts and even send notifications to customers as you manage your order.
When you offer curbside delivery options it is also important to have available tools handy to support those customers. Orderup offers accepting payment using handheld devices and helps to perform contactless checkout and print/email receipt. Ability to fulfill orders, accept payments and
last but not least automating using available tools is important to ensure that orders are processed smoothly and efficiently. Whether it is automatically printing your picklist of orders on your printers or automatically creating shipping labels using shipstation, it is very important to understand and automate wherever possible.
Checkout retailcloud’s Order Fulfillment Solution app – Click Here!
Checkout retailcloud’s eCommerce Solution – Click Here!
1. Wait ! Are you really not online yet
In the post pandemic world, it’s rare to have a business model that does not include online sales. Here are some easy steps to get your restaurant taking online orders, fast!
With other restaurants in your area taking online orders, allowing their customers to easily browse their menus and place their orders, now is the time to add this sales avenue. Most online ordering solutions provide customers with a history of their orders, as well as allow them to place orders using facebook or instagram stores. The following are important areas to think about to ensure that your online store runs efficiently for you, your staff, and customers.
2. Keep your menu simple & expressive
Complex online menus can be confusing and frustrating for customers to navigate, especially those with complex modifier and sub modifier options. A limited selection of items, a couple of 3 course meal choices and a family pack that represent your top selling items is a great approach.
Pictures, pictures and pictures; look at pictures that your customers have posted on Yelp or Instagram and use them (with appropriate permission, if needed) – pictures are a great way to give your customer an idea of what to expect.
Include relevant details regarding ingredients, allergies and any other information that will help customers make informed decisions.
3. Set expectations
Make sure your online system allows you to manage your pick up times, delivery areas, delivery and service fees. With different types of products and customers from different places there is no one size fit for all orders. Getting these details right is important to setting reasonable expectations for customers and making it manageable for you.
Here are a few recommendations:
a) Providing various fulfillment options is one of the most important steps. While eCommerce and Online ordering have traditionally operated on shipping only, that has all changed in 2020. Most effective options may be Curbside Pickup, Instore Pickup or even have your own crew do the local delivery. This adds options that work well in today’s environment.
b) Defining various shipping rules are very important, as well. It is a known fact that customers prefer to have free shipping options. While it may not be cost effective to provide free shipping for every single order, custom shipping rules come in handy in those situations. Free Shipping based on a certain threshold, Custom Shipping Rules based on Weight and specific products are very commonly used to balance business and customer satisfaction. Local businesses should be able to set up a nominal fee for local delivery based on delivery zones and rules.
c) When an order is placed it is important to keep the customer appraised of the progress. When a customer shops in store they already have the products in hand and customers are anxious to get what they bought as soon as possible. Disclosing delivery windows and lead fulfillment times can help to set these expectations realistically. Email Alerts or notification also improve the communication regarding the order.
4. Engage your customer
Many email marketing solutions have social media engagement tools including those that allow your customers and potential customers to get to know you across all channels. Have cross promotions between your website and your social channels, tied in with a targeted ad campaign to always stay in front of your customers. They love your brand, they want to support you during the downturn – give them opportunities to do that by purchasing from you.
5. Open a gift shop
Convert your restaurant space into a gift shop – sell wines from your wine list at a discounted price – package food in serving dishes like Staub, for an upscale heat and serve option – maybe a take out meal combined with fun reusable products like those from Aplat. Offer meal subscription plans so your customers never have to worry about what to cook up for Wednesday night dinner, they just swing by and pick it up every week. Other interesting products like Repour or glasses for wine drinkers, or kitchen tools from GIR for the in home chef. Fun ways to add revenue and add excitement for your customers.
6. Streamline Order Processing
With orders coming in online, via the phone and walkin orders, it is important to streamline the business. From the time you accept the order, keep track of inventory all the way to fulfillment and delivery are key steps in streamlining order processing. Having the proper tools at each stage is important.
a) A system which can track the inventory from the time an order is placed or processed is important. Most small and medium size businesses use one of their locations with a shared inventory pool for the fulfillment.
b) Solutions such as Orderup app allow you to manage the fulfillment lifecycle, to see all your orders, notify customers of the status and process even without investing in a Point of Sale or using a browser. Orderup can print delivery receipts and even send notifications to customers as you manage your order.
c) When you offer curbside delivery options, tools should be automated to support the option of payment at pickup. Orderup offers payment acceptance using handheld devices with contactless checkout and print or email receipt
d) Last, but not least, look at automating using available tools to ensure that orders are processed smoothly and efficiently. Whether it is automatically printing your picklist of orders on your kitchen printer or automatically creating shipping labels and using shipstation, it is important to understand where efficiencies can be improved and automate wherever possible.
Steps taken now, will help your restaurant success during these challenging times and prosper in the future, as customers will demand these new approaches to ordering and restaurant services beyond the near term situation. Embrace the changes in customer expectations to improve and success for years to come.
Checkout retailcloud’s Online Ordering System for Restaurants – Click Here!
Checkout retailcloud’s Fulfillment Solution app – Click Here!
No one is unaffected by the impact of the COVID-19 slowdown/shutdown. We are all in this together to make it through financially, physically and emotionally. Small businesses are hit particularly hard. With small businesses accounting for employing over 48% of all workers, the shutdown has the bigger impact on this group.
The following are ways for small businesses to help weather the crisis as well as ways that consumers can pitch in and help
Offer online sales through your website, Facebook Store and Instagram Store. If you have one or more social media profiles, start posting. Take photos of products, videos of the store or update posts and get your information out there and let your customers know you are still active and how they can purchase from you.
Offering gift cards allow your customers to support your business by providing much needed cash now and continued support for the future.
If you have the ability to use a video conferencing software, do so. You can connect and sell to customers via webcam and ship directly to their home.
Buy now to use later or better yet, buy a gift card to give as a gift to a person who is working extra hard during this time, such as a health care worker, grocery store clerk or is in emergency services
Call your favorite stores to see if they are taking phone orders or purchase online to support your favorite business. This will help them and you get cool new stuff.
Many restaurants are now offering deliveries or pick ups. Call your favorite restaurant to see what your options are or order from them online
People are still working, so tipping extra will not only help them financially but also boost their morale. They are working extra hard and this will show your appreciation to them.
Do you have a social media account? Reblog, retweet, or send out props to your favorite stores to give them a boost. Liking, commenting and reblogging will help get them noticed.
Consider this as a donation at this time. It will help the business during a time of little to no income. You can help them out by not rushing to cancel and keep it open so it will be ready as soon as you’re able to go back.
Donate what you can to local food banks and pantries to help your neighborhood. Give as much as you can to help those that have little to nothing.
Call your favorite store to see if there is anything you can do to help. There are some small businesses that have crowdsourcing where you can directly donate to help them and their employees. It never hurts to ask how you can help.
During this trying time, let’s take the time to help out our neighbors and local businesses. A little extra care now will help with recovery once we are back to our everyday lives.
To understand your customers, customer feedback is important. Companies that listen to their customers have the tools to succeed – You’ve heard this many times and you have probably even given it consideration for your business. But what’s missing is a solid explanation. You’ve heard that customer feedback is crucial to your business grow, but the how’s and why’s are what I’ll try to help clarify for you.
Here are seven reasons why a customer feedback rating is important to the success of your business
You know your product, every variation, size, color, style, feature and you have educated your team hundreds of times. Unfortunately, your passion may not allow you to see the imperfections. It is important to know what appeals to your customers, as well as what was subpar and why. Listen to your customers and provide the products that they desire.
Listening to your customer feedback makes your customers feel involved and valued. When customers feel listened to, they positively connect with your brand and direct their good experience back to you, which makes them a part of your business family and ensures return visits.
Word of mouth advertising is very successful, and referrals are the most effective, free way of advertising. These most often come from friends and family and are often the most convincing recommendations. Always remember to strive for positive feedback, if you want to gain customers through recommendations.
You can always sell something once, but the true test is getting the customer to return over and over. Feedback is helpful in providing some of the finer details that encourage the recurring business. Is maybe free shipping, same day alterations, polite/educated support team, user friendly website which is the key to solidifying the customer relationship.
Especially nowadays, with competition down the street and on line, its essential to tackle a problem or misunderstanding immediately. With the bandwidth of social media, a bad comment can do far reaching harm to your business.
Seek out a rating system can has the capability to alert you to negative feedback immediately – before your customer has left the store. Allowing the customer to share the unhappy experience and providing you with the opportunity to rectify the issue immediately.
As a consumer, one of the first things you do when looking up a business or product is to read online reviews. Make sure that you have reviews available to draw in the new business, and further more, make sure that the reviews are positive. Asking your customers for their feedback in store will allow you to react before it appears online.
Actively soliciting feedback from your customers and reacting to their opinions creates a relationship that makes the buying process more personal. The customer perceives the business as being run by friendly people that care about their experience, instead of just a company that sells product.
As you see, eliciting feedback from your customers is important and can be very beneficial to your business, as it helps you get to know your customers better, increases their engagement and loyalty and brings in new customers. As it turns out, customer feedback is quite important!
The key to retail success is having a plan you can implement, reducing the variables and executing the plan to perfection! Ok So you knew that already, but how do you go about doing that.
Since you are reading this, I will assume you are part of the 20% of retailers that have put processes in place to monitor your expenses, manage your inventory levels and are reviewing your product mix and performance.
You might even be part of the 20% of the 20% that has implemented a CRM that tracks customer preferences and is aware of slippage activity; if you are just doing loyalty that’s not good enough.
So you are now part of the 20% of the 20%, now what – how do you get to be 20% of the 20% of the 20% that is executing to perfection. Let’s look at one of the simplest ways to get there.
Put another way :
80% of all small business are content with opening the doors and waiting for customers to come in – when they do they focus on selling them what they have and meeting whatever needs they ca,
20% of them are looking at their product mix and managing their costs and inventory levels on a regular basis – They are aware of a key KPI’s and are looking for ways to increase margin and ROI.
20% of that 20% (4% of all merchants) are taking it a step further they have implemented a CRM and have launched an online commerce store – they work hard at trying to increase their foot traffic, focusing on marketing, making their inventory visible and doing what they can to match their stock levels to customer preference.
The difference makers – the ones who seem to have all the luck the 20% of the 20% of the 20% (thats .8% or 80 out of a 1000 businesses) are focused on doing more with what they have – seems simple but often misunderstood it’s focusing your energy and efforts on where they make a difference. Make every action count! What does that mean.
How many customers come in and how many are buying – if for example 10 out of every 50 customers who come in buy something, focus on what it takes to get that to 11 – that immediately reflects a 20% increase in sales. Are they looking for sizes, color or product you don’t have – can you meet those needs using retailcloud’s endless aisle or predictive reordering to ensure you have the right mix? Does your clienteling system allow you to suggest substitute products?
Yes again you are right everyone says that , but what kind of insight does your POS system give you on similar customers, are you using machine intelligence to recommend items based on what customers have selected as well as what that customer has previously purchased? If your average units per transaction are 1.67 and you get 1 out of every 5 customers to buy one more item this could result in a 12% increase in sales.
Look at what how many customers are coming back and how often, does your POS system allow you to reach out to them with targeted offers (promos or experiences) to drive them back – the better you know your customers the more effective experience based marketing is; say for instance you know they love UnderArmour shoes, invite them back for an early preview of the new shoe line; or if they like a certain wine – allow them to reserve part of that allocation before it comes in – (use the retailcloud prepaid feature). Utilize the valuable information in your customer preference profiles. If you can increase your customer retention by 10% this again would have a huge impact on your bottom line.
So what does it take to be the 20% of the 20% of the 20% – it’s the little details; while your competition is using a scrambling approach you can focus on the details and successfully execute a winning strategy.
retail Key performance Indicators ( KPI ) in combination of recommendation & pragmatics analytics are key to solve sales challenges retail companies are facing. If you would like to learn more about the how you can improve your retail performance bookmark our blog and keep watching this space.
1. Embrace the data – Quality Data Will Replace Big Data , Have your POS data start working to provide you with information on lagging lines and to start matching product to customers more effectively.
2. Embrace the tech – The discussion has been resolved; Consumers do prefer shopping via mobile in store and out of the store. The POS has extended to the customer phone, and it’s easy for SMB to respond.
3. Embrace your online presence – Digital shopping can be a destination, and with the dropping cost of ecommerce, online insight to product and inventory is a must have.
4. Embrace customer engagement – Reset your customer service culture, train associates to provide quality in-store engagement and use your customer preferences and inventory data to provide relevant engagement through social media.
5. Don’t fear the unknown – It’s about a seamless customer journey. In store experiences and loyalty will get more relevant, the brick and mortar experience will become the secret weapon against big online.
6. Don’t fear payment providers – Payment solutions are becoming more competitive and innovative, the entry barriers to provide multiple payment options are being lowered as consumers demand more options.
7. Embrace Retail as a Service – It’s more than just carrying inventory and selling the product – customers expect more and suppliers want to do more. Endless aisle, pop-up stores within stores and customer preference data will all lead to a more curated retail experience for the consumer.
Let me start by says that a product return isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Based on a six-year study from the University of North Carolina’s Flagler Business School, the study looked at the return rates from various companies. And it turns out that there’s actually a “sweet spot” that equates to higher profits per customer sales. One company was found to have a magic number of 13 percent!
But a product return may not go the way merchants want. As reported in The Wall Street Journal, that same research showed numbers that were greater than this percentage actually decreased profits. And it signaled deeper, structural problems within the company itself. It could be a strict return policy or poor record keeping from accounting. Either way, these problems can lead to dissatisfied customers, increased chargebacks and much more.
I’d like to provide four simple tips that should help your business prevent excessive returns
Allow your customers to fully experience your merchandise. Touching, Tasting, Feeling – your customers can make a more informed decision, which will minimize returns.
Many times such returns are the result of a retailer carrying a product that doesn’t have the features customers demand. They may still buy it, but the end result will typically be a return.
The best way to find out what the customers want is to ask them. Salespeople will also have great insight as to what customers are asking for that a store isn’t carrying. Paying attention to the responses and acting on them will help minimize returned merchandise. Keeping tabs on the competition can also be useful.
“With tight payrolls and a large turnover of associates, displays are more important than ever before,” says Tom Hebrock, vice president of retail services at Stuart and Associates in Brentwood, Tenn. “This is what the customer relies on if they can’t get employee assistance in the store.”
Displays need to have consistent information for one type of product. The sign also needs to include accessories that are needed but not included so the customer doesn’t get home expecting what’s not there.
Informative displays will also help store personnel communicate the benefits and features of the products they are selling. While it would be nice for associates to memorize every feature of every product, the expectation is unrealistic, and detailed displays will assist them in selling.
Follow these tips to prevent excessive returns so that you can operate in the Sweet Spot of customer returns.
Today’s perfect grocery store point of sale and retail management solution is full-featured, speedy, and reliable. Supermarkets need a POS solution that is seamless, running on grocery POS software that is fully connected to the rest of the store. From a single lane, multi lane, or many locations the POS solution needs to grow with the business and provide the tools for success.
The grocery store needs significantly more than a cash registers that prints receipts and holds cash. The perfect POS system addresses inventory, loyalty, analytics, and accounting. Grocery stores carry tens of thousands of products: fruits and vegetables, meats, breads, and dairy. Keeping track of product volume and sales data will maximize profit and help avoid spoilage, shrink, and stock-outs.
A strong POS system will streamline supermarket operations, cut costs, grow grocer’s profits, and maximize efficiency.
In looking at a POS solution, consider these key features:
Important to consider is the POS provider. Look for software upgrades and enhancements to be included in your monthly POS license fee, this can save you hundreds, if not thousands annually. Understand their merchant support, are they available during your peak hours. Are ou provided with training during your critical early days with the new software. And dont forget track record, are they comfortable with understanding the needs of the grocery store merchant and have the features to help your business thrive.
To begin with – Get to really know your customer!
If you are using a POS management software like retailcloud, you can get an in-depth understanding of your customer preferences, what their ideal product mix is, what their tendencies are, maybe even who their favorite employees are
Having this type of insight will allow you to create a more customer centric approach to your emails, ultimately improving your conversion rates and allowing you to target your product mix more specifically for your customers.
Online retailers gather every bit of customer data, their clicks what they looked at what they bought and what they abandoned, this may overwhelm you if you are not collecting any data today but time is on your side- start with a 3 simple things to get you started
These are just basic steps, if you are already using your retail CRM and would like a more indepth discussion on how to use preference marketing to drive additional sales (especially add-ons) email me at jordan@retailcloud.com.
Brick and mortar or physical stores are still the way to get start a small business for a lot of communities across the country. A lot of these business have ambitious plans to build their store and expand it beyond their first location. However seldom think about how to get beyond brick and mortar. Today’s digital world require you to go beyond your instore strategies. This post outlines some quick ways you can adopt beyond brick and mortar
This is the quick way you can expand your channel. The easiest way is to start an online store and have start selling there . Modern retail software allows you to start online store with a few clicks without any server cost of huge maintenance. You can either use your existing site or provision a new website to do this.
Pro Tip : Use a smaller web address even if you have a long business name . This is way to remember
Online store these days are not just for online shipments. You can have Buy online and pickup instore strategies without any additional cost. These are sometimes very useful for busy shoppers where they can get orders picked up same day. BOPIS also offers Pay online or Pay in store capabilities.
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchats have become an essential part of people’s life. They also offer ways you can sell products. When you take a nice picture of your products, get your likes and if you can have your customers buy directly from that picture it would be awesome. This is what these social platform enables with commerce.
According to hootsuite here are some statistics about Instagram . If your business targets any of these demographics you know that it is right time to get into the Instagram commerce
How can you sell beyond your store, online store social media ?. The answer is market places. Everyone knows that amazon is the biggest online seller of eCommerce products. Did you know that you can also sell through amazon marketplace. Moreover did you know that you can have the products displayed across all the channels and have a single inventory view.
retailcloud online provides capability to give your instore into another dimension with and set of channels with a single Inventory view. You can sell products in store, online, facebook , instagram and marketplaces through retailcloud online.
It is that time of the year, the dreaded full inventory count. This blog lays out 10 steps to simplify the process, increase your accuracy and reduce the amount of time spent on this task
The prep planning is the key to a successful and accurate count, most of the prep work can be done during regular business hours and will both reduce the time you spend counting as well as minimize recounts. Remember, an inaccurate count affects at least two years or stock levels and KPI analysis.
Schedule the date far enough in advance so that all involved have time to prepare for it. Plan for a date/time that is less busy. Ideal timing is right after an inventory clearing sales event before the new merchandise is received into stock.
Best practice tip: Give yourself at least 30 days to plan
Assign a specific role in the process to each person and make sure that they understand the role is fixed. Explain the need for accuracy. Of course, consider your staff for the task, with thought given to checks and balances. If internal theft is a consideration, you cannot depend on an accurate count. You may want to assign personnel to areas which they do not have a direct associate with or other stores. Using an outside service provides an alternative, with the downside is that they can be costly and they do not have the same knowledge of the merchandise and stock locations that your team does.
Best practice tip: Use experienced team members in key roles, who have an understanding of the product and the count plan
A fixture map is a physical layout of the store with all stock locations. Each display, rack, stock location should be assigned a fixture map code that will be used for counting. When doing the physical counts, include the fixture code on the count sheets so you are able to tell which areas are not counts and where the merchandise was, if a recount is needed. The fixture map will also encourage all team members to use the terms in describing the completed work.
This will provide a critical map to a well planned wall to wall inventory count that assures that all product is counted.
Best practice tip: Organize fixtures so that the product is not varied, and the counts can be done systematically. Once counted they should easily be tagged as completed.
Before the count date, visit your inventory to understand the layout of the store and look for obsolete and damaged items. Make sure that the inventory areas are clean and organized; product are in their proper places and not mixed up. Make sure all items have barcodes if applicable. Look for areas that may not have been considered in the fixture map, such as hold/layaway or merchandise that has fallen behind the display. Review all merchandise that needs to be returned to your vendors. Complete RMA’s and ship back or identify these items for the count. Consider products that you may want to markdown prior to the count to reduce the inventory. You can run category and attribute analysis reports and review Stock Days, Turnover and Return on Inventory Investment numbers to identify products that should be targeted for markdowns.
Best practice tip: Organize product on the shelves, removing damaged items and use discounts and promotions to clear obsolete ones.
To get an accurate count, all sales and movement of inventory must cease. Make sure that all store/warehouse transfers are completed and merchandise has been received into the system. New shipments received should be frozen, and seals should not be broken. Review Open Transfers and Adjustments and make sure they are committed or errored out as appropriate.
Best practice tip: If you can’t freeze receiving, then clearly define a physical not to be counted area for items that have not been received into the inventory.
There are a number of methods available and selecting the one that will work best for your business depends both on your type of inventory and how your merchandise and store are laid out.
Manual count sheets are simply forms to enter the product ID (SKU) and quantity. This method is effective for wall to wall counts using count teams, with one person calling out the SKU, price and count and the other recording the data. This allows you to pair an experienced person as the counter with the less experienced employee to record the information and helps less experienced personnel learn the inventory. The downfall is that there is room for mis-recorded SKU’s and it’s a manual process so more time consuming.
Preprint the count sheet from your POS System and use this for recording the count. The biggest problem is that the form will not follow the logical flow of your merchandise layout. To much time can be spend flipping through pages searching for items. If some items are not included, you are more likely to miss them altogether. However, system generated count sheets are useful in narrower spot counts or warehouse locations where the inventory is well organized. Run an inventory balance report and download it to a CSV file so that you can sort it and prepare the count sheets. Your final count sheets can be imported into the system to adjust your inventory balances; this will generate write-off amounts for you to review before you commit the counts.
Using a portable inventory device can be the most efficient way to take inventory when all items are barcoded. You will not need the two person count team and merchandise can be counted quicker. These devices also automate the reconciliation process so that the store can complete the count quicker and be ready to unfreeze the inventory in less time. The primary hurdle is the expense of the devices. There are two options here; you can use Portable Inventory scanners or any Android phone to scan and count the inventory. The Inventory Manager application can be used to load the data into the system automatically or the data from Multiple devices can be combined into one count using mInventory, mobile inventory management software.
Best practice tip: Use digital tools whenever possible, organize counts in smaller groupings so you can easily recount, if necessary.
Designate a responsible person to monitor and control the distribution and return of the count sheets. If you are using electronic counting, designate one person to monitor and coordinate activities. Use the fixture map to describe the counts.
Best practice tip: Have one person in charge, who is managing the process. Everyone follows their plan.
For accuracy, enough time needs to be available to take the count, complete the count audits and recount as needed. If possible, start early in the day, while all employees are fresh and alert.
Although such a major inventory count is disruptive, resist the urge to focus on speed. The primary goal should be accuracy. Speed will come in time, but an inaccurate count does not provide any value to the store
Best practice tip: With proper planning you have plenty of time, however planning will not eliminate errors from exhaustion.
Even your best counter can make mistakes so instead of blindly adjusting inventory based on a single person’s count, steps can be taken. Have two separate teams conduct the count separately and compare the numbers to determine discrepancies and areas to look further into. Recount all items where discrepancies exist.
Best practice tip: Double count all items, and triple the count the discrepancies
Depending on device/method used, determine that all inventory has been included. Investigate discrepancies and recount as needed. Document explanations. Determine the adjustment amounts. Make necessary system adjustments based on the physical count.
Deeper research into discrepancies can always be completed at a later date – in fact several weeks or months later, but the only time a physical count can be accurately verified is at the time all movement is frozen. So take the time, while you have the staff in place and focused on the inventory count to resolve any count discrepancies.
Once all data has been uploaded into retailcloud, review the potential write-offs and recount any items where the variances are outside the acceptable differences. Check storage areas again for overlooked product.
Best practice tip: Get the count rights, resist getting involved in reconciliation or adjustments until later.
A well planned and organized physical count is the basis of determining and analyzing shrinkage. Without a reliable physical count, analysis of the results will be unproductive. It takes a bit of work to initiate the implementation of the physical count. But, in the end, when inventory is accurate and operations are running smoothly, the attention to detail will be well worth it.
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Also See 5 WAYS TO MAKE INVENTORY MANAGEMENT EASY
There are over 42,000 liquor stores in the US! This is an industry with very specific and unique requirements and not just any POS will do. When selecting a Point of Sale for Liquor Stores everything begins with Inventory Management, from handling a large number of items, pre-loading catalogs and case management. Inventory visibility and reporting is only rivaled by speed of use and reliability of the point of sale hardware. POS equipment should be sturdy and capable of handling the high activity that’s prevalent in this segment. Tablets while small and compact do not provide the power and reliability for liquor store usage. Centralized reporting and proper cost management is also key as individuals frequently own multiple stores or are in buying groups where they may even want to share certain information about sales and inventory.
These are broad areas and the need of liquor stores are varied, however here is a list of 12 must have things, when looking at point of sale solutions for liquor stores.
Inventory management by Cases & Bulk – Be able to purchase your inventory by the case and easily track and reorder, as you sell by the case, 6 pack or single
Preloaded inventory catalog with items and classifications – This will save time setting up your POS as you have the items already added and ready to sell. Prices should be modifiable upon first ring up to update to your selling prices
Print barcode and shelf labels – Easily print our product labels and shelf labels (including reviews) so that customers have current pricing and adequate information to make informed buying decisions
Upload catalog and price changes from supplier to support automated ordering and PO management – Using the current pricing catalog from your supplier, automatically modify selling prices
Flexible pricing options to allow for single, multi packs and mix and match scenarios – Inventory comes in all shapes and sizes and you need to be able to sell it (and price it) for the various ways that your customers want to make their purchases
Automated VIP and club pricing – Define the discounts for your VIP and club members and automatically apply the discount at the register
Item or transaction discounts by category or quantity – Create the discounts that work best for you with date range flexibility, quantity discounts and automatic discounts applied to categories
Reorder level reporting and purchase order module – Make inventory ordering more accurate and save time with the predictive reorder and purchase order modules
Centralized reporting for multi store multi owner environments – Have the tools to manage and report for the entire enterprise or individual stores, with sales tax and pricing set by location if desired
Employee management with time and attendance, pin or password based logins – Have the tools to manage your employees with role based individual logins and clock in/out from the POS
Remote Management with alerts for monitoring key function access and use by employees – It’s key for owners and managers to know what’s going on in a store while at another location or away from the business. Your POS system should offer mobile access to key analytics and sales data as well as emailed alerts that when events you specify occur (such as cash drawer limited reached or price changes)
Ability to use the credit card processor of your choice – Dont let your POS system provider tie you in to a specific credit card processor. Make sure that you have the ability to chose the provider that you want to work with.
Making sure that your POS System can handle these functions on an easy to learn system that’s scalable as your business grows, is key to selecting the POS that’s right for your liquor store.
A lot has been written about drawing new customers and retaining your existing customer base. Statistics show that it is wiser to emphasize your efforts on retaining existing customers, as it’s 6 to 7 times more expensive to attract new customers than to keep existing customers. That being said, you probably have underutilized tools, that you are already paying for, that can help you reach new customers that will love your products.
You want to grow your business not only through catering to your existing customer base but reaching all those potential customers out there. There are a number of paths to explore with ways of attracting new customers into your store.
You are the eyes and ears of how to make your business succeeds in your community. You know the demographics of who your products will interest. Explore beyond the obvious and expand to new avenues that potentially could expose additional consumers to your store that may not have even thought of you as a viable option.
You need to think about how best to reach this audience. Give this some thought, so that you can tailor your marketing to best reach the consumers most likely to respond, seek you out and enjoy the buying experience at your store.
There are numerous ways to market to your targeted buyers, ranging from elaborate marketing tools to flyers plastered on car windows. Look at the systems that you have in place to leverage the features that you may already have and that you may not be using to their fullest.
Once you have the marketing campaign in full swing, you want to have real time data to assess the success of your program and then can pivot to increase effectiveness. You’ll want to know which marketing campaign is bring in the new customers and what kind of shoppers are they. What are their Units per Transaction and other Key Performance Indicators, are they repeat customers once they discover your business, in general how did your marketing campaign increase the bottom line.
Whatever you have put in place to reach your new consumers, it needs to be user friendly so that you can easily modify the parameters to get the results desired. A complex third party application that requires expensive development to alter may not only take too long to change, but may also come with a price tag that does not work for you.
I recommend looking no further than your POS system for advanced marketing tools. Partner with a POS company that can help you get seen by the consumers you are trying to reach.
What to ask your POS Provider to explain:
These tools should be available on your POS system and are often underutilized as merchants think that they need to look elsewhere for these solutions and often hire a third party when it’s already provided on their POS. Your POS, not only helps with sales and tracking inventory, but uses your customer data and integrations to give you incredible market reach.
Units Per Transaction (UPT) is a key performance indicator in retail that measures the average number of items a customer buys in a single transaction. It provides insights into customer purchasing behavior, highlighting how effectively a store encourages shoppers to add multiple items to their baskets. A higher UPT indicates a successful upsell or cross-sell strategy, as customers are purchasing more items per visit.
Retailers often track UPT to assess sales associate effectiveness, optimize store layout, and develop promotional tactics aimed at increasing sales volume. Understanding and boosting UPT is crucial for maximizing revenue and improving overall store profitability in the competitive retail landscape. Increasing your units per transaction is often what determines success versus failure for the small to mid size retailer. How best to do this hinges primarily on understanding and engaging with your customers. This article identifies key practices to increase your units per transaction covering different aspects of your interaction with your customers.
Selling more is a direct reflection of you and your staff. Placement and signage are only so effective. The key is engaging with your customers starting with the interaction from your sales personnel on the floor. They are the first point of interaction a customer will have with your business. Besides hiring sales associates with experience and providing training, now they need the tools for retail management solutions. This not only will build the trust and result in additional add ons being purchased but also increase return visits.
Units per transaction (UPT), also known in another name as items per customer (IPC), is a sales especially in the retail sales sector to measure the average number of items that customers are purchasing in any given transaction. The higher the UPT, when the customers purchase more items for every visit. Increasing UPT is an excellent way for a retailer to increase sales using existing traffic.
Units Per Transaction (UPT) is determined by dividing the total quantity of items sold by the total number of transactions.
For example, if a retail store has the following sales data for a week:
Then, UPT = 450 / 75 = 6
This means that, on average, customers buy six items per transaction at this store.
Drop the “Would you like a … (scarf to go with your sweater)”, customer are so tuned to this that they have the “No thanks” formed before you have completed the sentence.
Try suggesting
Notice that these techniques do not ask the customer to buy the product but instead the sales associate is asking if they have tried, noticed, or been told about the item. The phases are conversational and encourage the customer to consider the option brought forth by the sales associate.
Cross-selling, upselling, and recommending add-ons are powerful strategies to enhance the customer’s shopping experience. It’s essential that salespeople are skilled and experienced in making thoughtful suggestions that add value for the customer. These techniques are most effective when a salesperson establishes a genuine connection by approaching and engaging the customer sincerely. Through attentive listening and understanding of the customer’s needs, they can provide tailored recommendations that benefit the customer and improve the overall shopping experience.
This is a prime opportunity to solidify your relationship with the customers. It’s no longer enough to complete the transaction, bag the merchandise and politely say good bye. You have a captive audience from your customer and one final opportunity to increase your units per transaction (UPT)and ensure a repeat customer.
The customer is generally relaxed and impulse items are easier to sell. Your POS may have custom tailored recommended items prompts, similar to your Amazon on line purchasing experience. Ask your retail POS software solutions provider to add this vital feature, if available.
Does your POS has customer history, this provides another opportunity to reach your customer on a personal level. By mentioning recent purchases, the sales associate can remind the customer that they may need to replenish the purchase or have a related product that enhances their experience with the original purchase. This type of personal interaction is reminds customers as to why they still shop in the traditional brick and mortar shops.
Focusing on a particular product line, or area for a week or a month can also help generate add on business. Sales Associates are motivated to recommend these items and the internal contest keeps it fun for the employees. Your POS Solutions should be able to track sales by employee so you can update your employees as the contest runs.
This blog covers a number of techniques to improve your UPT, but wouldn’t it be great to tie it all together with matrix so that you can see how effective these improvements are to your success. Focus on Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to track from a retail store perspective. Your POS System will provide reports and/or a mobile app so that you have immediate access and can tweak your approach to get the desired effect.
These positive sales experiences all hinge on your salespeople being able to build solid customer relationships built on authenticity. Your goal is for your sales associates to be seen as trusted advisors to your customers. Sales isn’t an art, it’s a science. Teach your sales associates the basics and with continued mentoring will tweak and develop their authentic approach. Use the tool provided by your POS system to give your employees access to the knowledge about your customers to further build that relationship.
A customer who is enjoying their experience in your brick and mortar store is easier to upsell and more likely to buy add-ons. That’s what raises your UPT – not promotions and discounts that might increase units sold but destroy overall profitability.
After starting a small business, you want nothing but growth. Growth is brought about by happy customers who will come back again and this time with a friend. Point of sale software has seen many small business owners succeed. This is because it makes work easy for you in through the analysis of the retail trends of your business. As such, you can track the records of your customers.
POS software will track the retail trends of your customers. With the POS system, you will never have stock outs. The POS software has inventory control programs that will notify you or your employees once the reorder level of a product comes. Most small business owners will stock up the shops with their preferred product stocks rather than preferred customer products. Point of sale software helps you by giving you reports on what products are fast movers for which customers. This helps you to make more informed decisions when restocking.
POS software will track your customer’s data to see the most preferred methods of payment for your customer. Once you open a small business, you might be having cash as the major form of payment in your business. However, you need to accommodate those customers who cannot pay in cash. There are other different methods of payment such as credit and debit cards, checks and other forms of payment. As a small business owner, use your POS system to track methods of payments of your customers to ensure that they are always available.
A good POS system will help you track who your best customers are and what they like. With the customer’s purchase history report available at the cash register. As such, the owner of a small business will be able to notify their customers when restocking of their favorite products has been made. POS System also helps in the quick query with a barcode scan on the availability of a product as the customer is inquiring.
Good point of sale software will help increase sales in your small business. This is achieved through improvement of customers experience in your business. One of the most important aspects of sales improvement in business is giving customers what they want and need. With a POS system, you can quickly collect and keep track of customer preferences and buy history. You can also include details like the customer personal taste, allergies, aversions and other information. This information helps the business better their target markets when campaigning and up sell at the point of sale. It also helps to cater offerings to individuals or groups of customers to improve the customer experience.
POS software helps you to track the most loyal customers. It also gives you the degree of loyalty and therefore leaves you more informed on how to maximize your profits with these customers. It classifies the customers who have the most impact on the point of sale, those who are likely to come back, and those who are not worthy of the time and effort to pursue. Combine all this with loyalty programs, rewards, and gift cards all built into your POS system and you will have a return customer powerhouse.
What is layaway?
Many retailers used this feature to attract customer instead of discount, and in many cases, it is indeed a great option. When a product is on a layaway, your customers can pay in smaller increments. These payments can go from 8-12 weeks and are a great way to get new customers and make them returning customers if you respect the layaway process.
How it can work better than discounting
First of all you wouldn’t use the revenue you usually give when discounting. Second of all, payments over few months are attractive to customers as they can get expensive products and are most likely to buy your products that are higher priced.
Additionally, if you have a good point of sale system, with layaway point of sale features included, it is much easier to manage these products and organize the layaway process. With a good POS system, they can be easily tracked and registered in your sales.
Customers satisfaction is also bigger because there isn’t any interest in layaway, like there is in their credit cards. So, in a way it is a two-way street, you benefit because you won’t lose money giving various discounts for your products, and customers can plan and spread their payments to fit their budget.
Layaway is a great option for businesses that sell products that cost more than $200 or $300, or simply products that require bigger portion of the family budgets. Instead of discounts, offering any type of product on layaway will increase the sales potential.
Another great option for using layaways instead of discounting is that it will spare you from many unpleasant situations that can create a bad image around your store. Often, retailers, are making desperate moves and giving false or extremely small discount just to get new customers. These attempts often are ending bad and many customers just start to have bad opinion about the business utilizing these types of bad discounts.
Maybe the best combination is using both discounting and layaway. Huge retailers like Wallmart and ToysRUs are already using layaways for a reason, they are seeing much more profit and revenue with the use of layaways.
Layaway point of sale
Although our POS software includes the layaway feature, not all POS systems have it. Usually, the layaway is included in the inventory settings of the POS systems. The layaway option is given after a product is purchased. When you manage the invoice of a certain product you’ve sold, there should be options that you can manage and one of them is layaway. When you select layaway, the product will be put in that category and you will be all set. POS System that includes layaway can give you great revenue and management option.
Change is the only permanent thing that brings along improvement, though quite hard to accept for most people. However, it is inevitable especially when you clearly know it will be beneficial to you and especially your business. When starting a small business, you require POS software that will improve your customer service. The customer is king, and therefore we need to keep them happy. The point of sale system your small business can help you improve your customer service in the following ways:
POS software provides a detailed real-time account of sales for all customers.
This will allow you, as the business owner, to analyze which customers purchase what products and in what quantities. This helps you to be able to offer discounts to their clients. Also, you can access customer trends or history and reports of their transactions,
Give your customers what they want
The primary component of excellent customer service is giving the customer the product that they want. It is important to know the reorder level in your small business to avoid stock outs. The POS software will always notify you when you hit the reorder level. It will also help you to see the products that are fast movers to avoid the dead stock, which are a waste of time, space, and money. With a cloud-based system, you can run numerous reports that highlight the top selling items. This will help you to make wise decisions, which will keep your customers happy.
The point of sale for small businesses improves levels of efficiency
POS software allows you to spend less time on paperwork, sales record keeping, accounting, and inventory management, as well as managing such programs as marketing and special advertising. This helps you focus more on your customers. It ensures that you have enough time to handle your customer complaints and concerns efficiently and as quickly as possible.
Improved speed
A long queue is not exactly what your clients want. The sight of 5-6 people waiting to check out is enough to make a customer run for the door. A reliable POS software will minimize the time customers spend at the register and will eliminate human error by employees. Small business owners can organize menu items on their computers based on the category and make ‘hot keys’. Slow transactions or inventory errors will no longer be an issue. POS software providers now offer integrated barcode scanning which increases speed and efficiency. This method eliminates manual entry and gives fast transactions. This keeps your customers happy as you generate more profits.
Flexible payment options
It is important for small businesses to have several flexible payment methods. The days of carrying huge sums of cash have since expired. Luckily, the point of sale for small businesses has made it easier than ever, for business owners to accept just about any payment method. These include; checks, cash, credit card, gift cards EMV chip cards and apple pay. Customers will be happy with all these payment methods and will always come to your business.
Today, getting customers is very hard for most companies, but keeping them is very easy. Customer loyalty mainly focuses on incentives to your current customer base so as to make more purchases. This kind of interaction is aimed at building trust and the desire in the customers to maintain a relationship with you. Most companies today achieve this through customer loyalty programs.
Competition among businesses today has led to most companies putting in real energy and effort to maintain a consistent customer base. A great product does not mean that the customers will come back for more unless you gain the customer’s loyalty. Below are some effective ways to building customer loyalty.
All these are just some of the effective ways that will ensure you build customer loyalty to your business. The success of any business can be determined by the size of the customer base and building customer loyalty gives you a large customer base that the business needs.
Having the wrong point of sale system can be quite messy to a business. An effective point of sale system is vital to smooth the operations of any business. Choosing a system that will effectively work for your business needs is as easy as the snap of a finger. However, there are four basic points that you should have at the back of your mind before and after purchasing a POS system for it to work effectively:
Gone are the days that the businesses relied on conventional cash registers; cloud-based POS systems has taken the industry by storm. No matter whether you run a retail store or a restaurant, a POS system can increase the productivity significantly. Other than playing just the role of a point of sales, these systems are capable of generating vital reports for a business. But what such reports can you run on your POS system, you ask?
No matter what the type of your business is, the ultimate goal should be sales. Having a perfectly generated, detailed sales report is highly beneficial for a business. In fact, such facility should be a prerequisite of any POS system. A comprehensive sales report should emphasize sufficient information enabling you to draw a clear picture about your business. Which items make most profits for your business, which period you experience a boost in your business and which items needs to be eliminated from your product list are some of the facts you can determine referring a sales report. Below is a list of facts that can be found in a sales report.
Although sales are the bread and butter of a business, the amount of actual payments determines the amount of money you have made during a particular period. Again, POS can help you to track critical information like cash flow, credit card payments and other information that affects your payments. Such report is a great way to prevent employee theft, errors in billing, preferred payment methods of customers and determine the discounts applied on sales. POS payment reports include information such as:
Integrating CRM software to a POS is a very effective way to monitor information pertaining to important customer activities. You will be able to monitor repeat customers, develop specifically targeted marketing campaigns and develop customer loyalty programs. Modern CRM software programs are capable of capturing the customer details real-time and update the databases accordingly. Standard CRM reports include information like:
Modern POS systems come with inventory management software too. This is a great way to manage and maintain adequate stocks to be compatible with the sales volume. A report generated via this inventory management software emphasizes information like the quantities, values of the inventory and items that you are running low. Those who need in-depth reports can rely on third-party software integration to the POS.
Having understood the benefits these reports can bring to your business, it is a wise business owner to use an up-to-date, hi-end POS and rectify the potential mishaps. What you spend on a POS as a business owner is a wise investment that associated both short and long term benefits.
We all know that a good retail POS system is hard to find. Yes, there are hundreds of solutions, but none of them really guarantees a full, quality and reliable service and functionality. There are several parameters that need to be overlooked and analyzed before selecting one final POS system solution.
The great point of sale software enables adding and handling of thousands of inventory items. On top of that, these items need to managed in multiple locations of the stores in order to achieve the goals. Be sure these two features are included in the POS system as they are crucial for any small business.
Another key feature of the ideal POS system is the ability to return defective or damaged products. These situations are frequent and having a software that can smoothly and automatically update these occurrences is a must.
Employee management is really important for small businesses. That is why the reliable, full-featured and quality POS system must include employee management. Ideally there needs to be an ability to track the working hours of the employees and possibly the progress of each task or project.
The order management of the point of sale software needs to be full-featured and versatile. This means that the ability to regulate multiple vendors, orders and stock levels need to be included and organized in an intuitive way. It also needs to include great calculation and analysis possibility and ability to create special orders directly into the purchase orders.
When you buy a POS software, the selling features need to be specially analyzed. The great software solutions, usually automate the process and simply enable you to follow the situation. Usually, the great POS software will integrate with automated promotions and enhance sales on a predefined time frame. The store functions and layout also need to be simplified and to include integration with barcode scanners, cash drawers and other important sell items. Which leads us to the next question.
Usually the companies that provide such software offer hardware products to completely secure you with a total package. Thus, you must look for the price and quality of these items. Don’t be fooled, the software can be affordable and cheap, but the hardware may be costly.
Smartphone and tablet point of sale can enable you access to your store and business from anywhere. They are great for progressing on the go and managing the things much better. However, problems can occur at any time, so when you search for the great POS, customer support is a must-have!
Finally, when you select 1-2 or two solutions, do a thorough online reputation research. Search for user reviews on Captera or other similar software review websites. Also, check the social media accounts of the software and find some feedback there. If all of the previous steps are done, you can be sure that you have the perfect POS system for your business.
Having a POS system is the best thing that can ever happen to your business. It manages almost everything in your business and you are left with a little to keep up with. Thanks to advances in technology, the POS systems are becoming easier to acquire for any business. In the past, people used stand-alone terminals in their businesses because a point of sale system was very expensive to get. Today, however, things have changed and you can even use your phone or your tablet as a point of sale system. You will just have to get POS software and install it on your device. There is free POS software, and you can still buy an advanced POS system. No business today is limited by its size or profits when it comes to a point of sale system. A point of sale system reduces the amount of work that has to be done in business. It almost reduces every job by half.
A point of sale system can also help in employee management. Employee management is an essential element of a well-run retail business. It allows you as the owner of the business or the manager to keep track of your employees’ hours. The employees will clock in and clock out of the system when they report to work and when they leave respectively. It comes with modules that have the clock in and clocks out features. If an employee forgets to clock back in after their break, the time can be modified by the manager or the supervisor and make the required correction. This helps to efficiently keep track of the hours employees are working. There are more advanced point of sale systems that can assign sales commissions to the employees. You won’t have to worry about who worked overtime and for how many hours because your POS software has you covered on that. It also provides employees with a very easy access to their schedules.
The data that is collected by the POS system helps in producing a hustle free payroll. Everything is set from the number of regular hours an employee has worked combined with all the overtime hours and the sales commissions. This makes it easier to draft a payroll. The POS system will do this by consolidating and sorting the data for every employee. It then prints out the results as a payroll. No more guessing how much to pay your employees or getting confused on the commissions they have. The point of sale system gives reports on a daily or weekly basis, so it is hard to lose track. If you want incentivize your employees, the point of sale system will help you. It will help you know the top seller every month, and you can award them with a bonus. This is difficult to do without a POS system.
Are you a vape shop owner that wants to improve managing and tracking the different brands and juices that you are selling? Are the upcoming regulations keeping you up at night as you wonder how to handled the imposed changes? These are just two of issues facing vape business owners today. Vape store owners should be aware of all the options to help smoothly run their business.
retailcloud, a Windows and Android cloud-based POS solution, is your answer. Why? It has the many features that vape store owners will find that retailcloud has the solutions to help with the issues unique to their industry in order to make their business work. Here are just a few of the essential elements that retailcloud can provide you with:
Vape store merchants should be aware of the essential elements that should be present in their POS solution in order to have a successful business. With retailcloud’s solution, you will be on the right path.
For more information about our POS solution, email us at support@retailcloud.com.
The best way to retain your customers is by having a loyalty program. A loyalty program is a kind of a rewards program that is offered by a company to the customers who make frequent purchases. The loyalty program can reward the customer either by free merchandise, coupons, rewards and even some advance released products which other customers would not get. Customers automatically get more value from businesses that they are loyal to as compared to the one stop shops. A loyalty program should work for both the company and the customer. It should not be biased such that only the customer is benefiting from the program, and it is not profitable to the company.
One good reason why loyalty programs work for small businesses is that they use a loyalty point of sale system. This is POS software awards the customer automatically every time they reach a certain level in the royalty programs. Remember a loyalty program has an absolute limit of purchases that a customer should reach for them to be rewarded. The point of sale system will automatically record the number of times that the customer has visited the business and the purchases done during those visits. Sometimes the customer might have difficulties keeping up with the loyalty program, but the point of sale system makes it easier.
POS system help increase the business revenue by raising the visit frequency of a customer and the amount they spend per visit. It does this by offering an attractive reward structure and as well as attractive points per visit. For a small business with a good POS system, it’s very easy to term transactions into relationships with their customers. The more you get the customer to come back and spend on your store, the more you get to know them as individuals. This way the small business learns to treat their customers as individuals by knowing their tastes and preferences. This is easier for small businesses because it is not hard to keep up with a group of customers in your surrounding as opposed to the large companies where customers come from different places making it hard to keep up with them.
A small business with good POS software can sell the idea of a loyalty program to customers in a much better way. The POS will keep the record of the customer’s transactions based on each visit. When the customer reaches the rewards level, the small business can even reward the customer using cash. This is because the POS software keeps track of the transactions of the loyalty program per customer. A small business will reward the customer with free merchandise and also cash. A cash reward might seem risky for the business, but it is not if the business has good POS software. This would be harder for big business because of the complexity of their POS. The small business can keep a good loyalty point of sale system that will be profitable to them and also to the customer. The business will be able to retain and even call back some of its inactive customers. This way they increase sales revenue significantly.
Having a small retail business can be overwhelming if you have a traditional stand-alone point of sale terminal. A retail business can be more profitable if one is using a point of sale system. The system will be able to manage the stock, handle purchases, place orders when the stock is about to get replenished and so forth. The time when buying POS hardware was hard for small retail businesses is far gone. Thanks to advance in technology, there is free POS software that is readily available for businesses. It is very easy to acquire a point of sale system today at a low price. If you have a tablet, you can download free POS software and install it on your device. You can even have a tablet point of sale system. This is POS software that is installed on a tablet.
The right thing with the tablet point of sale is that your staff can approach customers where they are. They don’t have to wait for customers at the terminal. The staff can assist the customer in making a decision about an individual item and then make a purchase for it directly where they are. This will ultimately increase sales. According to a study, customers are more likely to buy an item when they are making a decision on whether to purchase the item or not. It is easier to convince them to purchase the item before they move from where the item is.
Small businesses should be concerned about the kind of POS hardware and software they are using. The best inventory software will alert you before the stock runs out. This way you can place an order and still have stock to sell before the order arrives. There are free POS systems which are very integrated. They will keep historical data on sales and estimate when there is likely to be a low stock condition. This kind of system can also place an order for certain inventory just in case it runs out.
If you are a small business retailer, make sure that you get the best POS hardware and software there is in the market. This will increase the sales revenue for your business in an amazing way. The POS can manage your business, and this makes things easier for you and your staff. Remember taking stock and keeping track of it is the most time consuming and labor intensive job. It is one of the most important things in a retail business. Having too much stock or too little stock is risky for the business. However, this will not be a problem if you have the best inventory software in your point of sale system.
Small retail businesses should be more concerned about how well they manage their stock and how safe they are from running out of stock. The retail business should also be concerned about gaining trust with their customers. The customers will be more confident when entering their credit card details at a point of sale system rather than a person’s mobile phone. If you are a small business retail owner, invest in a good POS system and you will have an easy time while managing your business
A point of sale system is the lifeline of small business operations. A Point of Sale system used to be a very expensive and serious undertaking for a business to get this sort of system. But today that has changed thanks to advances in technology almost everyone can acquire and set up their POS systems very quickly. Today, small businesses don’t have to depend on the stand alone terminals to handle point of sale transactions. There is software in the market that can turn your computer or tablet into a point of sale terminal and it is easy and most of this software is free. Remember that having a good point of sale system means that you can get better insights into your business, and it can also help you keep track of what your customers prefer which in turn will help you boost sales magnificently. The best POS system should be affordable and easy to use. It should be integrated such that it can do more than just accept payments and process sales.
A good POS system must have an inventory management system or an inventory program. This will help you take a good look at your stock anytime you need it without having to go to the store. It should record how much of the stock is in the store and depending on the sales data; it should be able to estimate the period which that stock will last. Anytime the stock runs low, the point of sales system should alert you that you need to acquire more stock as soon as possible. The inventory management system should be up to date all the time to avoid issues of failure. Remember if an inventory management system fails, there is a risk of your retail business going out of stock without your knowledge. For the small business retailer, the inventory management system is not complicated and it is very easy to keep up with at all times.
Your retail business should always be safe stock wise if you are using a point of sale management system. The inventory program should look at the historical data of sales and use it to predict when a low stock condition might hit your retail business. It should also be able to create orders for replenishment on low stock conditions. Remember the point of sale might not be so complex as to send an order to the supplier directly. However, it will print out an order request for you asking you to order more stock before a particular time.
A retail business is best run by a point of sale management system. Don’t let your business run on the traditional stand-alone terminals. A POS system is a tool that will increase your sales revenue. Also based on the kind of system it is and how integrated the system is, it should be able to help you market the business increasing the number of customers.
A layaway program is a kind of a plan where the consumer pays for merchandise in parts. The consumer will not take the merchandise home with them until the full payments are made. This is an advantage to consumers, instead of buying on credit and the price being higher because of the interest. The store will hold the merchandise while at the same time keeping a record of how the customer is paying for it. Once they make full payments, the company releases the merchandise for them, and the customer takes the delivery. One advantage of a layaway program is that there is an assurance that the chosen merchandise will be in stock and ready for delivery when the item is fully paid for. This can come as an advantage to consumers who buy merchandise that runs out of stock quickly, and they don’t have the money to buy it instantly.
For a layaway program to work efficiently, the business must have a good layaway point of sale. The POS system will keep a record of how many customers are paying for their layaway programs and how they are paying them. Remember a customer can shop for different items in the business and at the same time he has a layaway plan for an individual item in the same business. A layaway program is beneficial to both the retailer and the customer.
The POS software should be able to keep track of the stock that customers are paying layaway programs for. The POS system should calculate the amount of stock remaining based on the data of the customers paying layaway programs. If the stock that is remaining can only fit the layaway program customers, the POS system will alert you that there is going to be a low stock condition and make the order for more stock. A good layaway point of sale should not sell stock that is already on the layaway plan. This is because the customer is expecting to find the stock in place after making full payments of the item.
Layaway programs help businesses compete by installing trust in their customers. The customer is always assured that the item they are paying for will be waiting for them in stock after they finish paying. This way the customers are more likely to be shopping in the same place to keep in check with their layaway programs. When a customer goes for shopping, they will always remember the store they made a deal with in a layaway program and they will have the feeling of honoring the store by visiting more often.
A layaway program is kept in track by the layaway point of sale. If you have an inadequate and ineffective POS system, your layaway program will fail terribly. Acquire a good point of sale system that will keep track of the layaway programs payments and coordinate that with the stock. The program is an advantage to most of the retailers in that it allows them to offer products to low-income customers. The customer will consider this like a savings plans where they will not fail to pay when the time comes.
Do you feel like your POS resembles the ancient, bulky cash register from the early 2000s or do you have a tablet POS system that you installed two years ago that is not even able to show you customer purchase history? Do you feel like there could be a solution out there that can truly simplify the tasks of running your retail store? Now is the time to look into the advances that are now available and affordable for the small to mid-size shop.
Retailers today most likely do not want to stay late after closing, checking off what products have been sold that day on an excel sheet, or worse, by hand on a piece of paper. Switching to more efficient POS systems will help benefit your small business by not only making your life and your employees lives easier, but also contributing to higher profits and creating better customer satisfaction.
Not convinced? Well, here are some more reasons why you should keep your POS system updated:
These are just a few of multiple other reasons why you should update your POS system today. So, what are you waiting for? Go update your POS now!
I don’t think so!
I believe most SMB’s only care about one thing, Smart Data! If you don’t have smart data it’s all noise. Smart data is about how the data is interpreted and presented to users in easy to implement steps that make their processes better. It’s not about quantity and dimensions, it’s about presentation to the consumer of that data.
With that in mind it’s important to focus on providing SMB’s with actionable analytics that help them improve daily operations and better understand their customers. At retailcloud our focus is on providing the data in such a manner that it intuitively conveys source, context and perception. Our KPI application, ngauge and our TabPOS dashboard at a glance will allow the merchant to see how inventory segments are performing and how associates are engaging with customers.
Smart data is not limited to dashboards, our recommended items algorithms based that is used to increase units per transaction at the POS and also to drive traffic to the retailer’s ecommerce site using our premium receipts and our Stock Index which ranks top and bottom performers using an algorithm based on Stock days, GMROI, opportunity costs and other data points are examples of ways that smart data can be used to increase sales and optimize inventory levels.
It does not require a business owner to process data, the visualization of the data should convey a feeling of what requires additional investigation and then the retailer can drill down to review actionable analytics and in some cases some predictive modeling.
So as a consumer of the data, give me smart actionable data that can be visualized and recognizable and I’ll leave the big data as well as the binomial, nominal, and ordinal data for you.
Often the butt of jokes, CVS Pharmacy has always had a ridiculously long printed receipt. They recently announced that they will be offering digital receipts to their reward members (and in the process save thousands of trees).
In an era when in many cases customers are even digitizing their payment and loyalty cards, the notion of a printed receipt is becoming obsolete. Especially a printed receipt that is so long and crowded with information it becomes a source of jokes for late night TV hosts. CVS is taking what should be a universal step of allowing customers to opt out of printed receipts, at least if they are committed enough to join a loyalty program. After all, loyalty programs are supposed to make the shopping experience better, not more burdensome.” DAN BERTHIAUME, Chain Store Age.
Many customers prefer the digital receipt so that it cannot get lost if needed for a future return of merchandise and ease of check out. Retailers look for ways to enhance the customer experience and offering digital receipts is just one additional way to accomplish this.
An added advantage to offering digital receipts is that you are building your customer database, as you now have your customer’s email address. This will allow you to deploy targeted marketing based on your customers buying habits and further enhance their experience with your store, as you cater to their purchasing needs.
Digital receipts have always been a standard feature of retailcloud’s POS products and retailers have been enjoying the benefits for years. The feature is easy to implement (check the box to enable on your device) and use (the cashier is prompted for digital receipt at the end of the transaction).
Going one step further, is the Enhanced Digital Receipt (shown) available on any retailcloud device as an Add On Feature. Not only does the customer have sales transaction information, they also have recommended items that are aimed specifically towards the customer. This Enhanced Receipt allows for a review of the products and further engages the customer with your business and your product line. If used with the retailcloud eCommerce integration, click on a recommended item to easily make another sale.
Small business retailers are typically focused on the day-to-day tasks of operating the business and it’s not unusual to see many retailers use KPI’s just for scorecards. It’s unfortunate, as this approach would be like getting to your destination and then checking the traffic instead of using Waze to provide you with real time information on traffic conditions.
Below are some of the KPI’s to consider in managing your business on a daily basis, and while no one by itself will give you any great insight, the combination of all of them will let you know if the road ahead is a green, red or orange line.
The most important performance indicator for a retail store is the sales totals and the cost of the product (including freight) associated with those sales. Look at this number at both an overall and at a category level and if possible even at a brand or supplier level. Take a look at the inventory levels and compare the cost of inventory on hand to the overall contribution to sales and to the margin during the period. Over time this could help you identify under performing, mispriced or overstocked items.
Gross margin refers to gross profits expressed as a percentage of sales. This is an important indicator of a company’s financial performance. Gross margin is also important for determining the markup percentage for products. When pricing consider gross margin and historical markdown percentages on a category.
If you have enabled the time and attendance module, look at the Margin Minus Labor as well as any commissions paid to sales associates to see the impact of labor on your operation. Run this report by day to see if there are days that you are overstaffed, in addition consider customer activity and units per transaction for those days to see if what if anything can be done to improve the overall Margin minus Labor number.
Many SMBl retailers do not bother with this metric. They focus primarily on sales – product cost, and as long as the sales keep rolling in they stay focused on keeping the shelves stocked (too often at any cost); sales does not equate to profitability.
GMROI measures your profit return on the dollar amount invested in inventory and may be the most important KPI to track, as it provides you a snapshot of the overall picture of your store’s performance. It essentially tells you what your return was for every dollar you invested into inventory. Run this at an overall and category level to see if your product mix is right, and a brand or vendor level to see if you should be repricing or renegotiating pricing on any lines. Is this return worth your investment in inventory?
Scan Return reports over a period of time to identify any potential problems in quality of lines or a category. High returns across multiple lines may mean that there is a problem with information provided by your sales associates on products and may be a simple matter of improving their understanding the product. Irrespective of the reason, this is a number that retailers should be aware of try to reduce as it impacts their costs, and negatively impacts their units per transaction.
While reviewing returns, also run customer and cashier reports to see if there is any unusual activity associated with specific customers or cashiers.
Just as it sounds, this KPI will tell you how many units are being sold pre-transaction. Compare this number over different periods and see the performance of your sales associates. Having the entire team focus on this number can have a direct impact on overall profit as there are typically no additional fixed costs associated with an increase in this number, increases in units per transaction have a direct impact on overall profitability.
Stock turn, is the number of times inventory or stock is sold over a period of time, typically annually. It tells you how quickly you sell your stock. In most cases a high stock turn indicates that you are operating efficiently and don’t have money being tied up in inventory for long periods. Review this number at a category and a brand or supplier level to determine if your product mix needs to be modified to improve efficiency.
A higher than usual stock turn may indicate that you don’t have enough inventory on the floor, and you want to see what the impact on other numbers are, are your units per Transaction slipping? Are sales dropping?
Compare this ratio to industry benchmarks if available, remember while a low turnover implies poor sales and, therefore, excess inventory but a high ratio could be caused by either strong sales or ineffective buying.
This KPI is the percentage of items sold, compared to the amount of items that were available for sale. This tells you how a product is performing and should be run at a category and an attribute level. This information should be used when ordering product, or to decide how to bundle product to encourage sales movement. This can also be used to rest your displays.
The inventory to sales ratio can signal potential problems in cash flow. For example, an increase in inventory to sales ratio from one month to the next indicates that one of the following is happening:
No matter which situation is causing the problem, an increase in the inventory to sales ratio may signal an oncoming cash flow problem.
Likewise, a decrease in the inventory to sales ratio from one month to next indicates that one of these is occurring:
Here again, no matter which situation is causing the reduction in the inventory to sales ratio, either one suggests that you are effectively managing your business’s inventory levels and its cash flow.
To reiterate it is important to just not consider one KPI and draw a decision on it, these should be viewed in totality and see if the road ahead is red, green or orange. For example you may see the your inventory to sales ratio is dropping and your stock turn is dropping which suggests your inventory efficiency is improving and decide you need to do nothing. Next you look at your Units Per Transaction and see that it has dropped, as are your total transactions and sales. Putting all these data points you may conclude that your drop in inventory is causing you to have product Out of Stock losing sales opportunities with your customers which in turn start having them shop elsewhere.
If this all sounds interesting, download our KPI dashboard app or sign up for our monthly KPI webinar.
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All inventory must be included in the counting procedures at least once during the year. A popular method to schedule the counts is the ABC method. Under this method, the inventory items are designated based on value or number of inventory turns as A items, B items, or C items.
The A items are considered most critical and are counted frequently throughout the year. Typically these are inventory items that turn over often or have high value. The C items typically have less movement or carry a lower value and therefore may be included in the count only once or twice during the year. Accordingly, the C items are expected to carry a lower risk of material differences. Any given inventory count includes a large number of A items, some B items and very few C items.
Whatever counting method is used, the frequency of inventory counts is important. The counting process ideally occurs on a daily basis — weekly at a minimum.
Placing controls on the cycle count process will help maintain the integrity of the counting process and the number of times inventory items are counted during a given year. If a scheduled item is not counted, or is swapped for an easy-to-count item or an item that is known to possess an accurate quantity, the validity of the sample is compromised. As a result, any issues residing beneath the surface like stock shortages, unidentified spoilage or unrecorded transactions could go undetected, greatly undermining the goals of the cycle counting program.
The business should also perform blind counts to restrict the ability to make changes to the counted results. Blind counts are performed without knowledge of the quantity that is listed in the accounting records. If blind counts are not performed, the person performing the count may see the system quantity on the count sheet and simply match its count to the system quantity to avoid the hassle and additional time of investigating variances. By exercising discipline in performing blind counts, this risk is virtually eliminated. Some companies even use a double-blind counting system, which involves a second count team that recounts, on a blind basis, certain components or locations of inventory.
Also critical to an effective cycle counting program is the development and implementation of a tolerance threshold for investigating count variances. A company should document count differences in both quantities and dollar amounts, and the differences should be measured on their gross (absolute) value. To be useful, the tolerance threshold should not be too high. If many individual differences are uncovered but the aggregate net quantity or dollar variance is minimal, an underlying issue is still causing the inventory variances. The fact that a net difference is low could simply be the fortunate result of the particular sample that was selected for counting. A sample on a different day could produce dramatically different results if the error frequency is similar but the differences are consistent instead of netting out to a small difference
For example, a company counts 100 inventory items on one day and finds differences for 10 of the items. Some of the differences are overstated and some understated, so the net dollar difference is a small amount. The next day, again the company counts 100 inventory items and again finds differences for 10 of the items. This time, however, the differences for all 10 items are directionally consistent that is, they are all either overstated or all understated and therefore the overall difference is more significant.
This phenomenon — where the key underlying problem is the error rate — highlights the importance of evaluating the dollar differences in terms of their absolute value instead of net value. If a company can eventually achieve a variance rate of less than 1%, the system is likely to be accomplishing the desired objective. However, results and expectations can vary among businesses.
When implementing a tolerance threshold for count variances, it is important that the investigation process occur as designed and that the count discrepancy resolution process be documented well. The business should determine error thresholds that automatically trigger both a second count by a different individual and an investigation of the cause of the error. An experienced separate individual should perform any second counts the program requires. Any differences that remain unreconciled after the second count and, after examining shipping and receiving activity, should be adjusted in the system.
If problematic trends become obvious, management might determine that it is necessary to flag various locations or types of products and perform additional counts on these items. In some cases, it might be possible to increase test-count coverage by changing the characteristics in the cycle counting program (for example, changing a B item to an A item, or providing for certain flagged items to be selected on a more frequent basis).
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Have the benefits on cycle counting from our last blog convinced you of the value cycle counting can bring to your business? If so, it’s time to implement your cycle counting program for optimal inventory management. Keep the following tips in mind as you develop your cycle counting plans:
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Cycle counts can be done during down-time and do not necessitate closing or disrupting regular business. As cycle counts are for smaller subsets of inventory, use those quiet times to tackle the count (early one morning per week or if you never see a living soul in the shop between 1 pm and 3 pm). In addition, problems and discrepancies are more easily spotted and corrected. This saves you labor costs and hours of time.
When you implement ongoing cycle counts, you’re forced to continuously assess your inventory. By having smaller check-ins, focusing on a subset of inventory, your buying decisions are more informed and targeted. You can focus on just one area of your business, so use the opportunity to not only count, but make decisions about that subset of your business.
By shortening the time between counts, you are decreasing the amount of time an error could have been made. It will also help you identify loss patterns and even have a more precise idea of when a theft occurred.
Inventory can often be the most frustrating part of owning a retail business. Implementing smaller cycle counts allows your entire team to see your stock accuracy as a vital part of your business. Now you can transfer merchandise between stores to optimizing the inventory mix at each store, having the stock available for sales of exactly what the customers are looking for. Employees and customers will feel more confident about the business decisions you’re making.
Real time accurate visibility into your inventory allows for greater productivity. For example, if a customer wants a particular item, you can quickly and easily locate it, without having to purchase another item and wasting your customer’s time and losing their confidence.
Understanding product movement can also enhance your sales. For example, if a product line performs better than expected, you can expand your supply of those items.
When you’re rifling through your merchandise more often, it provides a perfect opportunity to dust things off and keep your displays sharp.
Implement Cycle Counts
Some interesting statistics:
More than 80% of U.S. retail sales will still happen within the four walls of a store (McKinsey & Company)
44% of email recipients made at least one purchase last year based on a promotional email. (Convince and Convert)
80% of email subscribers are added at the Point of Sale (Paradise Pen)
Digital interactions influence 50% of in-store sales (Deloitte Digital)
91% of consumers have gone into a store based on an online experience. (Dimensional Research)
These are amazing stats and show the importance of building and use your customer mailing lists. Here is a step by step process of how to import your existing lists, some tips about growing your lists and how to activate and launch an email campaign.
Lets begin by gathering all your various customer lists you have and put them in an excel file, ideally you will want to have the following fields:
Once your list has been gathered you are now ready to organize and import the list using the Advanced User Import. You may review your list and say it’s not large enough or perfect enough, but don’t let that dissuade you from doing your first campaign (Remember the statistics above; 44% of email recipients make at least one purchase based on a promotional email).
So whats the best way to build a list? Ask at the point of sale!
This method is particularly effective when combined with incentives like discounts and offers. Activate CRM Builder to start prompting your cashiers to ask customers if they would like to be added to your list to receive special offers. Paradise Pen Co. actually collect 80% of their customer emails in-store. Combine this with incentives using gift cards or loyalty and start not only building your list, but also tracking SKU level and transactional data about your customers. Remember to set up static and frequency groups to get even more insight on your customer habits; do they respond to discounts or certain product mixes? When you create these special offers use the club pricing feature to automatically have eligible customer groups automatically receive that offer once they are linked to a transaction.
Offers and discounts are not the only motivation for consumers to get added to a mailing list, many retailers use early access to new products as an incentive to successfully build their list. As you get to know more about your customers, you can tailor campaigns specifically based on their shopping habits or even by using the New For You capability on the TabPOS. For those using the recommended items prompt, these recommendations also get more targeted the more you know about the customer.
You can begin by activating mailchimp under the Integrations tab in the Configuration Menu when signed in as the system administrator. If you do not see it, please contact us via chat or by sending an email to support@retailcloud.com to have it activated for you.
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