You know that you need retail management software. As the days drag on, you are finding yourself sacrificing sleep and valuable personal time in order to babysit mundane, routine, business processes. Since you opened your doors, the customers have been coming in non-stop. While this is great for your bottom line, you have quickly come to the conclusion that your business methods have ill-equipped you to effectively manage things.
Your business may be flourishing, but you are floundering. What can you do to correct this before you have a complete breakdown, or a costly error forces you to shut your doors? Unfortunately, many small business owners have underestimated just how much they needed to have technical automations in place. Many fail not because of a lack of sales or traffic, but because of mistakes that, when allowed to compound over time, led to costly errors that could not be overcome.
Achieving functional success requires owners to invest time and effort to develop places for automations. This is why it is important to utilize retail management software in your daily operations. Implementing retail management software that is designed and scaled for small businesses will alleviate many of the burdens daily operations place on your shoulders. When looking at software for your retail business, there are a handful of critical places that must be examined if you want to maximize the benefits of any retail management software.
Reconciling Transactions and Returns to Inventory and Production
One of the most complex and time-consuming components of owning a retail business is balancing the books. Retailers not only have to monitor incoming revenue and outgoing expenses to suppliers but must also be able to account for financial whereabouts of returned or exchanged products. Sprinkle in a little sales tax, and you have a paper trail that runs as long as a CVS receipt.
Analyzing this manually is a task best accomplished while humming the “Mission Impossible” theme song. Having the right software in place helps you in a variety of ways. Automations can be implemented that issue alerts when the cash drawer does not match the inventory scanned to leave your store. Additionally, you can set any required taxes on all of your items, and have the system detect items that are non-taxable. Your software must give you clarity into voids and returns, allowing you to ensure that your final sales tally meets the cash in the till.
Using retail management software for tracking and using transaction data is a dish best served with a highly capable POS solution. Many modern point-of-sale software systems are now all-inclusive, meaning you will get all of the functionalities to address your store’s operational requirements in one, easy to use system. You will want a POS system that provides customized and detailed reporting capabilities that can be run against historical data or in real-time. This gives you an easy way to gain control over all of your transactions while minimizing the effort around managing inventory.
Stopping Inventory Leakage Cold Through Retail Management Software
Managing inventory can be a chore if done manually. Walking through the stock room or among the shelves with a clipboard to tally items is a waste of production time. Manually matching these numbers with receipts from customer transactions turns into an exercise of frustration and boredom at the least. Your POS management software must take the bite out of monitoring inventory and make it easier to view what you have on your shelves.
Saving time is the essence of leveraging your POS solution to automate many of your inventory processes. The POS management software you bring in must not only present you with real-time reporting of the product in your store but must accurately and quickly help you connect those dots with the items sold at the register. All of this must also alert you of inconsistent numbers around voided scans and customer returns and must show you who is on your staff are most likely to generate these alerts. You achieve a reduction in product leakage, and can easily identify staff that may need re-training to improve performance.
The Best POS Retail Solution Makes Staff Management an Enjoyable Experience
Getting your staff motivated can be an exercise in futility. It can also be the difference between happy, engaged customers and customers that wander and leave after a short stay. One of these drives sales, the other deters them. Knowing which of your staff is helping to drive sales through quality customer engagement, and which are prone to wanderers shuffling out the door empty-handed is a key function that your retail management software must give you.
Reports can be executed to show you who your top performers are, and on what shifts they are most effective. This makes your staff more productive by lining them up with coworkers or time slots that line up with their strengths, giving you an advantage over your competitors. Also, arming them with mobile POS devices hastens the checkout process and empowers your staff to take that one extra step towards making a first-time customer and regular.
One last important piece that must be present in your POS management solution is around scheduling and payroll. With the right POS solution in place, you can easily match scheduled hours to hours worked to quickly determine any discrepancies. Also, the online scheduling capabilities means that staff can proactively change their schedule or request time off, or allow staff looking for more hours to slide into recently vacated shifts. This allows you to gain even more time back so that you can focus on achieving success.
Finding Your Retail Management Software
Introducing a retail management software solution into your retail space will be nothing less than game-changing. Automating simple tasks and examining your business processes to remove those that are not necessary are just the start. Blending your software needs into a POS solution that can cover you in all areas is the best way to proceed. This solution must include inventory and staff management, transaction and revenue reconciliations, as well as giving you the data you need to shift gears based on trending customer behaviors.
Getting the guidance you will need to achieve this will be conducive to your software solution’s long-term success. Partnering up with a vendor that has deep levels of technical knowledge around the trending aspects of POS, as well as experience working with retailers in your area of expertise sets you up for today and beyond. As a partner, they will learn the nuances of your business to deliver a concise, customized POS solution that will be your most valuable tool.
When you partner with talech for your retail technology needs, we devote our time to identify your business challenges and work with you to apply a solution that provides you with a POS solution that can scale alongside next-gen business technical trends. Our goal is to leave you feeling confident that our feature-rich platform makes you a trendsetter. Reach out to us today to sign up for a demo and to learn more about how talech can be your valued POS partner.
