Are you experiencing many pricing errors at your retail store? Do you want to control prices for maximum profit? Are you dealing with employee theft and errors? Do you need to know exactly where you are making or losing money? Do you think that customers spend too much time in line? Are you thinking about e-commerce? Are your employees spend too much time doing inventory and paperwork?
Are there no customer loyalty programs at your store? Is there no control of inventory – are products sometimes overstocked and occasionally there are not enough? Are there too many books? Overbilling or underbilling? If you answered yes to these questions, it is time to bring your business to the next level by learning, understanding and eventually start new system.
A Retail Point of Sales (POS) is a system that records financial transactions in stores. The system typically includes a computer, a monitor, electronic cash register systems, touch-screen display, receipt printer, magnetic stripe readers, customer display and a barcode scanner. It can also include a weight scale, integrated credit card processing system, a signature capture device and a customer pin pad device. More and more system monitors use touch-screen technology for ease of use and a computer is built in to the monitor chassis.
What are the main benefits of POS? This system not only will help you to resolve existing problems but also give you a unique opportunity to plan your business growth. What are your vision and goals? Where do want your company to be in the next years (decades)? Generate more sales? Identify sales trends? Add more customers and products to the system? Provide better customer service? Organize new marketing programs? Set up an effective inventory and purchasing management? Analyze data with flexible reporting options?
POS will help you save money, time, energy and increase productivity by keeping track of your inventory, determine best and worst selling items, analyze profit and loss margins, discover which items are your top sellers, automate purchase orders, sell and redeem gift cards, manage your employees’ hours and wages, implement loyalty programs, etc.
Benefits of POS for the Retail Store
1. Making a profit
• Use data on the best and worst selling items
• Focus on higher-margin items
• Offer suggestion selling
2. Saving time
• Reduce the time on doing inventory and paperwork
• Make checkout faster
3. Improving productivity
• Eliminate double entry of orders
• Calculate and create restocking orders automatically
• Control track orders, prepayments, invoices, and cash payments
4. Increasing accuracy and speed
• Use scanning vs. punching
• Send invoices by email
5. Obtaining detailed report
• Sales and inventory
• Purchasing
• Customer account
6. Networking
• Link to other terminals and to back-office computer system
7. Managing employee
• Record of hours worked directly at the point of sale
• Integrate table of employees for each department
8. Creating a schedule
• Create a schedule printable by employees, department or store
9. Printing labels and promotional posters
• Print labels for store products or for external batches
• Create labels by category or sub-department
10. Securing your business
• Prevent credit card fraud
• Secure money transactions and personal data information
11. Implementing loyalty and frequent buyer programs
• Generate repeat business
• Automatic level adjustments, based on purchasing habits
12. Plan marketing strategy
• Forecast sales trends
• Organize targeted advertising campaign
• Learn consumer’s buying habits and behaviour
Benefits for your Customers
1. Improving customer relationships
• Loyalty programs
• Offer gift cards and certificates
• Allow returns and exchanges at any location
• Use printable coupons
2. Saving time
• Spend less time in checkout lines
• Reduce the total length of the transaction at the point of sale (2 to 4 seconds)
Benefits for your Employees
• Staff performance tracking
• Contact information
• Discounts
• Access control
• Time and attendance
• Schedule