The landscape of retail businesses have certainly changed in the last decade or so. Thanks to technology and the need to enhance the customer’s experience, retail POS software has certainly come in handy.
So how has this software evolved retail businesses and what are the benefits of having a software like this in place?
What’s changed for retail businesses using retail POS software?
The bigger the retail business is, the more challenging it becomes in managing the various tasks and duties that need doing throughout working hours and outside of them too.
Whether you’re in charge of your own operation or you’re overseeing a particular location, there’s a lot that goes on. Before the introduction of retail POS software, managers and retail business owners would need to document everything using paper.
From scheduling in employee hours, stock-checking to cashing up at the end of the day, these tasks would often take up a big ol’ chunk of time and resources.
Online influences to retail businesses
There’s also the change in retail from a customer perspective. With the online world being what it is, the expectation in 2021 is that $4.88 trillion revenue is made through global retail eCommerce. A lot of the major tasks of running a retail business can be handled online and additionally helped with automation.
With so many individuals now online, there’s a need for retailers to go digital not just with online stores but in physical stores too. Even though a lot of retail operates its sales online, in 2019 90% of retail sales were happening in-store.
With all this in mind, a POS system can be an essential tool for retail businesses to use, for many reasons.
How retail businesses have evolved with POS software
The retail business has evolved with the help of POS software because it’s an all-encompassing system. Whether you’re tracking inventory or monitoring employee performance, POS systems have helped many retail businesses over the past decade to make work processes easier.
The biggest benefit to having this software in place is that everything can be streamlined into one system. That means less room for error and no need for multiple applications to be up at once.
A retail POS software has helped cater and expand the world of retail businesses and benefits from it in many ways.
Customer Loyalty
Attracting customers and retaining them is an important part of the retail industry and for sales in general. There are expectations from modern shoppers in 2021 that require businesses to upgrade their systems to adapt to a technology-driven era.
Point of sale software has allowed retail businesses to provide customers with a more tailored and valuable experience. A lot of these POS softwares have a customer management program built-in to the system in order to monitor the frequency of customers making purchases. If they’re not built-in, the program can be integrated into these software systems fairly easily.
This has evolved into many companies now offering customer loyalty programs that give back to those who stay loyal to the brand by making regular purchases.
With 58% of customers belonging to a brand’s loyalty program, they’ll end up purchasing from the brand at least once per month. The POS system allows the business to monitor and track customer activity and provides rewards and incentives where necessary.
By having access to this information, you can personalize the experience that every customer has. It also provides the data to help analyze customer behaviours. This can help the marketing teams in retail to implement certain strategies that will encourage more sales and growth in general.
Sales Reporting
Data is a benefit that all businesses can take advantage of and collect with the right tools and software in place. A point of service software for retail businesses can provide the transparency it needs to analyze individual store data and its performance in comparison to other stores where applicable.
Lightspeed’s point of sale software offers all you need when it comes to reporting and sales analytics. Like many of the other systems that exist, it can help you deep dive into your sales data in order to keep track of high-selling items for example or to track your overall revenue for one store or multiple.
By having access to this data, you can identify how your retail business is performing overall and comparisons can be made when you own more than one store or platform.
Focus
When you’ve identified the data, you can explore in more detail, what patterns are occurring and what is selling better. It’s also good to focus on what isn’t selling well so that you can spot problem areas.
Expand
Sales data can help expand on the growth you have as a retailer. Whether it’s introducing new products or implementing various cross-promotion opportunities, there is expansion available when using these areas of the POS software.
Sales reporting through POS software can help identify, focus and expand on what your company is selling or not selling.
Inventory Management
Maintaining and managing inventory stock is a lot harder when you have multiple locations or an inventory that’s growing.
It’s a fine balance when it comes to inventory management because too much stock could restrict your cash flow. It may also risk a lot of stock wastage if it can’t be shifted.Too little and you may not be able to cater to the demand of your customers, which results in a loss of sales.
Without a POS system, that balancing act can be difficult and may cause financial mistakes that are detrimental to your retail business. Having an electronic system like POS can help keep your inventory up to date, regardless of how big or small the inventory is.
There is the ability to bring together multiple stores’ stock too in order to help with distribution across all your businesses. It’s useful to help spot trends or purchase cycles so that you can make more informed decisions when it comes to purchasing the right levels of stock.
Being able to see your stock levels in real-time can also help refine your ordering processes as well as cutting costs in relation to distribution.
Hardware
Since these POS softwares are cloud-based, it allows retailers to operate from anywhere and at any time. Even if the business isn’t open during working hours, the system can still be accessed out of office.
According to 74% of global IT decision-makers, they believe 95% of all workloads will be operating on the cloud in the next five years. POS systems are therefore relevant and useful to businesses of today and beyond.
The hardware is also an important element to running your retail business efficiently. For example, having barcode scanners can help you find products easily. This can be useful when helping find a product for the customer or to check if there’s stock left of said product.
There can be a lot of time and effort saved by having the right hardware in place. It can also help reduce errors and improve customer experience. It’s also something that needs to be adapted to any POS system you put in place, especially if that hardware is already up to date.
eCommerce
eCommerce has experienced a lot of growth over the last few years and global sales reached $26.7 trillion in 2020. So there’s certainly a lot of money in eCommerce that can be useful for retail businesses to make use of.
With that being said, many retail businesses have found themselves creating an online presence and a POS system has helped with integration of this process. The integration of a POS system helps to keep track of stock across the channels to avoid online shoppers from purchasing stock that’s not physically available to buy.
eCommerce is an area of retail that more and more businesses are opting to provide to its customers. And why not? It can provide the opportunity for global sales and growth that for some businesses, may be simply out of reach in the way of physical stores.
The cost of creating an online presence as a retail business is a small price to pay for the ROI it can potentially offer.
Should you get retail POS software?
The short answer is yes! Depending on your budget and requirements, this may vary what you choose from when it comes to POS systems. It’s worthwhile investing in one that specializes in retail businesses in particular though.
As technology develops and grows, more of this software is popping up on the market. If your retail business is yet to invest in a point of service software, then now is the right time to do so.
Make sure to do your research when it comes to the POS software that’s out there and pick one that can tailor to your needs as a retailer.
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