Your goal as a business owner is to keep your bottom line in the black, which means you need to increase sales and reduce operating expenses. Although there are still small enterprises whose owners love the idea of doing things manually, most stores today use one type of point of sale (POS) system. Depending on your cash position, you can either rent or buy a point of sale system that is suited to your type of business.
Automation
Using a POS system has many advantages over the traditional method of just using a manual cash register. With a POS system you can automate most tasks, which helps in reducing your overhead costs as you only need to hire staff for tasks that cannot be done automatically, such as serving customers and manning the checkout counter. You do not have to assign a staff to collate sales reports because you can generate that automatically, freeing your staff from the additional task and enable him or her to attend to customers. An integrated POS system is also capable of inventory management and cash reconciliation.
Next generation software
Moreover, most POS systems today are next generation software, thereby there are more features and innovations worked into the program to make the software more efficient and responsive. These additional features are meant to help retailers to further improve and raise their sales and net income through increasing their geographical reach and sales volume. Built-in as well is better customer service.
How a POS system increases sales
Extends your geographical reach – with its new features, you can integrate an ecommerce website into your POS system. This allows your customers to shop anytime and outside of your regular operating hours. Your customer base will increase because you are not limited to serving just the customers in your locality who can reach your physical store but those who live somewhere else. You can program the POS system to simplify your online checkout, which help greatly in preventing online customers from abandoning their shopping carts.
Improves your customer relations management (CRM) – a POS system allows you to provide better service to your customers, from always having their favorite products in stock, to reminding cashiers to upsell or provide you with customer information like birthdays and special occasions – things that will increase customer patronage and loyalty.
Use it as a marketing tool – you can build a customer database using a POS system and generate customer details that you can use for mass email or mass marketing campaigns. If you have newsletters, you can have an opt-in on your website and send newsletters automatically to customers who opted in to your service. You can send emails announcing exclusive discounts, special offers, anniversary sale or new products. These are marketing tools to encourage your customers to spend more money in your store.
Create customized receipts – when you have a POS system you can use a feature of the receipt printer to add a customized message at the bottom of the receipt. It can be a coupon, a discount voucher for the next purchase, an invitation to check out your website or answer a customer survey.
Serves as sales prompts – the flexibility, responsiveness and additional features of a POS system allows retailers to set it up with sales prompts. These are short reminders to cashiers to promote loyalty cards, add-ons to the purchase or announce particular or new products, all geared towards increasing sales for the day or to encourage customers to visit the store frequently.
When you’ve chosen your POS system carefully, it will become a critical part of your retail business operation. Not only will your customer base widen, a good POS system will turn you into a very effective marketer. Ensure that your POS is well implemented as it will result in increased sales volume, lower marketing expenditure and a smoother business flow process.
