How to Boost Operations with Your Current Retail POS Technology

With the challenges retailers face today, whether dealing with labor shortages and finicky customers, issues like social distancing, constant cleaning, or maintaining proper inventory fulfillment processes, achieving operational efficiency is vital to save time and focus on customer service and satisfaction.

While the goal of operational efficiency can seem intimidating, the good news is that many retail businesses can become more efficient by utilizing untapped resources found on their point of sale (POS) system. Unfortunately, not all business owners are maximizing their retail POS technology software’s full potential. Consider using your POS to boost your retail store’s efficiency in these three ways:

1. Streamline Employee Tasks and Maximize Performance with Automation

Employee performance is among the most critical factors for success in a brick-and-mortar store. Without the right tools, it is easy for an employee or manager to get stuck doing tasks that could be quickly automated. For example, stuffing envelopes to send out customer invoices.

With the right POS technology, retailers can optimize employee performance and help overcome challenges created by labor shortages. For instance, email statements can help employees avoid sending and stuffing upwards of 400 envelopes to bill users. If your business invoices for products like hardware, office supplies, or wholesale goods, you can reduce employee work with automated email statement technology from The General Store. With this technology, workers can immediately send statements at the end of a statement run for customers with a valid email.

Another way your POS can help save time is with staff scheduling, which can save managers 1.6 hours a week. Scheduling can be tedious, with over half of business owners reporting they spend at least two hours a week on this task. Some even report spending up to 12 hours trying to perfect schedules. Retailers can automate and streamline the scheduling process with their POS system to determine when staff is needed each day. This results in saving managers 4.35 hours a week on scheduling and maximizing the performance of their labor force.

ECommerce orders are another way to minimize employee tasks and save time. Without an eCommerce integration, employees must monitor online orders on one computer system. From there, then manually enter orders into your POS system. One order takes about two minutes to input manually, so if an employee enters 100 orders every day, that adds up to 3.3 hours of extra work a day and 23.1 hours a week. Integrating eCommerce with your POS makes it easy for your employees to manage your online and in-store operations in one place, which simplifies processes and optimizes employee productivity.

Having the right retail POS technology can help maximize employee performance, overcome labor shortages and improve operational efficiency. This means more time for employees to focus on tasks that can’t be automated, like helping customers and making sales.

2. Improve Business Decisions with Built-in Retail POS Data Analytics

With all that goes on in a retail store, it can often be hectic for management to make on-the-spot decisions. With built-in retail POS data analytics, businesses can base their decisions on the freshest and most relevant information available. Plus, dynamic reporting tools like Microsoft’s Power BI make accessing data quick and easy.

No one has time to sift through meaningless pages of data. With advanced built-in analytics, retail managers can make informed business decisions with easy-to-read reports that show insights on aspects like consumer behavior or historical and predictive data. In addition, tools like Power BI feature a dashboard with a built-in Q&A program, allowing managers to ask data-specific questions focused on key performance indicators and receive useful visualizations in response.

By gaining critical insights on consumer behavior with all-in-one retail POS technology, retail managers can improve operational efficiency. Customers are changing, and relying on gut feeling is no longer enough. A recent study on retail professionals found 70% noticed a change in buyers within the last 12 months, emphasizing the need to build a data-centric approach. By utilizing data, managers can discover customer insights such as:

• Customer-Lifecycle: Identify where customers spend the longest in their sales funnel and where they lose the most prospects.
• Pricing and Promotions: See what pricing and promotions their audiences respond to and what promotions are better left behind.

Another way analytics can help retailers improve their business decisions is with historical and predictive data. The latest advances in built-in analytics help retailers prepare reports with the freshest data. This information helps managers make more intelligent decisions that can:

• Forecast trends and predict future outcomes
• Run and compare different scenarios
• Monitor and predict changing customer demands at global and regional levels

3. Minimize Stocking Issues with a Retail Inventory Management System

Inventory management is time-consuming, but it’s an important task to keep your retail business running smoothly. A reliable POS can optimize this process and improve profitability by offering complete control over inventory, improving quality control, and streamlining the inventory process.

With a solution like the retail inventory management system from TGS, retailers gain complete control of their inventory. So, managers can review historical data when ordering products to reduce stock-outs, get automatic-suggested product ordering, and manage all vendors in one place. 66.3 percent of customers reported they would leave stores empty-handed if the business didn’t have an item they wanted. Avoid losing business with an all-in-one POS that can help ensure your retail store has the right products when consumers need them.

Retailers can use inventory software to improve quality control and maximize shelf space. By reducing the amount of dead stock, further your bottom line by boosting sales activity. In addition, the right POS software can help retail managers monitor receiving dates, outgoing stock and understand how each product moves through your store.

A retail inventory management system can upgrade your team’s operational efficiency by making inventory input quicker and streamlining product purchasing. Employees can take inventory tracking on the go with mobile POS solutions to quickly see inventory on hand and spend less time ordering. This software can also use sophisticated algorithms that offer your business fine-tuned forecasting capabilities to avoid over-purchasing.

A retail POS system is crucial to improving operational efficiency in your store. By utilizing untapped resources on your POS, your business can save time and focus on customer service and satisfaction.

The General Store offers retail POS technology that provides the clarity and efficiency you need to run a better business. Want to improve operational efficiency? Contact The General Store today