A successful retail operation requires the implementation of POS software. It can assist you in managing inventories, increasing operational efficiency, and delving deeper into your consumers’ purchasing patterns. By exploring point of sale development now, you are putting your company in a successful position.
But how do you pick the best POS system for your company when so many options are available? Let’s investigate what to watch out for when starting this quest before you decide and take the chance to purchase something that is likely different from what you require.
7 Things to Consider Before Buying a POS System
1. Inventory Control
You must be capable of handling extensive inventory, including serialized products and goods with various distinct features, such as pants with varying sizes and colors, for instance. In addition, you must be able to apply customized labels to goods to search for them so you can arrange and manage products that might be paired together aesthetically, even if not categorically. Inventory that can be tagged will be simpler to locate for storing.
Suitable POS Solutions:
- Organizing techniques such as product grids, adjustable sections, and labels.
- A product import solution to swiftly build up your stock.
- A capacity for managing sequenced inventory.
- Integrated order processing, reorder levels, and native buying features, including the capacity to store supplier data.
2. Synchronizing Online and Offline Activities
Managing a multichannel retail business is like having a shop that never shuts. Because of this, physical stores can create online shops and sell across any channel with the proper POS. It is insufficient to have two separate systems. An e-commerce system that will simplify online selling is required.
Suitable POS Solutions:
- Synchronization of stock, earnings, and order inquiries across your website and real locations.
- Combined statistics on overall sales, earnings per physical location, and revenue from your online store.
- The capacity to expand brand uniformity across sales channels.
3. Convenience for Staff to Use
A decent POS system shouldn’t take little time or give workers headaches. It should promptly provide the required data to assist consumers and move them around the business. They are the face of your company; when thinking about the technology in your business, remember them.
Suitable POS Solutions:
- Coordination of stock, revenues, and order requests across your online and offline stores.
- The capacity to expand your brand uniformity across sales channels.
- Combined sales figures on overall sales, earnings per conventional store, and revenues from your online marketplace.
4. Customer-Focused Experience
To enable your staff to provide customized product suggestions, the system should keep track of consumer profiles and purchase history. It makes no difference who is working shifts or how experienced a sales assistant is when you have that customer information in sight. Every visitor that enters the establishment is made to feel at home, fostering client loyalty.
Ensure a POS system has built-in reward tools and the flexibility to add more advanced features before you purchase it. To promote recurring business, you must be capable, at the very minimum, of establishing the earning of monetary rewards through sales (loyalty bucks for cash spent).
Suitable POS Solutions:
- Built-in client data that keep track of past purchases, contact information, a customer’s chosen method of interaction, preferred brands, and whether they shop in-person or online.
- Using the POS on an iPad allows staff to meet customer needs anywhere in the shop.
- Integrating your loyalty program to maximize the use of your customer database.
- Tools for fragmenting your customer information and creating specific promotions for each segment.
5. Metrics and Analysis
Retailers’ understanding of their company was only sometimes correct with old systems. Although goods arrived and departed, managers of businesses needed a better understanding of earnings and efficiency. The world has evolved.
Retailers now face fierce competition and need to take their time. Because of this, a successful POS will highlight your strengths and areas for development. At the bare minimum, you should be able to go deeply into the data your POS processes each day to identify top sellers and total sales success.
Suitable POS Solutions:
- Statistics that highlight your best-performing sales representatives, best-selling items and lowest-selling items, busiest business hours, best brands, and online versus in-store earnings.
- Dashboards that showcase the data you require.
- Simple access to data to aid in improved decision-making, including staff scheduling and the purchase of inventory.
6. Incorporated Payments
Since the required amount is immediately sent to your payment gateway, automated payments lessen the chance of human errors. Additionally, you use half as much receipt material and spend less time at the register as a result.
Suitable POS Solutions:
- Time-saving seamless payments.
- Statistics on your POS payment information.
- A predictable fee schedule.
7. Enduring Compatibility
While choosing the simplest and least expensive system when you first set out may be enticing, you’ll repent it once you transcend it within a year. Retailers require solutions that are scalable and expandable along with their business.
If you don’t set aside money today for a POS built for long-term performance, you’ll pay in cash later when upgrading.
Suitable POS Solutions:
- You may add records for a temporary pop-up store or a regular new site.
- The ability to support many sites and integrate inventory reporting
- Compatibility with widely used and practical programs like QuickBooks, Google Analytics, and MailChimp.
- Open source technology which makes it simple for freelance developers to create programs that you can integrate into your POS.
Ensure that the new POS system you install within your retail outlet (or locations) is something you won’t have to upgrade after a month. You will enjoy educating your workers on and being equipped to use a business administration application that enables you to go online and add outlets as needed in the future.
Consider consulting a professional POS solutions provider like Edvantis to ensure you choose a POS system that perfectly meets your business’s requirements!
