Considering that the first electronic cash register debuted in the early 1970s, it’s safe to say that POS systems are are more “mature” technologies. However, this doesn’t mean that a POS system has become irrelevant in the world of modern retail. In fact, the way it has evolved has allowed retail businesses to solve efficiency issues and reduce administrative work.
But more than just improving and streamlining operations, a 360-degree POS system can help your business grow and pave the way for a digital revolution. Here’s how.
It Can Help Keep Your Customers Happy
Apart from ensuring that your shelves (and your warehouse) are always well-stocked, a modern POS system is also a valuable tool for customer relationship management or CRM. Loyal customers are especially valuable in retail, and the data from your POS system can help you identify them. From here, you can reward these customers to show your appreciation for the positive impact they deliver to your business; this, in turn, will give them even more incentive to stay loyal. Your POS system can also help you determine which products are doing well, in which seasons are your customers most active, and how much buyers spend on average, among others. This level of detail and information about your customers and their habits will help you make effective and informed decisions to further fuel your business.
It Can Help You Conduct Promotions
Promos are essential to retail businesses. They keep things interesting and exciting, and they give your customers reasons to come back and buy more of your products. With the help of a POS system equipped with comprehensive and centralized promotional capabilities, you can easily develop a promo and apply them automatically, whether separately or across all of your branches or whether the promo is applicable to the general public or only a chosen portion of your customers.
It Can Help You Organize Your Staff
One of the most crucial components of business success is a well-oiled team, and a POS system can help you achieve it by ensuring that your staff is always on the same page. There will be no confusion about current promotions, for example. All your staff needs to do is to press a few buttons and all the promo conditions will already be applied. If there are loyalty programs currently in play, no detail will be lost in translation because everything can be accessed through your POS system. There are also POS systems with features that let you assign various roles and access levels so that only authorized personnel receives access to sensitive data, beefing up your data security.
It Can Help You Organize Your Sales Channels
If you have multiple branches, have an eCommerce platform, and/or are present in various marketplaces on the web, an omni-channel POS system can help you run all of these outlets using a single database. The most crucial part, perhaps, is that you can access the details of all your outlets from a single location through authorized and synced devices, like your smartphone or tablet, allowing you to conduct business virtually everywhere.
It Can Help Simplify Business Processes
There are many processes involved in retail that can be simplified with the help of a POS system, like accounting and inventory management. For example, a smart POS system can be integrated with your current accounting software, eliminating the need for manual inputs; you also don’t need to worry about “copy-paste” errors since every transaction is already recorded in the POS.
Any smart POS system worth their salt should also be able to streamline your inventory management. At the very least, it should give you real-time access to inventory levels, reorder points, and inventory turnover rates. Using these details, you can then optimize your replenishment decisions so that you won’t run out of stocks in critical periods.
It’s easy to think that foundation solutions have no room in modern society, especially with how fast technology continues to improve. However, some of these technologies have withstood the test of time because they have proven their worth in the industry — much like the POS system. There have been many iterations of the POS system over the years and it will only continue to evolve and help retails businesses grow, even as the landscape changes constantly.
