POS Solutions
Article | February 14, 2024
Point-of-sale (POS) software is constantly evolving. Clunky cash registers alone can’t keep up. Brick-and-mortar retailers are adopting leaner systems that operate on mobile devices in favor of complicated setups that cost thousands of dollars.
But it’s not just retail stores that are interested in POS systems—online store owners who sell at craft fairs, trade shows, and farmers markets are also in need of inexpensive and easy-to-use point-of-sale solutions.
So, what exactly is point of sale software, how do you know if you need it, and how do you choose the right tool for your business?
What is point-of-sale (POS) software?
Point of sale software is what brick-and-mortar retailers use to conduct sales in person. It's sometimes a cash register, computer, or even a tablet where cashiers input products, tally the cost, and conduct the financial transaction. Most POS software will also communicate with inventory levels to keep everything in balance.
A lot of big-box stores have wildly complex and expensive POS solutions, some of which were custom built for their needs. Independent retailers are moving away from these traditional POS systems and toward cloud-based point-of-sale solutions.
Types of POS software
There are two main types of POS software: on-premise and cloud-based. On-premise POS software requires you to be on location to use it. Terminals are the most common on-premise POS. Cloud-based POS software offers more flexibility, as you can use any connected, compatible device to access the dashboard. Cloud-based POS software is becoming more mainstream—the market was valued at around $1.29 billion for 2019, with an expected growth rate of more than 21.38% through 2026.
A cloud-based POS allows you to conduct sales and check in on your business even when you’re not at the store. You access it directly from the internet, and it’s often compatible with most POS hardware (cash drawers, printers, etc.) and other tools in your tech stack. This is great if you’re a small business that sells in a store and online along with the occasional in-person event.
When you use a cloud-based POS and link it to your Shopify store, your inventory automatically adjusts, helping you mitigate costly problems like stockouts. Cloud-based POS systems are also typically less expensive and more convenient than a tethered on-premise solution.
There are other types of POS software that fall into one or both of the above categories:
Mobile POS (mPOS): A mobile point-of-sale can move around inside or outside a store. Store owners can take transactions from a central point of purchase, like a traditional checkout counter or cash register, or wherever they need it to be. To take transactions on the go, retailers often use hardware like a tablet or smartphone to process transactions. Best for: Pop-up shops; increasing in-store conversion rate
Tablets: A tablet POS can be both mobile and docked to a station. These POS systems run on Android tablets or iPads, acting as either the main POS or supplementing your central POS station. This is also a mPOS. Best for: Selling products with lots of details, features, and/or use cases; collecting lots of customer data at the point of purchase; self-serve options; pop-up shops and event sales
Desktop: POS systems that run on a desktop computer are typically on-premise solutions docked to a checkout station. They’re bulky but often more powerful and reliable, depending on the hardware you choose.
The main POS station in a permanent brick-and-mortar store; businesses that want to add mPOS in addition to their desktop setup
Self-serve kiosks: Self-serve kiosks are common in food-based businesses, especially for quick-service restaurants and fast casual dining. This type of POS can drive a 15%–30% increase in average check size. They also work in retail environments. Best for: Food-based businesses; reducing lines and wait times; digitally savvy customers
POS apps: Depending on the POS, there are a few point of sale apps to choose from. POS apps work with your hardware and other compatible devices to enable you to access your data and manage business operations. Best for: Businesses that want flexibility and customizability without needing lots of technical resources or budget
Open-source POS: Open-source software allows companies to use their source code to build custom solutions with their platform. You can build your open-source POS system internally or with external collaborators. Best for: Enterprises with lots of technical resources; highly unique POS needs
Multichannel POS: A multichannel POS can integrate with various commerce channels, an increasingly important capability. These channels include your own website, third-party online marketplaces, your store, pop-up shops, event sales, wholesale, social media, and more. Best for: Ecommerce merchants who do or plan to sell in-person; multichannel online brands
Retail POS: A retail POS has features tailored to a brick-and-mortar business selling products. These features could include inventory management, forecasting, and multichannel selling. Best for: Pop-up shops; permanent brick-and-mortar stores in a traditional retail environment
Restaurant POS: Restaurant POS systems are designed with food-based businesses in mind. Specific features might include menu planning and costing, ingredient-level tracking, dish customizations, and self-serve ordering. Best for: Food-based businesses (fast food, casual, quick-serve, sit-down, etc.)
Components of a POS system
There are other pieces of hardware that can complement your POS setup:
Barcode scanner: In addition to scanning barcodes, you can also use some scanners to add discount codes. There are 1D barcode scanners that use the traditional bar code, and 2D barcode scanners that can read QR codes.
Cash drawer: Unless you only process cashless payments, you’ll need somewhere to put the cash customers use to pay for your products. The cash drawer is a safe, secure place to organize bills.
Credit and debit card reader: This piece of hardware can read debit and credit cards. There are several ways to read a card, including swipe, tap, and EMV chip. You need this for payment processing so you can receive the funds from the customer’s bank.
Receipt printer: These aren’t always essential, especially if you use Shopify POS, because you can send email receipts, but a printer can connect to your POS and spit out receipts on the spot.
Label printer: There are some instances where you’ll need to print a label—ship-from-store, for example. With a label printer as part of your POS setup, you can do that on the spot.
Scale: If you sell products by weight, you’ll need a scale to be able to determine how much to charge customers. Some scales connect directly to your POS for a seamless checkout.
What does a POS system do?
Modern POS systems offer far more functionality than simply administering transactions. They can complete other business functions, as well as inform important business decisions, including:
Managing inventory across all locations, both online and offline
Providing sales metrics and reporting
Managing customer data effectively
Improving in-store sales
Adapting to business needs with customizations
Managing inventory across all locations, both online and offline
Whether you have inventory at your storefront, pop-up shop, or warehouse, keeping accurate counts across the board is a tricky (and sometimes tedious) task. Inventory is one of your largest expenses as a retailer, and you need a simple way to manage it. That means having the right products in the right place at the right time—and a POS that helps you achieve that goal.
A modern POS system should help retailers manage inventory anywhere you keep your products. Not only does this level of inventory management make tracking easier, but fulfilling orders is quicker when you know how much of a product is at a given location at any time.
With a POS, you can easily monitor stock counts across all your stores, while keeping customers happy by avoiding stockouts and automatically ceasing sales of products when inventory runs out. Accurate stock counts streamline ordering from vendors so you always have inventory in stock wherever your products are selling best.
Complete visibility of your inventory across all locations also makes it easier to move stock from one place to another (e.g., from warehouse to storefront) when you run low on a product. And it’s simpler to create purchase orders and accurately create your demand forecasts.
Providing sales metrics and reporting
A POS is useful for far more than processing transactions. You also can use crucial information from your point-of-sale solution to make data-informed decisions about your entire business.
Modern POS systems make it painless to see analytics across every channel in your retail business, both individually and as part of your business as a whole. The ability to break down and filter sales data this way can often shed light on what’s working—and what isn’t.
So, when you’re assessing a POS system, ensure you can easily track the following:
Data for both in-store and online sales
Sales broken down over time (number of sales by day, week, month, etc.)
Sales per employee
Sales per channel (across all stores and for each location)
Staff activities broken down by employee
Product reports (to see what’s selling and what’s still sitting on shelves)
Number of orders (broken down by various stages of fulfillment)
Easy, intuitive access to this kind of data can help you make better decisions and understand the overall health of your business.
Managing customer data effectively
A POS should also help you easily collect, track, and manage customer information. Access to these details can help you better understand your ideal customers and identify your most loyal shoppers.
When evaluating your shortlist of POS contenders, make sure that your top choice helps you manage the following:
Customer profiles. Collect contact details to build in-depth profiles of your customers to help you learn more about them and their shopping habits.
Customer order histories. Quick access to a customer’s order history can help you effectively cross-sell and upsell by offering on-the-spot, tailored product recommendations based on past purchases.
Customer loyalty programs. A POS should give you access to your loyalty program across all sales channels, whether someone buys online, in-store, or elsewhere.
Improving in-store sales
The traditional shopping experience has changed, and retailers have to meet the ever-evolving demands of customers in order to compete. But a POS system can help you keep up with a shifting industry.
The right POS features can help you appeal to the empowered shopper and make more sales. For example, use your POS to stay in touch with customers and keep your products top of mind after they leave your store. Sales associates can email customers a list of items they were interested in but didn’t purchase while in-store, so, when they’re ready, the customer can buy those items via a feature like Shopify POS Email cart.
Providing a variety of shipping options is another way you can serve your customers’ evolving needs. You can use a POS feature to ship a purchase to whatever address is most convenient for a shopper, whether it’s their home, their office, or another location—which can give you a competitive edge.
A POS that offers flexible shipping alternatives can minimize the need for returns and exchanges and keep sales strong. That’s why the following pickup, purchase, and delivery options are quickly becoming table stakes:
Buy online, pick up in-store. In-store pickup allows customers to buy online and collect their order from the retailer’s physical store or a third-party location. Thousands of stores are decreasing returns and selling more by letting customers check the size, color, and shape of their purchases before walking out—all while offering highly valued flexibility.
Home delivery. After customers buy products in-store—especially heavy or large products, like furniture—they don’t necessarily want to lug it home with them. As an added convenience, offer home delivery. Or, if an item isn't available in-store, but is at another location, customers can buy in store and have the item shipped to their home.
In-store returns/exchanges for items purchased online. Creating a hassle-free returns experience for customers can actually build loyalty. For example, if a customer wants to return a product they purchased online, they may want to make a return immediately rather than sending the product back via snail mail. Make it simple for them to visit your store to make the return.
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Ecommerce Merchandising
Article | March 18, 2024
Introduction
Due to the dynamic nature of the industry and the ever-evolving demands of its customers, restaurant business owners are facing a unique set of challenges. This is compelling them to streamline their operations to meet customers' rising expectations while maintaining perfect control over all aspects of their establishment.
In addition, emerging innovative technology solutions are rapidly changing the world of payment systems, and the restaurant industry is the best example of it. Today, opening a restaurant is more than just serving food and making money. It is about providing a memorable experience to the customers and retaining them. As a robust restaurant point-of-sale (POS) solution assist in delivering a better customer experience, pacing up the ordering process, and managing inventory, among others, it is gaining huge popularity in the sector.
Why Does Restaurant Need to Invest in Modern POS Systems Today?
As the trends of online food ordering at dine-in and competition in the hospitality industry continue to deepen, it is becoming imperative for restaurant owners to efficiently manage the point of sale for their eatery. Also, the growing need for faster customer food service, efficient employee scheduling, and effective inventory management is encouraging business owners to adopt innovative restaurant technologies, such as restaurant POS systems. Here are some of the main reasons restaurants should integrate modern POS solutions.
Effective Ordering Processes
The ordering process, being the nerve center for restaurants, is one such aspect that needs serious attention. As food ordering processes that take a long time can significantly hamper the customer experience and satisfaction, owners of food establishments are aiming at leveraging novel restaurant POS systems to streamline and ease the food ordering processes.
Increase Cash Flow
Optimum cash flow is the backbone of any business. If restaurants are unable to maintain enough cash flow, they will have difficulties staying in business in the long run. Since restaurants are able to serve more customers per hour with fast-paced POS technology, allowing for greater sales and increased cash flow, business owners are aiming to deploy these modern POS solutions.
Organize and Track Profit and Loss
Keeping an accurate track of the income and expenses is of great importance for understanding the financial position of the eatery and creating an effective strategy to increase its revenue. A POS system can assist business owners in preparing a settlement at the end of each day, week, and month, keeping track of the ROI, and organizing profit and loss.
Offer Security to Customers
Customers or guests are increasingly using various cashless modes for transactions, such as credit cards, online banking, and others, for making payments. With increasing instances of customer data theft, guests are increasingly concerned about their data privacy and payment credentials. Hence, several food establishments are emphasizing embracing restaurant POS software to offer enhanced security to customers.
Build Customer Database
In today's highly competitive world, engaging and retaining customers is crucial for the success of businesses, especially in the restaurant industry. As the latest POS solutions aid restaurants in enhancing customer communications and loyalty, along with improving customer relationship management by building a customer database, these solutions are increasingly being sought in the sector.
The Ending Thought
With the emergence of innovative trends in the hospitality industry and the ever-changing needs of customers, it is becoming difficult for restaurant owners to keep the customers happy and build credibility in the long run. Since modern restaurant POS systems with advanced integrated technologies, such as artificial intelligence, can assist these restaurants in overcoming these obstacles along with providing numerous advantages, including cost reduction and increased ROI, these systems are anticipated to become a necessity for restaurants in the coming years.
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POS Solutions
Article | April 4, 2024
“Software-led payments is more than just ecommerce or online invoicing, as many software platforms are starting to offer solutions for card present transactions.”
- Caleb Avery, CEO of Tilled
The omnichannel retail marketplace has been witnessing a surge in recent years. A buyer has a natural tendency to check the details of the products or services on the internet. But a single purchase may involve different channels like apps, websites, store walk-ins, etc. For example, a customer may conduct online research and purchase an item before picking it up from a retail store; or, conversely, he may go to a nearby mall and inspect the product first before purchasing it online.
Therefore, retailing has become increasingly about providing multi-channel or cross-channel experiences to customers. If the merchant misses out on his goods being offered on any channel, it will harm the customer experience (CX).
In such a circumstance, deploying a POS system built for multi-site store networks that takes care of the maintenance of the website and all the locations in the chain simultaneously is a blessing for the retail sector. The point of sale is now an important part of an eCommerce plan for a business and a key part of its ongoing marketing strategy.
Drive Loyalty and Sales Using Your Omnichannel POS
A retailer's point of sale is the hub of every business action, wherein sales, marketing, inventory, customer management and customer service merge. But what many still don't realize is its powerful role in unlocking customer loyalty and higher revenue.
With a modern and adaptable point-of-sale system, lengthy transaction times are minimized and may be boosted while simultaneously processing more consumers, enhancing the customer experience.
Your omnichannel POS should permit the configuration of several payment methods. Customers can choose various payment methods, such as credit cards, digital wallets, PayPal, and cash.
POS data should be utilized in all company decisions in today's society. Additionally, POS data is essential for merchandise planning. For example, if a product is not selling quickly enough, sell-through and sales-by-margin analytics can influence your pricing decisions and allow you to adjust accordingly.
A common misconception about POS is that it is only a point of contact between your clients and your business. However, when its tremendous capabilities are utilized, it becomes a tool that helps you understand your clients, enhance their experience, and guarantee you are prepared to meet their demands.
Importance of Using POS and Ecommerce Integration
Combining CRM and POS software enables staff members to review and update client information instantly. You can develop new sales methods based on customers' interests and previous purchases. The omnichannel point of sale integrates with Tally, Quickbooks, etc. You may export order receipts from all channels directly.
With omnichannel POS, your firm is accessible to customers 24 hours a day. Customers can purchase at one store and receive delivery from another, as well as other choices designed to improve the shopping experience.
A retail eCommerce platform with seamless integration benefits both businesses and customers.
Bottom Line
Innovation in omnichannel retailing and investment in the POS system's digitization helps track and fulfill online, and offline customer needs. It goes without saying that the future of POS and retail are closely intertwined. In the coming years, POS will see a radical shift. Now is the optimal time for laggards to catch up or risk falling behind.
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POS Solutions
Article | February 12, 2021
For every business leader, growth is the key goal. No matter what the size of the business one leads, their strategies revolve around the overall growth of the company. However, the main challenge that they had to face is to gain the lead most cost-effectively and feasibly.
Nowadays, businesses are utilizing technology to integrate, automate or redesign their process operations. It has helped them in acquiring streamlined processes, minimal cost, and enhanced production.
But how technology can help in strategizing for business growth? Here, the digital transformation of the business is the force driving success and growth. So let’s understand what is needed to gain exceptional results.
Cloud Computing & Business
Cloud computing has been around for a long time now. It can not only increase efficiency but also offers better security and fast process operation. To make it highly effective and enjoy its full benefits, it’s important to take help from an experienced team. Also, businesses can choose from the wide range of cloud service providers available in the market according to the requirements.
Applications
Honestly, the number of smartphone users has increased in recent years. So to make the product and services reachable to a larger range of customers, organizations need to hire developers and develop web or mobile apps that are responsive and user friendly. It is the best way for gaining success in any business.
Social Media
Social media like Instagram, Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, etc. have changed the way people interact with each other and brands. It makes the social media platform a gold mine for businesses. All that an enterprise needs to do is create a business profile and start targeting the potential customers while connecting and engaging with them. It helps in increasing attracting, offering, and sharing products or services with the audience.
Big Data Analytics
The last and most important factor in any business growth is data. The growth strategy of a business should be supported by relevant and valid data. To use data effectively, business leaders need to learn the way to collect data around the internet and analyze it for achieving valuable insights. With the right data in the pocket, companies can easily adapt powerful strategies, approaches, and plans instantly to give an unbeatable boost to their business.
Conclusion
Undoubtedly, technology gives a high potential for strategizing foremost business plans. But, the entire process of digitizing business will take time. However, by listening to the customer and identifying the right tools, businesses can enjoy digital value. All that organizations need to do is keep themselves updated with new technology tools and trends that can highly impact the business growth.
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