What Constitutes a Complete Retail Business Point of Sale Solution?
Gone are the days of bulky, immobile cash registers – thank goodness! They served their purpose for a time, but retailers and consumers alike are equally grateful for the advancements made in the payment space. Over the years, point of sale (PoS) solutions have evolved and now merchants can take payments anywhere their customers are.
Effectively, these enhancements have improved how retailers serve their customers and run their businesses. The question is, how do you find the right PoS solution for your business?
Our goal today is to explore what really constitutes a complete PoS solution. Not merely the actual hardware, software, and connectivity, although this is crucial, but the whole picture. We’ll cover features like reporting capabilities, inventory management, the ease of integration to CRM/ERP solutions, and much more.
Armed with this information, you’ll find it easier to choose the solution that’s right for you.
What is a PoS?
Point of sale (PoS) is named for the apt way in which it describes the physical place where customers complete their transaction with the seller. It quite literally is where a customer pays for their goods in a store, at a market, on the side of the street, etc.
While a PoS comes in many different forms, all of these solutions are made up of hardware and software, with the view to enable your business to accept payments from customers and make sales in person.
PoS Hardware: What it Looks Like
PoS hardware is the actual input and output vehicles used to complete the transaction. Traditionally these used to be standard cash registers. Now, the components of PoS hardware includes (but isn’t limited to) touchscreens, smartphones, tablets, and mobile PoS. These options are often lower in cost and designed to be user-friendly, making them ideal for smaller businesses looking for an affordable solution.
Other components include the more familiar credit card terminals, and while card readers are becoming less popular as customers look for more hygienic, contactless payment solutions, there are still those who prefer using their credit and debit cards. Additionally, there are also various PoS-related devices, such as barcode scanners, cash drawers, keyboards, and receipt printers.
PoS Software: What it Does
The hardware does play a significant role in your choice of PoS solution, but the real decision hinges on the type of software it uses.
You see, the software is the operating system that you use to transact in-person, determining a range of factors, like how easy it is to use and what you can do with it. For example, different PoS solutions come equipped with software that enables you to manage store inventory, keep track of sales, collect customers’ contact information and order history, and integrate with customer relationship management (CRM) solutions to boost customer service.
There are even some that offer or can be integrated with enterprise resource planning (ERP) software so that you can better manage your staff, handling activities like recording customer interactions, sales tracking, pipeline management, prospecting, and creating/evaluating marketing campaigns.
Importantly, the right solution can help you run your business across an eCommerce platform and your physical shop using just one back-office, instead of two systems that you then need to reconcile.
That’s why the software itself matters enormously. Arguably, it’s the most vital constituent of your PoS solution.
How the Right PoS Can Benefit Your Business
Everyone wants to offer their customers faster ways to transact securely, but there are more benefits to a PoS solution. In our experience, if you know which benefits will drive success in your particular retail business, you’ll have a better understanding of what it is that you’re looking for.
The main benefits a PoS system can offer:
- Data Rich Transactions: Reporting and analysis features provide you with insights into sales, profits, customer purchases, and expenses in real-time, no matter where you are so that you can make data-driven business decisions.
- Accurate Accounting: Accurate financial reporting is essential and with accounting software embedded into your PoS solution you can create balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements, and even analyse your accounting and sales data together to review business decisions, like a new pricing strategy.
- Inventory Control: Real-time sales recordings can alert you to low stock on certain items, enabling you to adjust your inventory accordingly. You’ll also identify what isn’t selling and avoid overstocking, while placing those items on offer.
- One-Back Office: The right PoS software can track and record data across multiple locations, eliminating the need for certain inconvenient, and admin- and cost-heavy tasks, like having to physically be present to check inventory and count receipts. It also reduces employee theft.
- Improved Employee Management: Using ERP software, your PoS can help handle activities like recording customer interactions, sales tracking, pipeline management, prospecting, and of course, better scheduling to ensure that productivity is kept high and payroll data is accurate.
- Detailed Receipts: Using inventory data, your PoS can produce recipes that contain the item description, price, and even savings from a sale or coupon.
- Customer Management: Increase customer satisfaction by providing service tailored to the customer, including a personalised sales history, predictive shopping lists, discounts, and customer rewards.
We Can Help
Clearly there are so many ways that a PoS solution can benefit your retail business, from improving sales and increasing productivity to keeping your inventory at manageable levels and boosting customer satisfaction. It just takes finding your perfect PoS match and then making sure you stay connected, which we can help you with.
So connect with us, and let’s talk about what kind of PoS solution your retail business needs and which connectivity solution best matches those needs.
