A guide to choosing a retail point of sale system

A retail POS system is not only a medium of transaction for goods and services, it also has retail specific capabilities to help streamline operations, automate processes and gain valuable insights for your retail business.

Cash registers are not enough to keep up with the needs of today's retail business. A good POS system is crucial for a retail business, especially in today's constantly evolving retail industry. To remain competitive, many retail establishments have been using their POS system as the backbone of their business technology.

What makes a retail specific POS system

Inventory Management

A key feature for all retail businesses. Retail operations have a huge emphasis of staying in stock, and optimising stock in periods and quantity. A retail POS system should be able to churn out multiple reports on your inventory and stock levels, for example, best selling items, least sold items, low stock reports etc. Your POS system should also allow you to determine presets on low stock value and optimal stock value, and push alerts whenever low stock items have been sold.

Other important features for inventory management includes variance report, stock take, stock in or out functions and stock transfer between outlets and warehouses. Such capabilities will help you in timely restocking, as running out of stock often results in retail businesses losing customers to their competitors.

Multiple Payment Integration

Having multiple payment methods integrated provides the convenience to your customers, allowing them to use any payment method of their choice. Providing convenience to customers often leads to better overall customer satisfaction and more returning customers, which is a key revenue generator for a retail business, a topic which will be covered in a future post!

On top of that, being able to integrate multiple payment methods helps you reduce human error and achieve better payment security through automation.

Employee Management

This is an often overlooked aspect of retail business when looking for a retail POS system. With the employee management feature in your retail POS system, you can easily tabulate your staffs salary by referring to the working hours in staff reports, generated through the clock in and clock out feature in your retail POS system. Staff commission can also be automatically calculated by a retail POS system equipped with employee management software.

Customer Relationship Management

Being able to store customer's details and their purchase history helps you to create a personal experience for your customers, increasing your customer retention rate. Apart from being able to store customer purchase history, a retail POS system will help you keep track of customer rewards, enabling you to create a loyalty program to boost your returning sales.

Quick Check Out Process

Retail POS systems should be able to complete a transaction in as little time as possible to keep the queues moving. A research has shown that they lost 75% of their customers simply due to long waiting time. Hence, a user friendly interface with less clicks to complete a transaction is key to boost your retail productivity and revenue.

Reporting Capabilities

A retail POS system with robust reporting capabilities allows you to gain valuable insights to your business, helping you to make adjustments to stay ahead of the competition. Having a cloud based reporting system and backend takes your productivity a step further by allowing you to remotely churn out reports and make backend adjustments to your retail business.

Conclusion

Essentially, a good retail POS system should help you reduce the time spent on operation management and help you focus on the important aspect of business, to develop strategies to sell more. If you are starting up a retail business, or looking for a POS upgrade, do drop us your contact below and we will be in touch with you to arrange a free demo!