The POS Software Blog
News from Tower Systems about locally made POS software for specialty local retailers.
We shared updated information with our customers over the weekend on the Microsoft Windows 10 update that is being pushed currently by Microsoft. We have sought to provide clarity and certainty to small business POS software who rely on us for technical advice and support.
RETAIL LOYALTY INSIGHT: HOW A $2.50 DISCOUNT VOUCHER RESULTED IN PURCHASES OF $1,500 FROM A FIRST TIME SHOPPER
I want to share with you a true story of what happened recently in my own retail business. It is a story of how a small everyday purchase led to something bigger and how this happened as a result of fundamental changes in how the business is run.
To understand the personal nature of this story … Tower Systems owns and operates several retail businesses including a newsagency in a major Westfield shopping centre. We have this business to provide us with a real-world experience in retail where we can experiment with our POS software.
While this story is about what happened in my newsagency, it could happen in any type of business. This newsagency, by the way, is not your typical newsagency. Close to 70% of what we sell is non traditional. It is high margin higher price point items that sit at the core of this unique business.
At its core, this is a story about shopper loyalty, especially shopper loyalty in a retail situation where between 25% and 30% of shoppers visiting the business are not local and therefore not likely to engage with the old-school points-based loyalty program.
A customer passing the shop noticed our greeting card range and stepped into make a purchase because of a specific need. They purchased two cards. On their receipt was a voucher for almost $2.00. As they are not usually in the shopping centre they looked around for something in which to spend the $2.00.
This is the key: the customer came in to make a quick destination purchase. The type of business we were did not matter. They were on the way to the car park and happened to pass buy our shop. Point 1: location is in our favour. The stepped in because they saw our greeting cards. Point 2: the floor placement of cards was key in getting them in the shop.
Having made the purchase, the customer then noticed, for the first time, what else we sold – because of the $2.00 discount voucher on their receipt. Point 3: we got them to look around and see what else we sold.
The customer did a 180 degree turn and saw a locked glass cabinet of beautiful collectible bears. This was in the right place at the right time as they had been looking for a gift for a child. Money was not an issue. They wanted something to last a lifetime. They purchased a $500.00 bear.
This purchase would not have been made had they not been given the $2.00 voucher on their receipt. The voucher is what got them to notice what else we sold.
Fast forward several weeks and this customer who said they don’t usually come to the shopping centre was back for another $500.00 purchase. Now, several more weeks later, the customer has another $500.00 order placed.
I can directly trace more than $1,500.00 in sales back to the $2.00 voucher.
The software produced the voucher based on rules I established. The initial staff member serving the customer made a brief professional pitch highlighting the voucher. These are both important factors as they are at the core of a structured consistent approach to what has become the most lucrative loyalty program I have seen in my 30+ years involved in retail as a retailer myself and working with retailers in many different channels.
While most times vouchers are handed out they are not redeemed, they are redeemed enough to make them worthwhile. They are redeemed for good margin product as they get people looking at the shop for the first time and discovering items to purchase they were not in our four walls to consider.
The discount vouchers are disruptive and this is why I love them. People respond in unpredictable ways.
Best of all, the discount vouchers are profitable.
For this story to work in any retail business you need to have the right products, placed strategically in-store. Your employees need to make the right pitch. Plus, you need to be attracting people who don’t know and probably don’t care what shop they are in.
Tower Systems offers not only excellent software but also the business acumen, experience and drive to help you make the most of the opportunities in the software.
From points on a purchase to buy X and get Y FREE to Discount Vouchers, the Tower software offers flexibility in loyalty offerings that enable you to make the pitch right for your business to bring shoppers bag to spend more than might usually be the case.
Tower Systems is helping retailers make the most of Christmas with Christmas themed free training POS software opportunities. In groups and individually, Tower is delivering access to free live training to give retailers comfort from knowledge and confidence that their Tower POS software can deliver even more than they expected this Christmas.
Our comprehensive free training opportunities win us new customers.
High end retailers in jewellery, homewares, gift and select other retail channels like to be able to follow up customers who have purchased specific items. Thanks to the purchase tracking and marketing tools in our POS software we are able to help retailers with this follow up.
The result is finely targeted marketing communications that can bring a shopper back for a further experience in-store, delivering an enhanced experience to the shopper and a more valuable experience to the retailer.
Finely tuned purchase based marketing tools are rare in POS software. Thanks to deep customer relationships we are able to provide these through our Tower software and thereby help our customers access more benefits from working with us.
Deep and comprehensive marketing tools are a key feature of the Tower software. Personal training and comprehensive support are what really bring the facilities alive for small business retailers.
POS software is only as good as those supporting it. This is a maxim by which we life here at Tower Systems. We make sure our support is excellent, backing excellent software.
POS Solutions, a small competitor of ours, published on their that an employee of a competitor had been found commenting on their blog. For the record we note the competitor is not Tower Systems and the person to whom they refer is not an employee of ours.
UPDATE: We note POS has permitted a comment on their post, a comment that seeks to link us to what the Director of POS has complained about. They are trying to spin an argument that is not supported by the facts. The commenter the post is about is/was not from Tower Systems, the actions the Director attributes to the ‘competitor’ later suggested to be us, are not true. Shame on them for this slur. To underscore this point – the same director vets every comment published. Comments are only on their company blog if he approves. This makes him and POS the publisher of the comment.
Managing staff can be a challenge for small business retailers as too many operate more on a friendship basis than through structured processes and using accurate business data to guide decisions.
Thanks to smart tools in the Tower Point of Sale software, our retail partners have at their disposal tools on which they can rely to bring consistency, planning and comfort to employee management.
Here are four of the tools available to retailers for managing employees using the Tower software:
Using these tools and other facilities in the smart Tower retail management software retail business owners and their managers can build strong outcomes for their business and provide better oversight and management of employees.
Knowing the economic value of an employee to a business can help the business manage good outcomes for the business and for the employee. This is where data plays a key role and where Tower systems can help retailers improve their situation.
Thursday November 26, 2015 is Thanksgiving in the US and while this is part of the cultural heritage of the US, it is an opportunity for us to reflect and be thankful.
We are thankful for our customers who use our software for this not only benefits us commercially, it fulfils us as we enjoy seeing our creative efforts being of use to others.
Tower Systems works closely with bike retailers, to help them compete with online bike retailers. Through our Bike Shop Software we help in a range of practical ways.
Here are five ways local bike shops can compete with online
The difference between a bricks and mortar bike shop and an website selling bikes is that your business, the bricks and mortar business, is real, it can be visited, it’s personal. Everything you say and do needs to reinforce this and build trust based on this.
Be open about price
Don’t be afraid to say that online businesses can sell for less. That’s because they do less and care less. You could do this too but that’s probably not the business you want to run.
Competing on price really comes down to changing the game. This is where a properly structured and consistently run loyalty program offering an amount of cash off the next purchase based on the current purchase can make a difference for you.
Being consistent
Online businesses through the software behind their websites are consistent if nothing else. This is where good bike shop software can help a bike shop compete. It can drive consistency in the bricks and mortar business on pricing, loyalty rewards, customer marketing, buying, pricing and employee performance tracking and motivation.
Good bike shop software is designed specifically for bike shops to leverage the difference bike shops offer over online retailers. When used to the fullest, it can drive sales and bring customers back more often. It can play a key role on competing with online.
Independent pet shops face tough competition from Pet Barn, supermarkets and major pet warehouse businesses. These big businesses spend big on advertising to drive traffic. Their goal is to take businesses from locally connected and locally owned family pet shops.
Tower Systems is working with independent pet retailers and groups of independent pet retailers to help them more effectively compete with the big chains.
Through our Pet Shop Software, our engagement with marketing groups, our work with suppliers and direct contact with pet retailers, we have developed a strategy that breaks into useful tactics to help pet retailers compete in a structured and consistent way from their shop floor through all levels of the business.
Competition starts with being organised and Tower Systems helps independent pet retailers to become organised. Good organisation leads to a plan for practical store level competition that fans out through word of mouth and other touch points.
Our work for and with pet retailers is important to us. We are proud to be helping this important channel compete.
We are proud to have launched this new video on the weekend. It is having the desired effect of educating retail business owners.
Through a series of practical business development meetings throughout 2015 and one-on-one work Tower Systems is actively working with engaged newsagents on reinventing their businesses.
The days of the old newsagency relying on lotteries, newspapers, magazines and stationery are over. Engaged retailers are leveraging new product categories to attract new shoppers and to lift the overall gross profit of their businesses.
Tower Systems, through its close and direct contact with many in its 1,850+ strong newsagency software user community, is playing an active role in talking about business structure, product buying, marketing and overall strategy.
We believe in the newsagency channel, not as a channel as Australian shoppers currently view it but as a channel for the future of engaged, diverse and growing businesses. Many businesses that identify as newsagencies today will not be seen as newsagencies if you shop them next year or the year after. Yes, the transition is that dramatic.
Because of our work with other retail channels and our engagement overseas in retail strategy studies, Tower Systems is well positioned to help Australian newsagents navigate to a more profitable future.
The work we are doing in this area is beyond what is usual for a software company. We are proud to have the resourced and strategic thinking to be able to serve in this way.
Our industry standard newsagency software has been enhanced to serve the needs of the new News Corp. subscriber data project. The enhancements have been made to the News Corp. developed specifications The software has passed XchangeIT testing and will be released in the next update that is currently in our internal quality assurance prior to beta release. The timing of the update is on track for later this month. Newsagents will need to be supported to have access to this update. This is one of several projects we have been working on for News.
Tower Systems is actively engaged with Plants Plus retailers already using its Garden Centre Software to help them navigate away from the current Plants Plus loyalty program to an in-house offer. This change is necessary because of the decision by HTH to withdraw from Plants Plus.
Having met with folks from Plants Plus we are well prepared to assist with the transition to provide local Plants Plus business owners with certainty and comfort not only in handling the transition for loyalty rewards points but also to enable them to sell gift cards for their own business with certainty and ease.
Our most recent meeting with Plants Plus was Friday last week, enabling us to provide certainly and direction for local Plants Plus owners. We are working with them and our customers to deliver the best possible outcome to Plants Plus retailers and their customers.
The work tower systems is doing in this area is important for our existing Plants Plus customers and those joining our community of garden centre Software users.
Based ion our many years experience and our personal work with more than 3,000 retailers, here are the five most common bits of advice small business retailers ignore. Do these five things and your business will improve.
These tips are offered as part of a series from Tower Systems, a POS software company serving more than 3,500 small business retailers with specialist POS software for a range of retail niches.
Every day through our software, advice, support and training we provide help beyond the software, help to make a genuine difference to the small retail businesses we serve.
This is easy. Small business retailers can beat big businesses by consistently delivering a better service:
These tips are offered as part of a series from Tower Systems, a POS software company serving more than 3,500 small business retailers with specialist POS software for a range of retail niches.
Every day through our software, advice, support and training we provide help beyond the software, help to make a genuine difference to the small retail businesses we serve.
Running a small business need not be as stressful as it often is. Reducing stress starts with the business operating to a carefully developed and consistently executed structure. Good POS software is keep to a business operating structure. Get this right and stress will fall. Leverage the data in your software and pleasure will grow – you will benefit beyond money, we see customers enjoying their businesses more as a result of using the software to help in key management areas of the business.
Here are five ways the Tower software can help you gain more pleasure from your software:
These tips are offered as part of a series from Tower Systems, a POS software company serving more than 3,500 small business retailers with specialist POS software for a range of retail niches.
Every day through our software, advice, support and training we provide help beyond the software, help to make a genuine difference to the small retail businesses we serve.
Suppliers serving independent small business retailers can sell more product without a doubt if they are smart in the way they engage with retailers. Suppliers who do not engage with these opportunities miss sales and often find themselves without customers.
Do these five things and expect to sell more to small business retailers:
These tips are offered as part of a series from Tower Systems, a POS software company serving more than 3,500 small business retailers with specialist POS software for a range of retail niches.
Every day through our software, advice, support and training we provide help beyond the software, help to make a genuine difference to the small retail businesses we serve.
Tower Systems is helping Plants Plus retailers to transition from the group run loyalty program to the Tower Systems Garden centre software loyalty offer, to retail existing customer balances, make offers easily and leverage the long-developed loyalty database for the benefit of each Plants Plus business.
The work being done by Tower Systems in this area is comprehensive, beyond the software. We are working with HTH and Plants Plus retailers to ensure a smooth hassle-free transition that does not let one Plants Plus customer slip through. We are leveraging years of working in the loyalty space in several retail channels with diverse requirements.
The work being done by Tower Systems above and beyond the software is the type of work the company offers retailers in all channels in which it serves.
Tower Systems is working with several regional newspaper publishers to ease the introduction of price changes through their retail network. As our newsagency software is the industry standard we work with these publishers as we do with other suppliers to help newsagents handle newspaper cover price changes with ease.
We are grateful to the publishers who share price change information long in advance so we can develop appropriate messaging to make the change simple.
Retailers think about POS software systems as all being the same. Usually, they look upon them as a cash register replacement. While that is true,, good POS software does considerably more than this. Good POS software delivers benefits deep within a retail business.
Specialist POS software for specialty retailers such as garden centres, bike shops, jewellers, pet shops, newsagents and others benefit from software tailored to their needs beyond the cash register function. Usually, such specialisation includes linking to suppliers and serving mutual needs.
Here are five of many unexpected ways the Tower Systems specialist retail channel software helps small business retailers:
These tips are offered as part of a series from Tower Systems, a POS software company serving more than 3,500 small business retailers with specialist POS software for a range of retail niches.
Every day through our software, advice, support and training we provide help beyond the software, help to make a genuine difference to the small retail businesses we serve.
Next to rent, labour is the next largest cost faced by small business retailers. Too often, retailers do hot manage labour as effectively as they can. In our work with small business retailers across a number of channels we have developed ideas on reducing labour costs. Here are five ideas we see work well:
These tips are offered as part of a series from Tower Systems, a POS software company serving more than 3,500 small business retailers with specialist POS software for a range of retail niches.
Every day through our software, advice, support and training we provide help beyond the software, help to make a genuine difference to the small retail businesses we serve.
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