Data is king in any business. This is especially true in independent small retail businesses where data is key to being competitive against better resourced businesses. To often in our work with small business retailers we find a lack of discipline around business data, too little respect.
This advice has been written for use in businesses where the business data has been found to be useless, faulty and / or of little value.
There is no doubt: poor business data = poor business decisions.
If you ever hope to sell your retail business, accurate business data is vital, it will determine the price you achieve for your business.
Don’t be one of those business owners who only cares about accurate business data when you decide to sell as that could be too late.
Here is all you need to do to ensure you have accurate business data.
- Ensure you have a good department and category structure. This helps ensure the reports are useful. By good we suggest no more than fifteen departments and no more than fifteen categories within each department.
- Arrive all stock into your POS software. The best way to do this is to receive and import into your software electronic invoices from suppliers. This is done in Invoice Arrivals.
The slower way is to manually enter invoices into your software item by item. This is done in Invoice Arrivals.
If you created an order using the software and this order subsequently arrives, you can receive the order – to save time.
- Scan all stock you sell at the point of sale. Resist excuses like items are too small or too big or it takes too long or it is impractical. All these excuses can be countered.
- Scan all stock you return to suppliers. Use the Returns facility.
- Scan all stock you write off. Use the Write-off Stock facility.
Very simple, right?
Accurate business data is up to you. Not your software company, not your suppliers.
Accurate business data is 100% up to you.
Once you have accurate data, track business performance. Use the accurate data to see trends in your business, to guide better quality business decisions.
It is easy to create accurate business data. The operational and financial benefits are extraordinary.
How Tower Systems can help. We have articles in our knowledge base on everything discussed here. We also have training videos that show you what to do. We host weekly online training workshops, accessible from anywhere, where you can ask questions on any topic. Plus, supported customers have access to free one on one training.
