The POS Software Blog
News from Tower Systems about locally made POS software for specialty local retailers.
We are grateful to the hundreds of businesses already using our Aussie made and supported garden centre software. Here’s a video we shot just over a week ago where we explore some of the features and benefits of this software for independent garden centres.
As owners of retail businesses, especially small retail businesses, local retail businesses, know … everyone is an expert, everyone has advice on what to do, what to stock, how to grow the business.
Our retail management advice has been fine-tuned over decades of service of local small business retailers in a range of specialty retail channels. It has come, too, from our own ownership and operating of a range of retail businesses across four different specialty retail channels. We own three online shops and several online businesses today.
The retail management advice we share here is a taste of the support we offer small business retailers beyond the POS software we make, sell and support.
Today, in this post, our focus is on what we consider to be the most important advice for small business retailers. We call it bankable advice, advice you can rely on to add measurable value to your business.
Success in small business retail is there for the taking, through management action. Success comes from consistent pursuit of success. Systems helps you consistently pursue success.
Good POS software companies can help you with this, they can help you drive a more successful and valuable retail business. That’s certainly our goal at Tower Systems.
Shopper efficiency refers to the commercial value a business derives from a shopper, usually from a visit of a shopper, a single visit.
Smart POS software plays a key real in guiding better shopper efficiency. It does this through insights into business performance as tracked and curated through the POS software.
Small business retailers can learn, through smart POS software:
Smart POS software is key to harvesting these insights and more for small business retailers, to help them see what they may not have known about their businesses.
Tower Systems develops smart POS software and it backs it with advice, training and support to help retailers make the most of the software, to gain the insights to which we refer here that can show retailers ways they have not expected for their businesses.
We leverage our own retail experience to help;p small business retailers to go beyond the technology and into the realm of business insights so they can find their own business advice, relevant to their businesses, through using the software.
Tower Systems is grateful to serve more than 3,500 small business retailers using its specialty retail POS software in Australia and New Zealand. Through years of service we have built up a deep chest of advice and insights, which we willingly leverage for our POS software user customers.
Stamping a loyalty card in a coffee shop, gift shop, pet shop, toy shop and other settings can be a thing of the past thanks to terrific tools in the smart POS software from Tower Systems.
Here is a new video we shot a few days ago explaining how to set this up in our software and how to drive sales through it…
A year ago, Tower Systems launched a new rental solution for acquiring access to its POS software for small business retailers. What this means is that any business owner wanting to access our POS software can do so through a rental offer.
Making our POS software available to rent for a few dollars a day makes it cash flow effective.
There is no finance agreement to sign. No contract to lock in.
Customers can cancel the rental at any time, meaning their rental obligation is no more than 30 days. This makes the cost of accessing our POS software lower than ever.
By renting POS software, small business retailers are able to put this in place quickly and easily without having to invest significant capital, leaving those funds for products and other more practical investments in their businesses.
Included in the few dollars a day rental price is everything on this list:
All of these support and assistance tools are built into the low daily rental cost. Making the cost of the software rental valuable and easy for businesses.
POS software rental makes accessing our software easy. From a technical perspective, ur customers can run the software on their desktop computers or in the cloud – the choice is theirs. We are happy to serve whatever need customers have in that situation.
POS software rental is here for the long term. We think it’s what small business retailers want.
Rent for $185 a month: Aussie made POS software for garden centres.
$2,500 off setup and training. Usually $3,750.00, order between now and November 30, 2020 and you pay $1,250 for personal training and setup. See it in an obligation free and safe demo: sales@towersystems.com.au.
This is a genuine limited-time saving for garden centres, $2,500 off our user training and setup package.
Our comprehensive garden centre software offers many benefits, including:
Rent our garden centre specialty software for $185.00 a month, giving you:
Rent for $185.00 each 30 days, in advance. It can be cancelled at any time.
We have a structured and personalised on-boarding process, done in your business. With this limited-time special offer, the up-front on-boarding fee is only $1,750.00 (inc. GST). This includes comprehensive personal training and system setup services, and more.
We are grateful to business owners and staff in your channel who guide our software development. Their advice helps us make more useful software.
See our software in a personal live online demonstration: sales@towersystems.com.au.
If you are in a retail channel with big competitors, we suggest you think carefully before you take your current products online. Do your research and see if you feel you can compete with this online already, especially the big competitors.
This advice from us is especially relevant if your online plans are about attracting shoppers located outside your current catchment area.
Take the pet space. National pet retailers have a strong presence as do several online-only businesses. They own the value space, where people are buying on price, as well as the service space where people need it now. This is especially true with everyday pet food.
You have to ask yourself what is my point of difference? and can I make enough money off this to justify the website investment?
In terms of pet food and unless you are selling products unique to your business, it would be a tough road to find new shoppers outside your current catchment area. If you think about it, what do they have to go on, especially if you are selling known brands. Service and price are the two key factors. The big players will out spend and out service you.
Look at dog food, there are currently 8,800 searches a day in Australia for this. Once you add in the 65,000 variations to dog food related searches in Australia every day you soon hit almost 700,000 search results. That is the pool in which you would play if you are selling dog food. This is data from a respected data tool we subscribe access to.
Click here to see a summary report we ran recently on dog food. Click here to see a spreadsheet of of the first 30,000 keywords relating to this.
This example is relevant to all of our customers, regardless of whether they sell dog food. Each marketplace faces big business online challenges where keywords have been richly and widely mined.
If you are considering going online and want to reach shoppers beyond your current catchment area, your website will need to pitch in a way that differentiates to others.
So, if you are considering online and want to attract new shoppers, what is unique about your offer and is it financially viable.
We can help. We will research keywords for you, before you set on a path for a new or reinvigorated website. If you would like us to do this, feel free to email me direct (mark@towersystems.com.au) with keywords that you are considering. I will check out traffic volumes for you and email a report with data to help guide your consideration.
If the dog food example does not connect with you, let’s look at toys. In Australia right now, there are 40,500 searches for toys. On top of this, there are 528,000 keyword variables relating to toys with 7 million results. Click here to see a summary report based on current searches in Australia for Toys, which we ran recently.
Our core point here is that planning before you go online is critical to ensuring success once you are online. There are many opportunities online. They are often outside what retailers see as their preferred online solution.
Taking your business online is like creating a start up business. Researching before you begin is critical.
The Tower Systems POS software is integrated with Humm and ZipPay / ZipMoney and have been since they launched. Both offer small business retailers valuable tools for buy now pay later trading in their specialty retail businesses.
Using Humm or Zip, retailers are able to offer easy over the counter purchase to customers who might otherwise have wanted to use LayBy. This way the customers can take their items immediately and the retailer is paid the next day.
There are rules and processes, which are managed by the POS software.
Tower Systems delivered the first POS software integration for Humm, pioneering years ago a solution that has been beneficial for many small business retailers. This was followed by the ZipPay and ZipMoney integration with the Tower POS software.
Offering buy now pay later is particularly helpful in retail situations where a business is supplying one time only shoppers or infrequent shoppers as it helps the business capture sales that the old LayBy approach may not have served for those businesses.
Integration is easy and payment is seamless. Tower Systems helps retailers connect with bot the respected buy now pay later finance companies, delivering beneficial access and providing front line support to serve these business needs.
While our POS software continues to offer LayBy, it is being used less as businesses seek to use less space for then storage of LayBy goods. Also, consumer legislation covering LayBy can sometimes present more onerous challenges for retailers than nis the case for buy now pay later operations.
The Zip and Humm integrations and just two of plenty of integrations delivered by Tower Systems in this space of helping small business retailers offer broader solutions beyond the core POS software functions. Tower has a long track record of working with other businesses, connecting with them and helping small business retailers to leverage these connections for their own operations.
Tower Systems is a vertical market POS software company serving thousands of independent and small business retailers in Australia and New Zealand with fresh and innovative POS software that is tailored to the unique needs of each retail channel in which it serves.
All through Corona we have been helping retailers pivot online thanks to our fixed price Shopify website development. We continue to run open, transparent and interactive online workshops for retailers, where we answer questions and provide plenty of examples. Here is a video of one of our recent sessions.
Tower Systems continues to develop beautiful Shopify websites for small business retailers in Australia.
Our Shopify development work is 100% done in Australia, by developers who work for our company, in Australia. This matters because our team members understand Australian retail. They also understand how to connect the Shopify websites to POS software, like our own POS software.
Our Shopify website development is done on a fixed price basis. We do this in service our our retail business customers, specialty retailers with specialty needs. We provide a comprehensive plan as well as a terrific hand over document that outlines how any retailer can get the most from the Shopify site.
As a partner of Shopify, we bring the latest insights and tools to life in each website that we develop for our our customers. As Shopify evolves, so do we. we participate in Shopify conferences, face to face in Las Vegas and Toronto as well as online, to ensure we are up to date and reflecting the opportunities of their platforms.
Our POS software connected Shopify websites that we develop offer easy access to AfterPay, ZipPay, Humm, PayPal, click and collect, Sendle and more in terms of seamless integrations. These, plus social media integrations, offer true connectivity between our Shopify websites and the retail businesses they bring to life online.
Designed to serve your needs, the Shopify websites we develop are done in collaboration, with regular communication, offering our customers opportunities to learn with us so as to make using and adjusting the site in the future easy and smart of the retail business.
Tower Systems undertakes Shopify website development primarily for small and independent retail businesses. These customers are at the core of our business. The work is done 100% in our website development team, which is based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. We have a separate development team for our POS software. But … both teams work together to deliver seamless connectivity from which our small business retail customers can benefit.
Our fixed price approach to Shopify website development is clear, transparent and thorough. we have a wonderful portfolio of sites delivered already. we’d be glad to share details with anyone interested in Shopify website development for their retail business.
To find our more, please reach out to our sales team at sales@towersystems.com.au.
Details matter when it comes to specialty POS software for speciality retailers. Here are some highlights of detailed facilities in our specialty retail POS software:
Tower Systems developed and supports POS software made for specialty retailers in Australia and New Zealand. Our focus is only on local, indie, small business retailers, specialty retailers who differentiate by being specialist at what they do, like us.
We are grateful to our more than 3,000 customers who have faith us us every day.
Here’s a video of another online session we hosted yesterday with several retailers on taking a business online:
Click and collect is now universally understood and embraced as a consequence of corona. This is especially true in Victoria Australia where in metro melbourne there is a 6-week hard hard lockdown in place. Click and collect is a lifeblood for retailers in the large lockdown area.
Here at Tower Systems we have been serving small business retailers with click and collect enabled POS software connected to Shopify and other websites all through this. Indeed, click and collect is something shops working with us have been offering for years.
Through Magento, Shopify and Woo POS software connected websites, our click and collect solution can be for drive by curbside contactless pickup, home delivery and traditional click and collect the flexibility is powerful, appreciated and easy for small business retailers as they play in this now important space for small business retailers.
Click and collect is here to stay and even more important, shoppers and retailers understand it. They understand how it works, the opportunities it brings and the health and safety imperative. It is good news for newsagents.
We are proud to have helped many small business retailers bring the click and collect opportunity to life in their businesses and to do this through a seamless connection between our POS software and their e-commerce site.
We do it ourselves in our own websites, too, offering click and collect in the shops we run, where we use our software and websites that our web team have developed, to show off our tech and business operational skills.
retail has fundamentally changes thanks to corona and wee are grateful to the thousands of retailers who partner with us, embracing software we develop and leveraging the tech integrations that we support in the work we do across a range of specialty retail channels.
While corona is challenging for so many, if we can provide income certainty for small business retailers and those who rely on these businesses then it is one less stressor for them. This is where click and collect plays a vital role, in offering an alternative and safe path to revenue for a retail business.
2020 is a year of massive change with tech being at the core of so much change. It’s not done yet as more changes are coming. Our message to small business retailers is that we are here, we have your back through these changes.
We make awesome specialty POS software for speciality retailers.
We make awesome Shopify and Magento 2 websites connected to our POS software.
Join us Wednesday August 12 @ 10:30am AEST for a free live and interactive and secure Zoom workshop on taking your business online.
We will share insights, advice and experience from websites we run for our own shops and sites we have created for others.
We will talk design, smart text, SEO, SEM and other buzzwords, but we won’t use buzzwords. This will be a plain English workshop. We will be honest about the hungry beast that is a website.
The workshop is free. Just turn up. Click on this link:
https://zoom.us/j/92448828358?pwd=cllQSWFaRitJSkQwSUNYYy9ZTks1dz09
Meeting ID: 924 4882 8358 Passcode: 196319
Wednesday August 12 @ 10:30am AEST.
Or, talk with one of our sales people: please call 1300 662 957 or email sales@towersystems.com.au.
They can also show you websites connected to our POS software.
Our specialty POS software offers many specialty retail benefits for specialty small business retailers, including:
This is not the complete list. Our POS software is packed with specialty tools through which indie small business retailers can differentiate and deliver more useful outcomes to the business, those who work in the business and to customers of the business.
Our goal is to empower small business retailers with tools that encourage and nurture, tools that are at the core of the business, appreciated, loved and respected. Those are our goals for our POS software and the services we offer our specialty retail customers.
Click & collect is the buzzword retailers are talking about and have been talking about for several years. Too often, the talk is ignorant.
What is click & collect? It is when a shopper makes a purchase online and they travel to a store and collect the item. The online purchase is the click and the in-store pickup is the collect.
Click & collect is fundamental in any retail business today as it enhances the shopper experience and shopper efficiency. It also enables retail businesses to better manage time and resources in-store.
\Also, in 2020, being the year that it is, click & collect makes for safe retail, contactless retail.
In a click & collect scenario, the shopper chooses what they want online, browsing store inventory and making their selection. They pay on line, too. The goods are gathered together and set up ready for the shopper to collect in-store or even through curbside collection arrangement, meaning they might not even have to leave their vehicle. This is the ultimate click & collect situation, the ultimate convenient shopping experience.
Click & collect is something we have offered in our small business POS software for years, thanks to our integrations with Shopify, Magento and WooCommerce. We have helped many retailers bring this experience alive in their single shop situations as well as their multiple shop situations, where shoppers purchase online and can select, if they wish, the location from where they make the collection.
Click & collect is fundamental in retail today, it is a core service, a core consumer expectation and core to the revenue model of many retail businesses. It can be easily managed from the online purchase through to the back end store management.
Tower Systems is pleased to serve small business retailers in the click & collect space, pleased to help these businesses offer this useful and beneficial service as these businesses trade in evolving and unique retail circumstances.
Click & collect has come into its own in 2020 through the greater need for contactless retail. Making it accessible to and understood by small business retailers has been another part of the Tower Systems small business focussed mission, where we help small business retailers more effectively compete with big business.
Using our Australian made POS software, retailers can themselves easily promote Australian made in their businesses. We are proud to offer these facilities and more through with retailers can pitch local with consistency to shoppers.
We have delivered more beautiful and commercially engaged Shopify websites connected to our POS software for small business retailers. Here are some of the recent new websites launched by our partner retailers:
We have close to fifty new websites currently under development.
Our web development experts are skilled in development using Magento, Shopify and WooCommerce. This is in addition to us developing in native mode using multiple such tech platforms.
From the simple to the complex, the single store to multiple group businesses, we can deliver web based solutions to small business retailers to help them sell online locally, nationally and internationally -in local currency as well as through overseas currency.
Web development here at Tower Systems follows a structured process that is driven by the outcomes sought by the client retail business. We work to serve these needs from the outset, whether it is an information site, an e-commerce site, offering click and collect, delivery or other fulfilment of online orders.
Through consultation, our small business retail clients can imagine their needs and we can help them fulfil these needs and do so on a platform that can evolve as the online experiences of the business evolves. It is an iterative process that works beautifully for small business retailers and their team members.
Click here to access a quick questionnaire that helps you determine your own business needs for a website. Many of our customers have found completing this questionnaire helpful and informative.
To find out more, please speak with one of our experts: Please call our sales team at 1300 662 957 or email them at sales@towersystems.com.au.
Buying Australian developed and supported POS software for your business and having your business website developed in Australia is good for the Aussie tech sector. The more we all shop local the better.
BRAGGING ALERT!
We are proud of the loyalty software we have developed for and sell to small business retailers.
Our loyalty software is easy to use, smart, flexible and business building.
Our loyalty software helps small business retailers differentiate from big businesses. It is built for small business retail and offers tremendous flexibility and value.
Why do we say our, loyalty software is the best loyalty software? It is what customers tell us. They tell us they have used other systems, points based systems, card stamping systems and more and they have found our loyalty software built into our smart POS software to be the best loyalty software they have seen. The love it and recommend it.
Jewellers, garden centres, bike shops, homewares stores, gift shops, toy shops, newsagents, pet stores and more all have told us that what we offer is the best loyalty software. We believe them of course. But we do not stop there. Our loyalty software is enhanced, improved and tested in myriad retail situations, to be better and even more loved and useful in helping small business retailers compete with big retail businesses.
What makes it the best loyalty software for retail businesses? Here are the factors that we think matter:
That list is a simple list. We could go on. However, these points are the headlines, the reasons why we say the loyalty facilities in the Tower Systems POS software make for the best loyalty software.
Our focus is on small business retailers, niche retailers, specialty retailers who serve specific retail channels. Our software is nuanced as are our loyalty facilities, aiming to help these retail businesses to more successfully and enjoyably serve the needs of retail businesses.
Loyalty software is 2020 is very different to even a few years ago. Today it is smart, engaging, flexible and useful beyond calculating points. Loyalty software is helping businesses drive genuine loyalty, on which they can bank into the future of the business.
We switched to Xero for our 3 retail businesses and connected it to our POS software. This Xero connected POS software solution is a time saver, mistake eliminator and business planning aid all wrapped into one.
But let’s take a step back and consider why we switched to Xero for our retail business accounting needs.
We have had experience with Quicken as well as with MYOB. Considering all three, we prefer Xero. Our accountant prefers Xero too as does our in-house accounting team, which includes a CPA.
It is for these reasons that we chose to switch to Xero.
The process itself was straight forward. We were nervous, did a trial run, checked the data and then did it again, this time live. We have never looked back, never worried that we missed out. It was the right move for us in a back office sense and in terms of overall business management. Xero, connected with our POS software, is a good small business retail solution. We like it and thanks too our own experience in our three shops we can recommend it based in. genuinely personal experience.
We have nothing against MYOB or Quicken. Our Xero choice is based on our own evidence, based on our own experiences. We think this matters if we are asked for a recommendation by a retailer. If we are asked, it is Xero. If no one asks, we do not interfere in that our POS software can be connected to Xero directly and MYOB through a third party that keeps up to date with MYOB changes.
Tower Systems is not your usual POS software company. We are retailers too, using our software in our own shops, providing us and our team members with experiences that are truly valuable to what we do and how we do it with and for our customers every day. We walk in your shoes.
Specialty retailers are specialty for a reason, they go deep into a product category, as you would expect from a specialist.
The challenge for specialty retailers is that their specialisation attracts shoppers interested in and buying for their specialty product category. This is good in the usual world. In this corona world with movement challenged, specialisation can be challenging for local businesses.
This is why we think the covid pivot opportunity for specialty retailers can be helpful. We are not suggesting retailers seek to profit from corona or that they are profiteering. Rather, through a covid pivot, we are encouraging small business retailers to broaden the appeal of their businesses, to make their businesses more attractive beyond the community they currently serve.
A covid pivot could see a business remain the same to shoppers who visit and that it uses the back office infrastructure to serve an online only operation in their covid pivot strategy. This can see the business leverage existing overhead of space, labour and accounting infrastructure to effectively open a new business and through this to find new shoppers.
This type of covid pivot move can make the business more resilient through a time of change or challenge, like corona.
We think a covid pivot is a smart move for specialty retail as it spreads the risk, strengthens the foundations of the business and provides learning opportunities that themselves could help the business further evolve.
Using business data, smart tech and POS software connected websites, a specialty retail business can find, through a covid pivot, new customers, new efficiencies and new energy for forward momentum and this is the core goal … taking those steps ahead.
The whole corona situation is challenging. It would be easy to sit and wallow., and we get that for some that is what they choose. In covid pivot our focus is on pursuing forward momentum and doing this through a data driven and tech implemented pivot for the business for a better back half of 2020 and a solid 2021.
Bottom line: there is good news out there for specialty retailers who are making these opportunities for themselves through a covid pivot. We are sincerely grateful to have seen plenty do this, plenty find new shoppers and plenty learn new skills and categories through to expand what are effectively new start up businesses within their specialty businesses.
We are grateful to see sales data from a range of different Victorian retail businesses using our POS software. Here are trends from the latest Victorian lockdown:
While the pandemic has disrupted business, in that disruption are opportunities. The Victorian situation is a reminder that disruption is not temporary. We think history will show that winners will be those businesses that adapted early and were able to finesse their offering and processes as the market demanded.
More and more small business retailers are embracing the pivot to online as covid continues to impact in-store traffic. The covid pivot is more about getting online, for sure. It is about small business retailers finding new category opportunities to serve through their existing business operation.
That is the covid pivot, a turn for the business to attract new shoppers and to do this through an online model that leverages existing physical store infrastructure.
Tower Systems is grateful to serve small business retailers in making this covid Pivot, helping them to connect their POS software to a beautiful Shopify site created by our web developers.
Our suggestions cover the technical, operational and the creative. Our customers choose what they want for their businesses. All we can do is speak to our experiences and the experiences of others in making these moves. New are especially attuned to helping small business retailers looking for pivot opportunities as that is net new benefit for them, helping to drive efficiency of their overall business operation.
The covid pivot is real in business, especially small business and even more especially small business retail. covid pivot is a term we have been using since March to describe advice we have provided to small business retailers to encourage and guide their actions to attract new shoppers.
As developers of small business focussed POS software and as web developers of Shopify and Magento websites we are well positioned from these two parts of our company to deliver the tech infrastructure ideal for helping retailers make the most of a covid pivot move.
Jewellers, garden centres, bike shops, fishing and outdoors businesses, toy shops, pet shops, homewares businesses, newsagents and more are all benefiting from the advice and encouragement we offer in this model of the covid pivot to find new shopper traffic for any retail business. Guiding these businesses to make an online move is key and beneficial. It is timely because of covid even though the need and opportunity were always there.
The covid pivot is defined as the move you make in business in response to, because of and / or thanks to covid to help strengthen the business in an area not historically familiar to you. It is smart, opportunistic and timely. New customers are out there for businesses that pivot to find them.
This is an up to date (as at July 8, 2020) list of state and territory government Covid related grants. There are some new opportunities in this mix compared to what we have shared previously.
Click on the state / territory name for their landing page. Then, where possible, I have links to specific current grants.
Do your research as to eligibility. If you are eligible, do it now as waiting could see you miss out and there will be no point complaining then.
We have sourced this list ourselves, by researching the online information for each state and territory. We help retailers applying if their application relates to anything they may wish to purchase through us.
We are grateful to have switched more MYOB Retail Manager customers to our POS software. Through this latest round of work we have learned more about how our software is a good alternative to MYOB Retail Manager.
Each time we bring convert someone from MYOB Retail Manager we learn more about our MYOB Retail Manager alternative, how we can specifically help and guide retailers to walk that path with us.
We respect the place MYOB Retail Manager has played in serving small business retailers. As the alternative to MYOB Retail Manager, Tower Systems seeks to help those retailers move beyond where they sat, to lean into opportunities of change in physical retail as well as online.
So, here is feedback from folks who have embraced our MYOB Retail Manager alternative.
We are grateful for the users of MYOB Retail Manager who have joined our user community and look forward to welcoming more.
Recent Comments