The POS Software Blog
News from Tower Systems about locally made POS software for specialty local retailers.
Here is a video created in-house by Tower Systems for use by one of our POS software customers; newsXpress Mount Morgan. We love the video for its humour, naturalness and storytelling. We are proud to have played a role in helping newsXpress Mount Morgan with this.
We owe our customers the truth.
This is a mantra in Tower Systems. Truth trumps spin every time, especially the truth you see in business data.
If we see something in the retail business data collected and managed by our software, we share it with the customer involved. We do so in the belief that data will better inform their business decisions than opinions. the sharing is navigated respectfully and not in a smart-alee way.
We encountered this recently when a customer made a statement about the performance of a product category in their business that was not supported by the data. We showed them their own data and their understanding of their business changed. Buying decisions were reversed. Floorspace allocations were changed. More important than anything, employee training was provided to even better leverage the insights we shared through the truth of their own business data.
The experience went to the core of their business. It raised their awareness of the value of the data our POS software cultivated and set them on a mission to change their use of data and their use of our software.
We were thrilled to see the people in this business get it, to get the value of data they have at their fingertips and to love the insights accurate data can provide.
This small retail business will grow as a result of their new respect of and love for data.
We are excited and they are excited.
We could have operated in an average way for a POS software company, answered their questions and moved on. Instead, we took a risk and shared insights beyond the traditional software help desk engagement. We are glad we did. We are grateful for the reaction. We are excited for the benefits unleashed.
Every day in our business we get to interact with passionate small business owners and employees. It is a thrill because each contact is personal. As we found with this data experience, the result can be heartwarming.
The work we do goes way beyond the software. The software is a tool for far more valuable work.
Based on our work with 3,500 retail businesses across a range of specialty retail channels, here are our five top ways any small business retail store can reduce dead stock in their business. These top ideas are all about ensuring the problem does not occur in the first place.
There are more ideas and tips on reducing dead stock. These suggestions are the best-practice starting point.
With more accountants recommending the Xero cloud-based accounting software our POS software is reaching more people thanks to our xero approved integration.
Professional and thorough integration takes time to develop and have approved by Xero. We put in the work last year to achieve this and continue to maintain the integration today for our many retailers using Xero.
We are grateful to Xero for their support as well as to the many accountants who endorse what we do to ensure the usefulness of the Xero link in small retail business to facilitate accurate accounting data for little time investment.
We use Xero ourselves in-house and this helps us offer a more personal user experience.
Our Xero work helps us lead in our specialist retail channels.
We helped a retailer recently not make a very expensive business decision. They were being courted by a software company based on price. It turns out that the price being promoted was not that great if the retail business wanted to sue the software beyond two years. Since the retailer would never own the software they would keep paying year after year, long into the lifetime of use of the software.
What was pitched as low cost became expensive.
Once the retailer realised this they held back making a decision.
Our advice to retailers is do your homework on the total cost of ownership of your POS software. Think about how long you would like to use the software. Ensure you fully understand all the costs associated with using the software.
Research deeply and long. Get the facts, in writing.
The claim from a company that their POS software is cheaper may not be true. Take your time to ensure you determine if it is true.
Tower Systems is your quintessential small business POS software company.
We only develop software for small business retailers.
It is all we have ever done.
Small business retail is what we know and love. It is what we believe in.
But our interest goes beyond small business retail. We are focused on specific retail channels. We are what is called a vertical market software company.
Our focus is narrow, on selected retail channels, developing software only for those retail channels. In fact, developing highly customised specialist software for those select specialist retail channels.
This narrow focus of ours reflects our interest in small business and our interest in the specific retail channels in which we serve.
Our goal is to help our small business partners to leverage more from their use of our software – to help them make their small businesses more valuable to their customers.
In reality, our focus is on the customers of the retail businesses we serve. Maintaining our eyes on these customers helps us develop more carefully targeted software for we know if our software serves the customers of our customers our customers will love us.
Serving 3,000+ small business retailers provides us with a wonderful customer base from which we can learn. It also insulates us against the type of impact a business may feel if there is a challenge with a large, dominant, customer. Here at Tower Systems we don’t have that. Indeed, our approach is transparent and democratic.
We love this world of many independent voices rather than a software company world dominated by one loud voice.
Being local matters to shoppers today. There is a big difference, however, in saying you are local and being authentically local.
From our work in the trenches with more than 3,000 small business retailers here is our top five advice on successfully pitching local in your business.
Local, of course, can be different things to different people. It may mead a geographic proximity to your business. It could also mean products made by a family in another state. Nuanced appropriately and personally, this is a local pitch you could make.
We urge all small business retailers to engage with local and to do so with care and authenticity.
A Tower Systems exclusive multi independent retailer webstore integration is bringing small business retailers together in a fresh way, negating the need for small business stand along websites. In fact, this new approach is a game changer in several small business retail channels – delivering new traffic thanks to a high-profile national website than is achieving more than a local small business website might.
This is Tower Systems working for its small business customers in a fresh and exciting way.
Leadership.
No one has done what this site and the Tower Point of Sale software back end is achieving.
The Tower Systems specialist retail POS software continues to evolve thanks to suggestions from retailers in a range of specialty retail channels in large, medium and small businesses, in shopping malls, on then high street and in rural towns.
The Tower Systems commitment is to provide POS software you can use to guide more profitable control over your business – without the need to hire a consultant or businesses advisor. Above all, the Tower POS software will empower small business retailers.
Here are 9 ways the Tower Systems Point of Sale software can help your business:
Major changes are occurring in the newsagency channel when it comes to technology and how it is used in these small locally owned businesses.
Tower Systems actively represents its newsagent customers when it comes to changes. We work with those bringing on change and seek fair engagement for our newsagent customers.
The changes coming bring new opportunities and new challenges to newsagents, challenges especially through smart newsagency software.
Thanks to our size, serving close to 1,900 newsagents, we are positioned to help our customers best leverage these changes.
This is our commitment – to help newsagents navigate change.
There is a difference in newsagency software companies and we are at a time in the life of the newsagency channel when size matters. Newsagents need to ask themselves whether the software they are using today is capable to helping them navigate major change in their business.
Here are ten ways smart retailers use the POS software from Tower Systems to leverage receipts to act as more than a record of a transaction:
The more small business retailers use their receipts as a marketing tool the better for the business. It systemises shopper contact through existing transactions and through this can leverage greater engagement and success for the business and enhanced enjoyment for the shopper.
Tower Systems helps retailers across multiple channels to leverage receipts in this way – creatively using valuable tools embedded in the software.
Information on receipts can be text, QR code, barcode or visual through images. These choices make the Tower POS software useful in a broad range of retail situations.
We are confident that through proper engagement retailers of all sorts can drive better business value from receipts beyond being a record of a purchase.
This is another Tower AdvantageTM.
When it comes to POS software there is web store integration and then there is web store integration. Smart web store integration, like retailers have access to using the Tower Systems POS software, offers flexibility and options to better serve the needs of speciality retailers in niche retail channels.
Maintaining current real-time stock on hand data for the webstore and physical store, the integration delivered through and by Tower Systems is valuable and appreciated in small business retail situations including gift shops, homewares shops, jewllers, bike retailers and plenty more.
Thanks to an engaged customer base, Tower Systems has been able to evolve its POS software web store integration to deliver a genuinely valuable and cost effective solutions for small business retailers.
There is a general version of webstore integration as well as a Magento specific deep and strong integration. Retailers can choose the approach that works best for their own situation. This is what Tower Systems does – providing options for retailers to choose according to their needs.
Using the web store facilities itself in its own businesses, Tower Systems also brings to the project a personal user perspective that is quite unique in POS software development circles. Indeed, this personal use of the software including web store integration elements enables the company to finesse the software and the training provided by the company to small business retailers using the software.
The Tower Systems POS software web store integration is in use today, helping many retailers in a range of specialty retail channels to make the most of technology to drive business efficiency and value.
Tower Systems has created a new role within our POS software help desk structure. We are advanced in considering candidates and hope to have a final decision by the end of next week. This new role will enable is to offer additional service beyond what we offer today, service beyond what retailers expect from their POS software company.
Innovating in a software company is not confined to innovating within the software. Since customer service is the means through which retailers can leverage their IT investment, innovating through our services is kay to our mission to evolve as a company.
We are excited for the change new people bring to the business.
UPDATE: (Oct. 17): We have signed on our new team member and set a start date for later this month.
Smart newsagency software helps small business newsagents run for efficient and forward-focussed newsagencies:
Tower Systems will be exhibit at the newsXpress newsagency marketing group national conference in Sydney tomorrow. This is our third last trade show for the year – a year in which we will have participated in sixteen such events connecting with retailers across a range of specialist channels.
Smart POS software can help retailers better connect with shoppers, bringing them back more often, guiding them to purchase more and helping them bring friends to the business.
Based on years of experience helping small business retailers across several specialty retail niche channels, Australian software company Tower Systems has developed expertise and experience to enable it to list 5 ways retailers can use smart POS software to better connect with shoppers:
Your POS software can help you run a more successful, engaged and enjoyable business. Tower Systems, through its success focus, helps small and independent retailers to leverage these opportunities and achieve better results and outcomes for its retail partners.
Here are two new articles loaded to the Tower Systems knowledge base – available to all retailers using our smart POS software:
We are grateful to suppliers for providing us with stock files for testing, approval and sharing with small business retailers using our POS software. The files tested and loaded this week include:
POS software company Tower Systems is hosting FREE user meetings later this month to:
Senior management of Tower Systems will be running each meeting – giving you direct access to the decision makers on this software used by more than 3,000 small business retailers.
This session will be a terrific learning opportunity to discover how to get more from your Tower software.
While this is not a sales session, anyone is welcome to see how the Tower team interact with customers. Transparency at its best.
Retailers in all Tower specialist retail niches are welcome:
BOOK NOW.
Here are the dates you can book now:
We will add dates for regional centres later.
Tower Systems has been helping newsagents today prepare for a major News Corp. promotion of DVDs being given away to help drive newspaper sales. This latest work by the Tower help desk team is a continuation of the good work done by the company in service is close to 2,000 newsagents using its industry standard newsagency software.
If you want to attract new shoppers, bring existing shoppers back more often, hold supplies to account, more successfully manage employees and make better quality business decisions, we can help.
Tower Systems develops specialist software for specialist retailers.
You can buy the software or you can rent it for as long as you want.
We will help you harvest extraordinary value for your business. We are not your usual software company.
Tower Systems is on stand P61 at the Gift Fair starting tomorrow.
We have software for: jewellers, bike shops, garden centres, newsagents, pet shops, toy shops, adult shops and gift shops.
TOWER SYSTEMS: REAL PEOPLE PROVIDING REAL SERVICE TO SMALL BUSINESS
CUSTOMER SERVICE.
Small business retailers purchasing our software have access to a range of services to help get the most from the software including:
Too many businesses treat customer service as secondary to the routine processes of the business. By investing in customer service and getting all your staff to think positively, you will improve your business. The following five suggestions give demonstrations of positive customer service from the point of view of the customer, including some specific examples you can try today:
A greeting doesn’t have to be verbal. An acceptable greeting in today’s workplace can be a head nod or a smile or just eye contact. It can also be a social approach or a merchandise approach. It just requires that the associate make a quick decision on how they will “plug in” to start the energy flowing. The social approach can be something as simple as, “What brings you in on such a gorgeous day?” The merchandise approach could be, “I see you have a roll of film that needs developing. Do you need that in one hour or would you like to save a little money and have it sent out?” Oh, I feel a little spark!
90% of unhappy customers leave a place of business because of inattentive, impolite employees. And almost all of them never tell anyone in management, they tell everyone else they know. The way to avoid that is to start the connection in a positive way. Make eye contact first before you start the conversation. Find out why I am there in the first place before you start to tell me how bad your day is. You see, the customer doesn’t really care about YOU; they want to know how YOU are going to solve their problem. That’s where the “plug” comes in!
Plug in to what I am saying and really listen to me. Be able to repeat back my needs, wants or even my problem so that I know you are really listening. Practice listening with both ears and both eyes. Good listening skills can outwardly show how much respect you have for the other person you are speaking to. I have many choices of where else I can go, so make me feel like you care and you want to help make the connection!
Share your knowledge of your product and services with me. Customers keep coming back based on the trust they have built with you. They know that they can expect prompt, efficient and knowledgeable service. When you have a new system or new products, it helps to inform the customer. When an employee shares valuable knowledge, an “I understand” light bulb goes on in the customer’s eyes!
If a customer likes the connection they have with a business they will come back. But if that energy is powerful, the customer will become that business’ cheerleader! It takes so little time to say, “Thank you for shopping with us today” but those words make a big positive connection in the customers’ mind. Imagine, thousands of happy customers, all cheering for your business and advertising your service through word of mouth.
Tower Systems has invited its newsagency software customers to provide sales data for the September quarter to participate in a comprehensive sales benchmark study on behalf of the entire newsagency channel.
This is another small business service from the company – helping newsagents navigate and enjoy change.
Tower Systems is thrilled to have launched via our website user meetings for most capital cities where we will preview the next release of our software plus share with you news of two new products. These sessions are for all customers, no one particular retail channel. We will cover marketing your business, using MailChimp for email marketing and plenty more. More on these soon. Here are the dates you can book via our website now:
We will add dates for regional centres and New Zealand at a later date and there will be online sessions.
Small business POS software company has launched a POS software integrated web developer service, bringing online and offline together in a common technology platform.
Built around leading e-commerce technologies, the Tower solution enables high street retailers to setup online stores populated with some or all inventory from the high street store.
Developed using best practice techniques, the Tower solution offers small business retailers a fast, easy and appealing route to market for an online store that is desktop, tablet and mobile friendly.
With several e-commerce sites already live, the online retail team at Tower Systems has personal experience they can point to to reference their capabilities as well as business learnings that will be useful to small business retailers.
The seamless and live link between the Tower POS software and the e-commerce site is a winner.
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