The POS Software Blog
News from Tower Systems about locally made POS software for specialty local retailers.
We are thrilled our latest POS software is starting a managed beta release. This update is extraordinary in what it delivers. Enhancements go to the core of our POS software. We are excited for customer reactions.
Finding retailers keen to participate in the beta program leading up to Christmas was not difficult.
Here are some tips from us on how to more effectively compete with a big business competitor located near your small business:
Magento is the world’s best online shopping cart, retail website tool in our view. We say this having worked with a host of platforms and gaining considerable experience ourselves and through people we work with.
Our POS software links to Magento through the Magento API, directly from our software into Magento for shared real-time data. We link from our software to Magento ourselves and have small business retail clients using it too.
Developed in addition to our well-established web-store link, the Magento link is deep, comprehensive and tremendously valuable.
High street retailers serious about an online presence will find it easier and faster to achieve through our Magento link, something we have been using ourselves for all this year and something with which we have excellent experience and knowledge.
Our web development team has developed multiple sites, providing us with excellent reference experiences for retailers contemplating an online presence connected to their high street POS software.
Tower Systems is proud to have lead again in 2015 in the hosting of live in-person POS software user meetings around Australia and in New Zealand.
Our comprehensive and consistent user meeting program helps us provide a better customer service experience and it provides us with better guidance from customers and this helps us create better software.
Well done to all involved.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Retailers often forget these marketing opportunities they have everyday in their businesses, opportunities to make a pitch at no cost that can have shoppers more engaged with a business.
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 works with more than 3,500 small business retailers in speciality retail niches including jewellers, garden centres, bike shops, toy shops, gift shops, newsagents, pet shops, adult shops and more. We offer these ideas as our Christmas gift to you.
Christmas is the perfect time to plan for next year. It is the time to do everything possible to leverage bonus Christmas traffic to benefit your business through next year.
Tower Systems offers Point of sale / retail management software tailored for your specific type of retail business. Our software can help you leverage Christmas traffic for year-long benefits.
We provide you with loyalty facilities that are fresh and small-business focussed, loyalty facilities through which you can pitch a point of difference compared to big business competitors.
One of our retail experts can help: Please call our sales team at 1300 662 957 or email them at sales@towersystems.com.au.
Tower Systems is thrilled to welcome more whole foods retailers to its growing POS software user community.
Thanks to several unique facilities in the Tower software the company is able to serve needs unique to whole foods stores. Our service of the niche whole foods retail channel is another example of the value of small business POS software specialisation.
Specialisation is something we do well thanks to deep consultation with current and prospective customers in selected retail channels. This and not specialising too far and wind keeps the company focused on serving the needs of specialist retailers.
Whole foods retailers can rely on the Tower software to continue to develop to serve emerging needs in this important retail niche.
The secondhand goods management software within the Tower systems POS software helps secondhand retailers to meet their regulatory obligations in tracking these goods.
While developed initially for jewellers, the facilities have been enhanced over time to serve more retail channels offering secondhand goods. As the retail channels in this space have expanded so has the knowledge available to Tower systems to better serve the needs of the retailers.
From buying to shop floor management to selling, we track the goods in an accurate and data valuable way – serving the retailer and the customer through along the way.
Retailers benefit from time saved in record keeping as well as from maintaining best-practice records. This is invaluable in times of dispute.
Secondhand goods retail is a specialist field and Tower Systems is thrilled to bring its specialist POS software facilities to this specialist field.
The POS software scale integration facilities in the Tower Systems small business POS software are helping retailers across a variety of retail channels.
Produce stores, confectionery stores, whole foods stores, independent supermarkets, garden centres, greengrocers and other retailers are loving the seamless integration between the POS software and counter scale facilities.
Any store selling products by weight can rely on the integration with scales for producing accurate selling by weight.
The outcome is time saving for retailers. It also ensure reduces keystrokes and with every keystroke eliminated is the potential for a mistake eliminated.
The scale integration offered by Tower Systems has been tested to ensure it meets exacting requirements, to provide an accurate customer account of what is purchased and thereby charging correctly for items sold by weight.
Scale integration is another valuable point of difference provided by Tower Systems to its small business retail customers.
Small business retailers are loving Xero and retailers using the Tower POS software are loving our approved Xero integration. Saving time, cutting keystrokes and cutting accounting fees are some of the benefits being delivered to plenty of retailers partnering with us in the use of our POS software / Xero integration.
Using this ourselves in our own retail business, we have personal experience on which to draw when providing advice to our customers. It places us in a unique position for a software company and allows us to provide a level of service customers love.
Our own experience is that Xero does change a business forever. The time saving and other benefits claimed are real. We can speak to these and ensure our customers are able to leverage the time savings.
We have tested and loaded new stock files for the following companies suppling users of our POS software:
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.
Tower Systems has now completed the last round of regional group POS software user meetings for 2015. The engagement has been terrific, enabling us to learn plenty from our customers and to share insights that will help participants get more from the software.
We are grateful to all who participated and for the opportunity to show another example of the Tower Systems difference.
Tower Systems is pleased to advise small business retail customers that and change to the GST in Australia would be easy to handle within the POS software as it stands today. no software change is necessary.
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