CategoryProduce store software

The Magento Imagine conference is a must attend conference for Magento partners. Magento is the premier e-commerce platform in the world.

At the conference this year we expanded our knowledge, networked with valuable colleagues and learnt how best practice retailers leverage Magento to facilitate in-store and online growth.

The time away was also an opportunity to fine-tune our web and desktop development plans and leverage the already considerable success we are having with multi-store POS software connected Magento websites.

The story about baked by Melissa was especially inspiring.

Here at Tower Systems we will tell you if we think our POS software is not right for your business.

Seriously.

We have been in business too long and have too good of a reputation to risk it by selling a business software that is not ideal for their needs.

Our sales team are not under any pressure to reach a sales quota. This takes away the usual pressure on sales people to get a sale at all costs.

Here are some of the reasons why we might say our software is not right for your business:

1. Your retail business is not in one of the retail channels for which we have specialty software.
2. You want changes that do not fit with our vision for the software.
3. You have business processes you are not prepared to change that we think are not a good fit with the software.
4. The price you are prepared to pay does not res the software and services we offer.

We don’t like saying no. However, being transparent is important to us, and to prospective customers.

When we do say no we do so with an explanation, usually in writing, so there is not doubt. This can lead to a discussion about why we have said no and even changes in a business so the no becomes a yes. This process works well as it encourages a business discussion from which we learn and our prospective customer takes a look back at their business.

More than a software company, we are a retail business focussed business. Being retailers ourselves we understand the complexity of retail today. This personal experience enables us to take a retailer-focussed approach in how we navigate a situation where we do not think our software is a good fit for a prospect.

Some of our most engaged customers are businesses where we felt we were not a good fit. The process we have has worked well in ensuring everyone goes into a relationship with their eyes and ears open and we often see this benefiting both businesses.

See the software live. Contact us for an obligation free demonstration: Please call our sales team at 1300 662 957 or email them at sales@towersystems.com.au.

The end of shift process in any retail business is when the day comes together, when the numbers are revealed and and errors resolved.

This week, today in fact, we are offering retailers who use our POS software a free training workshop in end of shift processes and, in particular, the end of shift reports – in which wonderful and valuable in formation can be found.

Understanding the End Of Shift Reports

Why is the End of Shift important? How do I check my settings are correct? What do the reports mean? What parts of the report do I need to use for my accounting….

This training is accessible at no cot whatsoever to any of our customers. People can book online, through our free training portal.

The training is live, interaction and allows for plenty of time for questions.

This free training is another way our POS software customers can learn, for free.

This advice has been written by us here at Tower Systems for use in businesses, particularly small 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. We see this every day as to banks, accountants, business advisors and more.

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.

1. 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.
2. Scan all stock you return to suppliers. Use the Returns facility.
3. 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.

Tower Systems offers a direct to WooCommerce link that enables selling from the POS software and a Woo Commerce website all from the one inventory database. Making ecommerce easy for small business retailers.

What Is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is an open source e-commerce plugin for WordPress. It is designed for small to large-sized online merchants using WordPress. WooCommerce is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms because it’s free and open source. This means that there are a lot free or inexpensive extensions available to customise your site.

What Is The Retailer To WooCommerce Link?
The Retailer to WooCommerce Link uses the Tower Advantage Link platform to allow Retailer to connect directly to your WooCommerce webstore. The Tower Advantage Link platform is a subscription-based service that acts as an intermediary between Retailer and the WooCommerce API.

How Does The Link Work?
The link works by using the TALink platform to connect to the WooCommerce API and synchronise your data.

Stock
Retailer is your master stock database. You flag what stock items you want to appear on your WooCommerce store. Descriptions and extended descriptions are added as product names and descriptions in WooCommerce. Newly flagged products are automatically added and if you edit items in Retailer you have field level control over how these are handled in WooCommerce.

Department And Categories
Your Retailer Departments and Categories become categories and subcategories in WooCommerce. If you choose to synchronise departments and categories, your existing structure will be mirrored and managed in WooCommerce automatically. If, however, you decide not link your Department and Categories in WooCommerce, you can allocate categories manually to products once they are added.

Classifications
Retailer’s Classifications are treated as Attributes in WooCommerce. If you choose to link these in WooCommerce your existing Classifications will be mirrored and managed in WooCommerce automatically. If, however, you do not want this to occur you can manually manage your own WooCommerce Attributes.

Prices And Quantity On Hand
You have control over your webstore pricing from within the Retailer Stock Screen. Bulk updates of the webstore prices can be performed in Stock Manager. Once new prices are set, your webstore is updated automatically. Quantity on hand is also managed automatically, when your sell or arrive an item into stock these adjustments are sent directly to WooCommerce. If the quantity on hand of an item drops to 0, the item is marked as out of stock in WooCommerce.

Images
The images you set against stock items in Retailer are automatically uploaded to your website. If images change, the old one is removed and the new one is added. You can upload as many images as you like per stock item.

Customers
Customers that purchase off your webstore are added as customers in your Retailer database, allowing you to track what they buy and market to them. Existing customers with an email address will also be added to your web store to facilitate easy sales if you choose.

Sales
Sales are downloaded on a periodic basis and imported into Retailer. They are imported into our Customer Invoice Maintenance facility allowing you to place orders and print invoices if needed. Once sales are imported it reduces your quantity on hand so you maintain accurate stock control. Sales can be allocated to a specific location or merged to your main sales data, giving you excellent control over how you report on your webstore sales.

Every Tower Systems POS software customer has free access to POS software training workshops, weekly. Here are sessions for the remainder of March:

Small business owners work incredibly hard. With a little help, you’ll be turning your local success into grand global adventures with your family | #family #local #retail #POS #success #smallbusiness #smallbiz | www.towersystems.com.au

Here is a new infographic we created to help small business retailers pitch their economic value. We have made this available for use at no cost.

Every day can be tough in small business. You can feel like the big competitors are winning and that you can’t climb the mountain to compete. You may not know where to start.

There are green shoots of good news and opportunities in every small and independent retail business. The key is to find these and to leverage them for more success.

A green shoot is a product or a category of products or a supplier performing above average in the business. Often, these successes have gone unnoticed.

We were working with a retailer recently who said business was down by 20% and they did not know what to do. It turned out that the best performing product category in their business was ‘failing’ for six months because they had not replenished stock.

They invested, instead, on new lines that had not gone as well as the successful product.

They, in part, created their own downward spiral and had not looked at their business data to understand that contributed to the problems they were confronting.

Once they realised the situation, they re-stocked the successful range of products and numbers started to improve. More important, their confidence level grew and with this their business decisions improved.

There are opportunities for optimism in every business.

Finding optimism is like mining, you have to look for it, sometimes for a long time. It is there, though, in every retail business.

As soon as you hear yourself talking your business down, STOP. Look at your data, look for the good news. That is what you need to think and talk about.

By looking at your data, we mean looking at year on year, quarter on quarter or month on month comparison data for departments, categories, suppliers or even individual products. Look for growth and once you see growth, think about what you can do with and around the products achieving growth so that you can achieve other growth.

Any product achieving year on year increases in unit sales is a product to be appreciated, nurtured and used to help grow other products that can sell to the same customer.

This is how you grow optimism. Find those small green shoots, leverage them with some small steps and, over time, build more success for your business.

While overall revenue, traffic count and profitability may be down, growth even at the smallest data point, such as for one or two products, could be enough to get you looking at your business differently.

In the Tower Systems POS software, the best initial reports for good news are: Monthly Sales Comparison (department level, category level and / or supplier level), the 10×10 Report, Ranked Sales Report (by units) for one period and then for the comparative period.

We’re here to help you find the good news in your business. Your business data is the key.

Tower Systems provides these touch point services to all retailers using its Australian designed POS software. They are services we have found small business retailers appreciate and enjoy. These services are provided at no additional cost:

1. Small Business Support. Through a range of creative and management services we help small business in myriad ways including marketing, supporter, planning and more. Our experience in a range of retail channels, including as owing small business retail shops ourselves, positions us to offer these pro bono services to help.
2. Theft check. A business data assessment and analysis to determine if employee theft is occurring in the business. We have people who have been used by police and prosecutors to testify as expert witnesses in successful prosecutions.
3. Business check. One of our senior analysts researches the data being cultivated by the software for the business. A report is prepared on what can be seen in the data. The goal of this assessment is to provide insights the retailer might otherwise not have seen for themselves.
4. User meetings. We host two cycles of user meetings each year – in the first and second half of the year. These are in capital cities and major regional centres. The user meetings provide free training and an open Q&A session. They are always attended by senior management from Tower Systems.
5. Online training workshops. These are held for all Tower customers. Access is free. They can connect and participate from anywhere in the world.
6. Tower Systems has a structured approach to escalation of any issue about which a customer may be unhappy. This facilitates getting the issue outside the help desk and in front of the leadership team for more independent assessment.
7. Supplier engagement. Tower Systems has a structured approach to working with suppliers to facilitate seamless connection when it comes to business data. This process sees many suppliers already participating.
8. One-on-one training. Up to two hours of personal individual training each year.

Tower Systems is grateful to the support of its 3,500+ customers that enable it is provide these and other services in support of small business retailers. This is what we do. We love it!

Here is fresh collateral we have created in-house and released to small business retailers for their free use.

We appreciate the feedback from our POS software user customers about the preview we provided to the year in this video we shot in house. In addition to introducing some tech innovation coming early this year, the video  also reflects our human and personal approach to software development, it underscores that we stand behind what we sell.