The POS Software Blog
News from Tower Systems about locally made POS software for specialty local retailers.
With all the talk of a change to GST arrangement in Australia, it is appropriate we note that any change to GST in terms of quantum and the products and / or services on which it applies would be easy for Tower Systems to manage.
The Tower Systems POS software today has all the facilities necessary for our customer to handle such changes without the need for a software update.
Christmas is hamper season for many retailers and Tower Systems helps retailers easily and confidently make, manage, sell and deconstruct hampers.
We track all the components of a hamper, special package pricing, sales history, customer engagement and, if necessary, the breaking down of hampers to single items should a hamper not sell.
Making it easy to manage hampers helps the Tower software be selected by gift shops, bike shops, pet shops, garden centres and other retailers where hampers are an important part of the Christmas trade.
Our work in the hamper space started years ago when we sold our software to a hamper specialist. They guided us to develop smarter tools and these sit in the core POS software we offer to retailers today.
Hampers are a terrific way for local small retailers to pitch a point of difference. Our software makes hampers easy to manage and sell. More important, our software makes it easy to leverage for next season.
This is another POS software Tower AdvantageTM.
Here are some tips from us on how to more effectively compete with a big business competitor located near your small business:
We are proud to have launched this new video on the weekend. It is having the desired effect of educating retail business owners.
Based ion our many years experience and our personal work with more than 3,000 retailers, here are the five most common bits of advice small business retailers ignore. Do these five things and your business will improve.
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.
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.
As an engaged POS software company we find ourselves providing a variety of advice to small business retailers, even outside the usual remit for a POS software company.
Here is some advice we provided recently to retailers on our suggested best-practice approach to managing the departure of an employee. This advice was created for a specific situation but we think it is valuable for any small business retailer.
Here are some simple steps to consider taking when an employee stops working for you. These steps are designed to protect your business and the former employee.
Too often business owners don’t consider steps like these until after an incident has occurred.
The major retail seasons of Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and others work a treat at bringing shoppers out, depending on the type of retail store you have.
It is not enough in today’s retail climate to expect these major seasons to lure the traffic you need in your business. You have to do more by being bold, engaged and relevant.
Local small business retailers create their own buzz through a range of activities to bring shoppers in during quiet times. They can do this locally and from far afield – reaching beyond the usual catchment area for their businesses.
Small and independent specialty retail businesses have an opportunity to play outside the major seasons as the larger retailers tend to ignore these times.
The keys to creating your own buzz for your retail business and for this to pay off financially for the business are to:
Here are some simple ideas for creating a buzz between major seasons.
These ideas are designed to get you thinking of different ways you can creatively promote your business outside major seasons. Too often, retailers do what is expected and then wonder why their sales performance is just average.
Go all out and create a between season buzz which you own and off of which you reap wonderful rewards.
Small business retailers feeling glum or downtrodden about their businesses can always find green shoots in their business data – green shoots of optimism off of which they can build positive steps toward greater success.
Here at Tower Systems we look at business data for all sorts of businesses, looking for green shoots so we can share good news and use this as a pathway for exploring success opportunities.
Every business we look at has opportunities. Large and small. City and country. Every business has some good news in their business performance data that can be a structure off of which to build more success.
We are grateful for the opportunities we have to help small retail businesses to grow.
Employees are your front line of any independent retail business. They can make or break your business. You hire them, train them, motivate them and fire them. Their performance is on you.
Here are eight tips to encourage their engagement:
Small businesses are unique in many ways. Employees play a vital role in reflecting and leveraging that uniqueness.
Tower Systems helps small business employers to encourage and manage employee engagement in a range of ways in our specialty retail software.
Employees can steal from retail businesses in a variety of ways. Often, such theft goes undetected because of poor or unmonitored business processes.
The best way to cut employee theft or fraud is to commit to a consistent approach to theft management:
Cutting employee theft can be achieved with vigilance. A small time investment in developing and following processes will find you with more money in your bank account.
Packaging a range of goods together in a hamper can change how people look at products in your business. Take the candy in the photo: these items sold singly sell at the counter as impulse purchases whereas packaged together they sell as a gift for a special occasion.
A hamper can be priced higher than the sum of the parts, making it more valuable for a business.
Using our smart POS software, retailers are able to create and deconstruct hampers such that inventory levels are accurate and total hamper sales are also tracked.
We have businesses in a range of niche retail channels using our hamper ; manufactured goods facilities including jewellers, bike retailers, pet shops, gift shops, homewares shops and garden centres. In addition to excellent software managing the creation and sale of hampers, we offer terrific training, support and other business engagement help – to help small business retailers get the most out of the opportunity.
Our retail management advice for today: look at what you sell and consider putting multiple items together as a hamper to change how people see products in your shop.
We have launched another training video for retailers using our POS software. This new video is not your usual training – no, it highlights a new feature of the software, something fresh for all users. It provides a high level introduction from one of the architects of the new facility. All customers have been provided free access to the video and plenty have viewed it already. We are thrilled for such terrific engagement.
When was the last time you assessed sales by time and particularly at sales revenue at the start of the day and at the end of the day?
It could be that you are opening your small business retail shop too early or too late or that you are closing too early or too late.
What does your data show?
Use your POS software to assess sales at the fringe of the day for, say, the last six months. Look overall and then for each day of the week. Good software should allow you to do this level of reporting. Work out the slew revenue per hour, apply your overall gross profit percentage and then deduct the hourly cost of being open.
If, for example, your average revenue is $30 for an hour at the start of the day and you have staff working this time and they don’t have much else to do those days and you have, say, GP of 32%, your GP is $9.60. Once you pay wages for the hour you are losing money. If the customers are not regulars it could be that you are better off closing.
If, on the other hand, your sales are $100 or more in the first hour, it could be that opening earlier could win even more business.
Only you can make the assessment of what is right for your business.
Our advice today is look at your data and make sure you are open the right hours for the best possible financial outcome for your retail business.
Tower Systems offers a fresh approach to shopper loyalty thanks to innovation in its POS software.
Spiderman is a superhero loved by generations. He is more popular today than decades ago thanks to a reinvigorating of the franchise by Marvel.
Retailers using our POS software can track the success of superheroes in their retail businesses. They can do this through a range of views, providing insights beyond what is common in POS software.
The insights can help retailers undertake more finely tuned marketing.
Spiderman, for example, can appeal to a young kid discovering their first superhero as much as he can appeal to a baby-boomer reliving memories of their first Spiderman comic back in the day.
These different customers engage with their fan driven interests in different ways. Thanks to a clever approach to viewing data, retailers are able to treat both interests differently and the same as may be needed from time to time.
This is another smart approach to inventory management from the smart software development team at Tower Systems.
Keystrokes = mistake opportunities in small business retail.
Our best practice advice to small business retailers is to do everything possible to cut keystrokes.
This is easy with good POS software.
These three simple keystroke cutting steps alone will improve your situation. They will cut keystrokes, reduce mistakes and reduce fraud opportunities.
This advice is about the best business approach to undertaking a stocktake. Please refer to other Knowledge base articles on how to actually use the software. All retailers using our POS software have access to our knowledge base.
Please ensure you have the latest version of the Tower Systems Retailer POS software installed prior to undertaking a stocktake.
For the process to be as easy as possible you will need a wireless network – vital for OH&S reasons.
The best way to do a stocktake in your business is by using a laptop (or laptops) or tablet computer with a scanner attached. This enables you to do the stocktake live with no impact on sales and absolute integrity of your stock on hand data.
While using a laptop (or laptops) or tablet computer may seem cumbersome, it is our best practice advice for speed, data integrity and the ability to address data issues you may encounter on the shop floor. It enables you to do management work to ensure completely accurate data.
The alternative is to use a PDE. The challenges with this are the many different PDEs and it is challenging to be expert in all plus the PDE counts at that time and you load the data at a later time – meaning a gap in time in which sales could have been done. While PDE software is available for live to data updates, we have seen this be problematic and so we do not use it.
Given the advances in technology, our best practice recommendation is either a laptop of tablet computer as either offers a better solution than a PDE.
We suggest you setup a Laptop or tablet and use Team Viewer or the like to connect in and count this way. This approach means you do not need to purchase an additional software licence for the laptop. Team Viewer is easy to setup.
For the physical stocktake, we suggest you approach the business aisle by aisle, counting and rearranging stock as you go.
Once you have completed your first full stocktake, our advice is you engage in a rolling stocktake, doing parts of the business, through the year. The Tax Office does not require businesses with full sock control implemented to do a stocktake at the end of the financial year. They will accept data from your system if you manage stock through the year.
A loyalty program is only as good as the over the counter pitch through which you seek to engage shoppers. Check out this brief video we created to train retail employees on what has to be the easiest to use over the counter shopper loyalty offer.
Tower Systems leads with professional employee training videos which help retail employees leverage more value for the business from our software.
I hate going into work. These words from a friend reflected a long-held feeling, a feeling held with some shame.
Here was a retail business owner who hated going into his own business. He had fallen out of love with what he had created. The bitterness he felt towards his business had soured to hatred.
Why do some retailers hate going to work? It is an interesting question which needs exploration before we look at strategies for countering this.
There is usually a trigger – supplier fatigue, tough economic conditions, personal challenges away from the business, a partner dispute, tiredness… there could be any combination of reasons.
If you have reached the point where you hate going into work each day it is important to take time away from the business for an honest assessment as to why you hate the business. Until you can answer the question – why do you hate going into work? – you cannot begin to work on resolution.
Once you know the reasons, think about a series of small and achievable steps you could take to turn the situation around. No matter how challenging the situation, there are always steps you could take. Focus on these, start work on them and in some instances that alone will be enough to move you through the fog of anger and ill-feeling toward the business.
If finding small steps to take does not work, get together with a trusted friend and tell them how you feel toward the business. Ask them to talk with you about the business. Reminisce about why you started or purchased the newsagency. Remember your dreams and hopes. Use the conversation to explore your emotion at the moment you decided to open or purchase the retail business.
The best advice to to get professional help from a psychologist or professionally qualified counsellor to explore your feelings for the business. Your doctor could help you access a government funded mental health plan.
Understanding your hatred for your retail business is the first step. This will usually, of itself, reveal the first steps you can take to turn the hatred around. Be open to that. Take small steps and see where they lead. The change in feeling toward the business may not be immediate so do not expect too much too soon.
If you do nothing, the hatred will be more and more reflected in the business and in your own person. Neither benefits from this.
Measurement is key to the success of any retail business. This is especially true for small retail businesses.
Measuring sales, stock, employees and suppliers is mission critical.
Without accurate and consistent measurement, you are not able to make good business decisions or to hold others to account for their actions.
By measuring you can make better decisions.
Here are some simple rules for accurate measurement in retail:
If you are not tracking it you cannot manage it.
By making your business data driven you are better equipped to take the emotion and gut feel out of business decisions. This will improve decision quality and accountability and, hopefully, the return you achieve from these decisions.
Businesses which do not measure stock, suppliers, employees and sales accurately often find themselves faltering without knowing why – because they have no accurate data on which to base research.
People purchasing gifts want to ensure that the recipient can exchange the gift if it is not quite right.
Retailers using the Tower Systems specialist gift shop POS software have the ability to print a gift exchange receipt detailing the items purchased but not the price paid.
This facility has been in our software for years. It was developed with retailers offering gift exchange services. The receipt printed was recently enhanced to connect with quality gift purchases.
This gift / exchange receipt facility is another point of difference for Tower in several of our retail channels it is am important pert of the Tower AdvantageTM.
Theft is something to be managed in your business. You will be stolen from. Good management is about reducing the opportunity for and instances of theft.
Follow this advice and the opportunity for theft will be lower and the certainty of detecting it higher.
Unfortunately, many retailers read up to here and think this will to happen to them. Too many of these business owners are the ones who do experience the hurt of employee theft.
If you are still reading, well done. Here are simple steps you can take to catch and manage employee theft:
These steps work – based on decades of helping newsagents to reduce and manage employee theft.
Theft, employee and customer, costs a typical retail between 3% and 5% of sales revenue. Management attention can cut this dramatically. It does not take much time. No, it is more about having professional processes in place which everyone in the business follows.
The POS software from Tower Systems has excellent facilities for handling special orders, pre-orders and other forms of orders for customers that are unique to the customer and a point of difference for the business to offer.
Special orders and customer pre-orders are a point of difference for small independent retailers over big businesses. Being bale to do this with consistency and certainty can help these businesses more successfully compete.
Thanks to years of refinement and working with retailers in a wide variety of retail situations, Tower Systems offers a competitive advantage from the recording of customer details, tracking an order,k advising its arrival and handling a range of payment options including time payment.
We have retailers today transacting valuable business in pre-orders of highly valuable product as a result of these tools in the software. They are financially better off today and over the long term as special order customers tend to return for more orders.
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