The POS Software Blog
News from Tower Systems about locally made POS software for specialty local retailers.
Here at Tower Systems we love making things easy for our POS software customers. This is why we love Xero. It is also why we love Tyro. We integrate with both.
Here is a terrific new video from the folks at Tyro about their beautiful and easy to use solution:
Tower Systems is a proudly Australian POS software company. We develop software in Australia for small and independent Australian retail businesses.
Retailers wanting software to support their local focus ought to look at local POS software companies.
We have built a good strong business by being locally focussed. Yes, today we serve more than 3,500 retail businesses.
We are proud that in many of our specialty retail channels, we are the only locally developed and supported software. This makes us more fit for purpose for those businesses that care about living and supporting local.
As a famous song once goes so beautifully: we’re all in this together.
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.
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.
We are thrilled at the number of small business retailers engaging with the free marketing advice and collateral at our POS software company website. Any retailer can download the free posters and other materials and use them how they want to promote these marketing pitches for and through their businesses. Here are some of the free poster artwork Tower Systems has made available.
Everywhere retailers look today they are confronted with a new paradigm, a new approach to doing business, regardless of their area of specialisation.
Over recent years the fundamentals of retail have changed and some retailers are yet to notice and embrace the change.
The new paradigm, while impacting all retailers, is not universal. There are nuances by channel and there is where specialist Point of Sale software can help a retailer navigate to the change in circumstances.
The customer is at the heart of retail today, more so than ever before. Thanks to universal access to pricing, product and other information, the customer is more informed and powerful than ever before.
Whereas in the past a retailer knew of their key competitors based on their geographic location and could therefore research and understand them, today’s competitors could be anywhere in the world. Indeed, many shoppers are spending time with a competitor of a retail business while actually in the business… such is the power for the customer thanks to smartphones and easy access to the online world.
Many retailers have made them mistake of thinking that the new paradigm is merely about bricks and mortar retail versus online. That is barely the beginning of the new paradigm. Indeed, it goes way beyond such a basic comparison.
The only way to compete in this new world of retail is to genuinely and wholeheartedly place the customer at the centre of everything you do. From the moment they step near, physically or virtually, your business you need to embrace them with an embrace unlike ever before. No, not a hug, nothing physical.
The customer embrace in this new world of retail is about value, from as soon as a customer is nearby. Value in service, advice as well as price. This is where bricks and mortar businesses can win against online… if they understand how to demonstrate value through a range of touch points in their business.
Central to delivering value is the core efficiency of the business itself. Retail businesses need to operate at a level of efficiency which enables them to compete on price. At the same time they need to ensure that all sales associates are able to transact with shoppers wherever they are in the store. They need to be able to be the most knowledgeable people in the store without necessarily having the most experience.
This is where good Point of Sale software, ideal software for the type of retail business, can provide a retailer with a point of difference and a structure through which to embrace the new customer-centric paradigm.
It is not enough to operate a basic cash register type system as that will deliver only basic results and basic will not cut it today with competitors around the globe. Retail businesses which specialize need specialist software. The result is a stronger, smarter and more nimble retail business.
Good specialist Point of Sale software will, if used well, enable a bricks and mortar business to not only compete but grow in this world. This is an opportunity for retailers, an opportunity to embrace change and to thrive against what may seem to some like insurmountable odds.
Drive your relevance, use your software, chase change.
The shop local movement has a good profile. Locals do tend to prefer to shop local. Retailers need to actively and consistently leverage this through a regular reminder but such a reminder is hollow unless you offer local benefits such as community engagement, hiring locally and sourcing locally made products. Actively engaging in the business through locally focussed decisions helps any retailer bring power and strength to their calls for people to shop local.
This is our advice today – if you pitch shop local, live in in your shop every day and show you yourselves believe in it.
Tower Systems helps retailers actively pitch and live the shop local mantra through its POS software and through the business support the company provides in its training and on its website.
Tower Systems is adding to the free marketing resources for small business retailers. New digital art is being loaded to our website for small business retailers to download and print and to load into digital marketing platforms.
This latest collateral from our in-house creative team is themed to provide retailers more options for pitching their businesses.
We are grateful to the encouraging feedback from small business retailers – customers and not – who are using the facilities we have created and made available through our website. This feedback is what has encouraged us to do even more.
Tower Systems provides access to these free marketing resources without asking for any details – making the resources genuinely free.
To all small business owners: Happy New Year. May 2015/16 be prosperous, healthy and happy for you!
One a year there is a focus in the media and elsewhere encouraging people to shop in small businesses. Here at Tower Systems we would like to broaden that pitch.
Make every Saturday your shop small day.
With people home for the weekend, shopping at local shops is easier.
It puts money back into the community where you have your home.
It supports where your kids are going up, will grow up or have grown up.
It creates local jobs.
It builds local expertise.
It supports retailers of locally made products.
It supports small local businesses who support local community groups and charities.
It supports the narrative of the area.
It saves fuel.
It saves time.
We at Tower Systems encourage everyone to go out and shop local this Saturday and at the very least every Saturday.
Small local businesses thank you for your support.
A retailer who shifted to our POS software commended last week to us on our comprehensive video training library and the technology platform we developed for providing access to this training library.
I love it! I love that I can watch a video over at home. I love that I can get my staff to watch videos of the parts of the software they use.
The Tower Systems video training library is a unique and valuable resource, enabling retailers using the software to be able to access training as they want, as they get further into the software.
The investment by Tower Systems in creating the training resources reaps dividends for the company as it enables us to demonstrate a valuable point of difference.
The Tower Systems sales team provide access for business owners considering the use of our software – to show first hand the value of our training facilities.
Every day in our POS software company we see and hear examples of optimism in small business retail from a boost in traffic to an increase in sales revenue to an increase in the overall average gross profit percentage achieved by a business.
We are thrilled to play a part of helping independent small business retailers realise their dreams through our software.
In one situation this week we learned how a retailer using our software achieved thousands of dollars of incremental business in a three month period by using a facility they had never used before. By turning on this facility in their software, for no additional cost, they were able to achieve sales they were up until then losing. This was done with no increase in inventory investment.
Small business retailers can increase sales through smart shopper engaging tools in our software. Beyond the usual help desk facilities, we enjoy talking business management with our customers – to help them leverage even more value from their relationship with us.
Here at Tower Systems our focus is solely on independent small business retailers in a select number of retail channels. This helps us provide specialist advice to our specialist retailers.
Tower Systems is thrilled with the use small business retailers are making of the free small business marketing resources we have made available in our website.
These free resources are another practical way Tower Systems helps small business retailers beyond our terrific POS software.
Our development and free access to these resources demonstrates are acre for and commitment to the small business retail channels in which we serve. It is easy for a business to say they support their customers in a variety of ways. This investment by us is us being true to our words – walking the walk if you will.
We have happy for these and other free downloads we place on the site to be used widely.
Note we have not included our branding as we don;t want to get in the way of the businesses using the materials.
Small business retailers want to grow, who doesn’t? With rent and labour costs increasing each year, growth is mission critical. POS software company Tower Systems helps its customers grow by providing advice on how to use the software to grow.
As retailers ourselves we can provide practical advice on how to use the software to more than transact sales, we can help retailers use the software to grow their businesses. We do this every day on our help desk, through our consulting services, through our knowledge base and through our business mentoring assistance.
We encourage, guide, educate and support our small business retailer customers in their desire to grow their businesses. it’s something we take serviceably.
Even on the weekend. Take today, Saturday … we have been helping one business owner understand opportunities in their slow selling inventory pool to unlock cash and space for more productive use.
We are serious in our commitment to small business retailers from our software through to the practical advice and support we provide.
The cloud backup service launched last year by small business retail management software company Tower Systems is proving to be popular with retailers. The backup process is seamless, not taking any noticeable time thanks to the smart technology engaged. The result is double protection offering peace of mind to small business retailers.
While Tower Systems has supported external and automated backup services for years, this new even more hands-off cloud-based backup service that offers excellent protection to participating small retail businesses users of our POS software.
Run on a subscription basis and backing up to the cloud real-time through the day, this is a comprehensive replacement of the old end of shift backup approach for small and independent retailers.
POS Software company Tower Systems is helping small and independent retailers to promote the support of local retailers through an innovative campaign of collateral created by the company for its retailers.
We are thrilled to be investing our creative resources in support of our retailer partners in this way.
This latest artwork is part of a series we have developed in-house through our amazingly creative marketing team to give our retailers different voices and platforms through which to pitch their shop local credentials.
This is another Tower AdvantageTM.
The free marketing collateral will be released next week.
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