The POS Software Blog
News from Tower Systems about locally made POS software for specialty local retailers.
<iframe width=”720″ height=”420″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/0zsKAGSOwXs” title=”YouTube video player” frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture” allowfullscreen></iframe>
We have just completed another live and interactive preview with our POS software customers of a major enhancement our POS software.
We appreciate those who could Jon us live, as well as those who will watch the video.
Software enhancements take time to plan, develop, test and release. Today’s session was another step for a centrepiece update to our tower Systems POS software for 2022.
Tower Systems is grateful for the years of support from a diverse group of church bookstores, at the local church level as well as at the state level and the national level. The christian bookshop marketplace is strong both physically as well as online.
Our POS software for church bookstores has evolved over the years. It offers facilities unique to their operation and respects their role in the broader church life experience.
Our POS software for charity retailers fits in this space, too, serving secular as well as church related charities.
From serving through our POS software single christian bookshops to groups of christian bookshops to shops connected with local churches to shops connected with broader christian organisations, our POS software offers a broad based solution to inventory management, special order management, online sales, imp-store sales, shipping and more.
Church bookshop software is specialty by nature, like the businesses themselves. We work closely with those working in the businesses as well as those tasked with overseeing each business. We are grateful for opportunities to speak at conferences and to engage with church bookshop folk in a range of forums.
Dealing with tax in an appropriate way has been vital as has been the need to integrate with other platforms that are used in some church bookshop situations. Our software is flexible and constantly evolving as we discover other ways we can serve this vital part of church life.
From evangelicals to catholic to independent to Seventh Day Adventist, our church bookshop software is as diverse as the world of faith and we are grateful to what we have learned on this journey.
Christian bookshops are unique in that they are businesses and they are also part of church life, often staffed, at least in part, by volunteers. We understand the need for easy to use yet highly functional software. This is where we are proud to offer Australian developed and supported POS software for Australian church bookshop and christian bookshop needs. We make it easy for volunteers to learn and use our POS software.
From the practical such as pricing, bundling, customer accounts, inventory management and more to the complex such as managing a single online sale across multiple outlets and the proper accounting for freight, our church bookshop and christian bookshop POS software is robust and proven. We appreciate the advice and guidance of so many in getting us here and for supporting our work.
Tower Systems is grateful to offer locally made and supported POS software for local needs.
The POS software you choose for your indie retail business is an important decision. Get it right and the business could prosper and become considerably more valuable. Get it wrong and it could cost you plenty.
In thinking about the software you want, think about your business. The software you choose needs to serve your needs. Here are some headline level thoughts … 7 steps to choosing the right POS software for your local specialty retail business
Think about these things and think about what you want in software in your business to help you stand out. If it does not feel right, say no thanks and look elsewhere.
Here at Tower Systems we will tell a sales prospect if we think our software is not a good fit based on the needs they have explained to us. There is no value to us or the sales prospect in them going with software that is not a good fit.
We have won plenty of customers who made a poor choice before landing with us. We take care to ensure we fit their needs because the last thing we want for them is another poor tech experience.
There are many generic and cheap point of sale systems in the marketplace. Price does matter. You would know that in your business. Think about the shopper who wants a full kit but says they want the cheapest. Think about your advice to them. If you say price does matter and that you get what you pay for, the same is true with retail business software.
A small higher price today for the right software could save many times the gap between it and cheap generic software.
So, work out what you want. This must come first, ahead of any budget.
Be flexible. Once you have chosen software, follow the advice provided by the software company and the expert they send to your business to train you. If they suggest changes to your business processes, embrace them. While changing what you do can be frustrating, software designed specifically independent specialty retail businesses is specialist in nature and it does what it does based on years of development and feedback from many customers.
Be disciplined. Software is like a machine. It needs the right fuel. For software, that fuel is data. Ensure everyone in your business is disciplined in how the software is used. From the moment stock comes into the business to when it is sold. Track it. This will help you make better business decisions.
Be engaged. Your software company will want a two-way relationship If you have suggestions, share them Play a role in the continued evolution of the software. This helps you and other businesses in your channel.
Save time. The right software will help you eliminate manual processes. Embrace these opportunities as much as possible. Time saved is time you can invest in yourself or in the business. Seek time saving opportunities out.
Be realistic. Any new software will be a challenge. Know that you will have some rough days learning the new things. Accept these by focussing on the main goal of enjoyment and efficiency once you know the software well.
The software you choose reflects your business. Take your time. Be certain about what you want. Invest well and the right software will easily pay for itself.
Here is 2022 stocktake advice from our POS software company for our 3,000+ customers:
2022 is proving to be a challenging year for retailers. Covid continues to disrupt product supply and labour access. It is also impacting shopper behaviour.
The retailers doing best are those managing their business data, leveraging data for insights that guide business decisions. There is where the Tower Systems POS software helps local retailers.
Using our POS software, local retailers are able to be more frugal. Being frugal is a local retail business is beneficial, if it is done based on data, with a focus of driving overall business value. Being frugal is a good thing if done thoughtfully and well.
Let’s be clear though, there is a difference between being frugal and being cheap.
Being frugal is about being careful. Spending based on evidence when nit comes to labour costs and inventory costs.
Too often we see retailers over-index with labour, eating unnecessarily into business profits. Likewise, too often, we see businesses buying poorly, not based on evidence, and negatively impacting on the profits of the business.
Our POS software helps local retailers in these two areas and more, we help them be frugal in their approach to rostering and frugal in their approach to buying … with the goal of adding measurable value to the business. This matters.
The stronger the financial base for a business, the lower its operational overheads, the lower poor performing inventory volume, the better for the business. This is where being frugal matters. Done properly, it provides the business with capacity to weather economic challenges, to actually make the business stronger in its financial foundations. Our POS software helps local retailers do this.
There is a gloss and excitement to owning your own shop. The real gloss, and value, comes from running the business well. This is one of our goals here at Tower Systems – to make POS software and back it with support that helps small business retailers run their businesses well.
Being frugal is good for business and good for all in the business who rely on it. Our POS software provides insights as well as mechanisms for being frugal, for driving the value of and for the business.
I am leveraging my newsXpress and Tower Systems experience for this …
This free workshop on websites for newsagents will look at:
I’ll be hosting the session and sharing plenty of lessons from the last few years: websites I have launched that have failed and websites I have launched that have been successful.
I’ll discuss full time websites, and seasonal websites too.
Please have your camera on so people can see who you are. Please come with questions, too. Here’s how you can connect:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86342284316?pwd=M1A1WGw2MkNDL0lFQVQrWjdRd3VSZz09
Meeting ID: 863 4228 4316 Passcode: 586410
Thursday June 23 @ 2pm Melbourne time.
I will record the session for people keen and who cannot make it.
Being online is as important today as having a photocopier in your newsagency was 10 or 15 years ago. The biggest challenge I see confronting newsagents in particular is what to sell online. I’ve seen some spin their wheels over this for months. Some take the approach of putting as much of their shop online as the can while others treat the new website as a start-up business. I am more from the latter camp.
I am not hosting this workshop to try and sell you anything. Rather, I am keen to share experiences so that you can make more informed decisions. I see too many retailers, including newsagents, making decisions about websites that waste money.
Just about any local Aussie newsagency is perfectly placed to host a successful online business.
Having a realistic view of being online is critical to being successful online. A website can be a hungry beast and I’ll explain how.
I will, for context, touch on the group connected websites newsXpress runs that offer the easiest path to selling online. Any marketing group can do this.
If you can spare an hour Thursday I am sure it will be worth your while.
Mark Fletcher
Managing Director
newsXpress and Tower Systems
0418 321 338
mark@newsxpress.com.au
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-fletcher-tower/
PS. If you’d like to know more about what newsXpress offers newsagents: Click here for what is included in our $175.00 a month (or $1,680.00 (inc GST) per year paid in advance) membership offer.. Please email help@newsxpress.com.au or call Michael on 0400 331 055 with any questions about newsXpress..
Supply chain challenges are impacting retailers across many sectors. The challenges are not new, certainly not in the last two years at least. Here in mid 2022, the supply chain challenges are more impactful than before, and local retailers are being hit hard.
In the face of the unknown as to inventory arrival, some retailers ignore revenue opportunities.
In our POS software we have facilities that they local retailers win business and lock-in revenue despite supply chain uncertainty.
From managing inventory to capturing revenue for forward orders to easily shifting from one supplier to another, our POS software provides retailers impacted by supply chain challenges with tools that can provide appreciated flexibility.
With plenty of products impacted by supply chain challenges, customers are happy to wait if there is certainty they will eventually receive the products. This is where our software shines as it manages these special orders, providing the detailer with a structured framework through which to manage the opportunity and the customer the confidence that the retailer has it covered. By systemising the approach, bringing certain structure to it, the retailer can capture revenue early and the customer can be calmed knowing the retailer has their back.
Good POS software helps local retailers navigate often complex situations that are outside their control, offering the local retail business revenue stability that is key to on-going trading.
Through our work across a range of retail channels we are well aware of and across the detail for supply chain challenges. We have helped retailers who acted to stock pile inventory to see them through, managing that inventory across multiple locations. We have also helped retailers work with other retailers to share inventory across multiple businesses.
These are just two ways we have practically helped local retail businesses deal with the latest supply chain challenges impacting local sales.
Offering flexible POS software, we have been able to provide local retailers with pathways though supply chain challenges that are usually only available to bigger businesses. We arebgrateful for a local small business retail community that works together.
Tower Systems is a local Aussie POS software company seeing a range of local specialty retail channels.
We are proud to have created the Shopify website for the 2022 Hallmark Keepsake ornaments range available for pre-order now at www.myornaments.com.au. These highly sought after collectibles are loved around the world and here in Australia the best shop for being 2022 Hallmark Keepsakes is the My ornaments website, created by us and connected two our POS software running at the home shop in Mount Waverley, VIC.
The range of Hallmark Keepsake ornaments for 2022 in Australia is bigger than ever before and at the My ornaments website you can preorder more than ever before, including plenty of exclusive Hallmark Keepsake ornaments that are only available in Australia and New Zealand from this website.
My ornaments is the place to shop for your Hallmark Keepsake ornaments.
We have guaranteed supply by Hallmark direct, with supply numbers fixed for each piece. Once they are sold out, they are sold out.
Here are some of the Hallmark Keepsake Ornaments available now for pre-order:
We don’t have final images and details for our Hallmark/Funko collab ornaments, which are exclusive here to the My ornaments website, the metal ornaments and the resin ornaments. These details should be loaded to the website in the next week.
We are so grateful to bring you these beautiful and collectible Hallmark Keepsake ornaments for 2022. orders are open and people a4re getting in early to ensure they do not miss out. Already, in the first 24 hours, we are seeing some ornaments that are highly cherished by our collectors.
There are many more than these @ MyOrnaments.
If you have any questions, please email: orders@myornaments.com.au
Buy now pay later businesses are having a rough ride. They face challenges due to the ease with which people can get credit, their break fees, the cost to retailers of offering the payment method and the entry of new competitors into the space – like banks and Apple.
It feels like the glory days of buy now pay later as a traffic driver for retail are over.
In our Tower Systems POS software we have good LayBy tools, which any retailer can offer and manage easily. We developed these many years ago and have maintained them. Today, we have some retailers handling thousands of LayBys every year. We bring structure and support to offering LayBys in any local business.
Here is a 6-minute video we shot about this yesterday morning.
Using the LayBy tools in the Tower Systems POS software, small business retailers can offer professional management of LayBys including:
Best of all, the LayBy facilities in the tower Systems POS software help a retail business to bring structure, certainty, to the LayBy offer in a business and this leads to good business, efficient business, profitable LayBy business.
We make LayBy easy but certain, a differentiator on which local retailers can rely to win business and provide a service local shoppers love.
For too many retailers, offering LayBy can be a grind, problematic to manage. Using our LayBy tools we offer structure. many retail businesses in our POS software community find this useful to LayBy being a more enjoyable part of their businesses. We like this. One of our goals is to help small business retailers enjoy their business more.
With the advent of BNPL, LayBy can be a small business win, a true differentiator, and Tower Systems helps achieve this.
Only you can know which POS software is right for your rural supply / farm supply business. You can only reach this conclusion once you have researched the software out there, seen it first hand, and matched it against the needs in your business.
Tower Systems is grateful to serve many local rural supply / farm supply / produce with produce business POS software. This is specialty retail POS software made for these specialty retail businesses.
Our off the shelf software is designed to serve many needs of these unique local rural businesses, to help them serve farmers and other with the sale of materials, stockfeed and more.
What we do know is that we try our best, and that our software continues to evolve, based on customer feedback. Indeed, customer feedback is key to our software evolution.
Our advice when you see a software company saying they are the best is to ask them to prove it, to show what they know about other software that makes theirs the best.
All we know is what our produce / farm supply / rural supply POS software offers, and it is plenty.
This list is only the start. Our software offers much more.
If you own a local farm supply / produce / rural supply business and are looking for software, consider Tower Systems, check us out and see whether our POS software could serve your needs.
What makes Tower Systems worth considering? It’s that we will serve your need to find what’s right for you.
We shot this video in which we look at a wonderful local suburban pet shop in the US over a month ago. The video is all about retail and what we discovered visiting the awesome Rosie Bunny Bean shop in Los Angeles.
We’re more than a POS software company. We love good retail.
Okay, we know it’s not her birthday and, yeah, we are keen for Australia to be a republic, but who would say no to a holiday? Not us!. No matter, our online businesses are open today, including offering Platinum Jubilee mint coin sets like these:
Learning how to use POS software is like learning to surf on so many ways. It’s about knowing when to push off, which wave to catch, how to balance, how to ride it is and when yo feel exalted.
It’s kinda how we approach training, mentorship and support here at Tower Systems for our 3,000+ local retail business POS software customers.
Every local retail business has different waves, different challenges and opportunities. Every local retail business owner and team member has different skills. We know that a one size fits all approach does not work, that there is no corporate approach you can take to implementing POS software. It’s why our approach is personal, fit for each customer business.
We like the surfing analogy because it reflects the unexpected we see in local retail, the need to be flexible, to read the waves and to adjust accordingly. This is what our POS software helps with, and our training guides local retailers on this.
Tower Systems is not your average POS software company.
The price of gift shop software can be confusing. here at Tower Systems, it’s not. Our gift software software costs $159.00 a month.
That includes GST.
It also includes access from as many terminals as you want.
And, there is no additional cost based on transaction volume.
Also, the price is not dependent on you signing up to any specific EFTPOS provider.
Plus you can cancel any time.
Oh, and you pay monthly. There is no need to pay a year in advance to gat the $159.00 a month price.
And, we almost forgot, the $159.00 a month is in Aussie dollars. There is no exchange rate to tangle with to get this months price.
All those factors matter, if you compare the Tower Systems gift software software with some others.
On top of this, we’re an Aussie company providing Aussie supports with context for your type of business, your local conditions. We understand you and serve you, from here in Australia, in Hawthorn VIC, actually.
It costs $159.00 a month to rent (inc. GST). This includes the software, help desk support (Melbourne based), half a day one-on-one setup and training and access to an awesome knowledge base of advice and help.
You can cancel the rental at any time. There is no lock-in contract, no requirement for you to pay up front for a year. Pay as you go, monthly.
There is no requirement that you use a particular EFTPOS service. We mention this as some POS software companies lock you in on a service with a high price.
Find out more at www.towersystems.com.au/gift.
Watch a demonstration: https://youtu.be/0kArDkAKE4E
From sales to special orders to pre-orders, from Xero integration to Shopify integration, from loyalty that works to easy shopper postcode tracking, from smart ways to pitch shop local to featuring locally made products … our gift shop software is made for gift retailers, made to help you thrive.
We’re not your usual software company. See these videos at our YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/c/TowerSystemsPOS ) with practical business advice:
Attracting new traffic, new shoppers, is vital for local retail businesses. Every new shopper adds value to the business today and into the future.
We are always looking for businesses that do this well, in ways not traditional for that type of business. We found one a few weeks ago in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin – the Avant Cafe & Cycle shop. Here is a new video from us in which we explore what we like about what the folks at Avant are doing, what we learned from them.
They offers are well defined, quality and complimentary, yet able to successfully stand along … and that is key to any business attracting new traffic for specialty products or services – they need to be able to stand alone as that strength enhances the value of the combined offer.
Pursuing new traffic is the single most important business management activity for you and your business.
We suggest pursuing new traffic is a meditation point for any local specialty retailer… new traffic, what it is, what it means and how you can attract it.
When you approach any management or strategic activity in your business, think about what this task or activity will do to attract new shoppers.
It is not enough to do something in your shop for that is only seen by people in your shop. What are you doing to promote this outside your shop? … because that is where new traffic is to be found.
This is not something for your suppliers to do. It is up to you. Only you and your actions can attract new traffic.
Pursuing new traffic is about far more than putting new products in your store. Indeed, stock is only one of several steps that are all connected in pursuing new traffic. However, stock is the start. Stocking new lines never offered in the business are the best first step to take to bring in people who do not shop with you today.
What they are doing at Avant is attracting people who love and appreciate good coffee while at the same time attracting local cyclists and people wanting to purchase bikes or have their bikes serviced. Each of these separate areas does well, and they compliment each other.
Yes, mail is so yesterday for many. But, for some, mail is a wonderful way to receive information and advice. That’s what plenty of our local small business retail customers tell us. That is why, here at Tower Systems in mid 2022, we continue to publish a regular customer newsletter in print form, and post it to all customers, free.
This latest POS software customer newsletter is our third for this year. each newsletter includes advice, help and more … designed to help our POS software customers gain more value from using our POS software.
The newsletter gives them something to put on the notice board or to share with others. It gives them something to read anytime, anywhere.
We will keep producing print newsletters as long as our customers tell us they are of value to them. The newsletter is another point of personal customer service.
Each newsletter we send includes this important box of information, reminding our customers of easy contact points:
Tower Systems also sends a weekly customer email with advice and suggestions on best practice use of our software. Plus, we have social media access points as well as direct access for our customers through our website portal. We want to ensure we are where our customers need us to be, when they need us. The print newsletter plays a role in that and we are grateful to be able to produce this and provide it to our thousands of local small business retail customers at no cost.
We see too many software companies, especially POS software companies, de-humanising contact. Retail is personal. POS software, as a retail service, needs to be personal.
This matters.
Each time we send out a print newsletter we receive feedback. It is wonderful seeing customers discover something from the print newsletter that we expected everyone to know and understand.
So, yeah, sending a print newsletter is old-school. we are proud to do it and grateful that our customers engage with it. We understand that retail is personal and are committed to offering our customers personal service.
Recent Comments