How to: Get your point of sale working harder for you

With Jeffery Atizado from SMB Consultants

Many of us have changed the way we do business in the past few months. Moved business online, offered click and collect, or perhaps a home delivery service. It’s now time to assess how many of these new services are sustainable in the long run. How can we measure their success and adapt our business to include them moving forward? The first stop is your point of sale software.

“We’re finding that our clients are using this time now to look around the corner, it’s not all doom and gloom, they’re able to rethink their strategy,” says Jeffrey Atizado at SMB Consultants, who specialise in bridging the gap between sales data and its ability to inform automated business systems. “The first stage is really like disaster recovery - how do we generate sales to offset the lack of foot traffic that we were seeing? So we develop a method of capturing online sales.” The next step is to take the positive outcomes and bring what we can into the future, and this could be a game changer for your business. “There’s a lot of things that COVID-19 is teaching consumers in terms of buying behaviors that won’t go away even after things return to normal.”

Measure and learn. Look first to the sales figures to see what’s effective. “There are two ways to save money in business - make more sales and lower your cost base,” says Jeffrey. The temporary absence of a bricks and mortar store with all its overheads presents a unique chance to look at those costs vs revenue from an online business model. How do online sales compare to walk-ins? How much are you spending on postage and/or delivery?

Be realistic about going forward. “What you don’t want is to make a quick decision based on the current situation but not its long term potential,” says Jeffrey. With plans to ultimately reopen your store, this chance to focus solely on your online business provides a testing ground to get your systems in order, gather data on customer behaviour and look more closely at what’s selling well and to whom.

It’s about adapting your business. “Reinvest in the areas that are really important and guarantee success and leave off the things that are not going to be as relevant anymore,” says Jeffrey.

New sales patterns may create stock control issues so it’s important for your systems to keep up with changes. Having systems such as Xero or Shopify is great but if they’re not linked to the cash register in store where you usually turn to the dashboard for sales data, it’s difficult to report on the big picture and measure trends. “It’s kind of like driving a hybrid car - parts of it are electric and parts of it are still running on petrol,” says Jeffrey. This is where even the smallest business can benefit from cloud based integration - software used to bridge the POS system with your accounting system.

Change your mindset. Change isn’t as hard as it may seem, particularly if you’re halfway there and current Government subsidies on offer may help. “Small business is like a jet boat in an ocean - small enough to pivot and change direction, unlike a jet liner, which is hard to turn around,” says Jeffrey. “Having an online presence, investing in online content and ways to communicate with your customers through online channels is absolutely a priority for all businesses right now.” Look to your sales team for skills and support - work together to adopt and adapt.

Work with what you’ve got. We know that the adage, “If we build it they will come” is not always true in retail, so use your database. “Reaching out to your existing customer base is essential - your community of customers that loves your store is what’s going to keep you afloat,” says Jeffrey. “A loyalty program is a great incentive but it’s not doing anything for the business owner if it’s just offering a discount. There are technology tools now that allow business owners to engage with their customers in a very personalized way, based on the transactional data that they can collect from their cloud based system.” What will make the difference is how you use it.