POS: A Point of Sale Primer

Doing business today can keep you on your toes more than ever - a fluctuating economy and more ways to shop than ever before have retailers fighting over every dollar in a potential customer's pocket. When times get tough, only the smart and strong survive ... and for smart retailers, point of sale programs for retail (POS) are the best way to stay lean, mean, and in winning form.

Retail management tools such as a POS system can truly make your job easier by keeping your data centralized and organized, simplifying your decision making when ordering stock, helping you service your customers quicker and more accurately, and offering you automatic reminders to re-order when stock levels get low. The benefits of a POS system are numerous and customizable, and as flexible as each unique business they serve, but they also include:

• Employee sign in/out and scheduling functions
• Up-to-the-minute sales reporting features
• The option to unify your e-commerce site data with store data
• The ability to interface with your accounting software
• Eliminate pricing errors at checkout

Let's say you want to find out what your peak sales hours are this year ... rather than relying on memory or taking a good guess, you can identify peak times by reading time stamped receipts. Or, you may want to find out what items sell well together, so you can up-sell better or re-arrange your displays in the most effective way; point of sale software can tell you accurately every time!

A complete POS system combines hardware and software that will maximize customer service in a number of handy ways. It can process credit cards faster and protect against security threats, track customer data so you can reward those that buy from you the most, look up special order or stock information faster, and give you the data to spot buying trends so you can have what customers really want on hand at all times - because nothing is worse than having to turn away a first-time customer.

POS hardware offerings are also numerous, but each make your job a lot faster and easier, such as signature capture PIN pads, receipt printers, automatic change machines, bar code scanners, customizable bar code label printers, customer display screens and touch screen monitors, among others.

You might not even recognize some of the benefits off the bat, but they are endless. For instance, one simple one: printing bar code labels with your store's name on them can be a bit of free advertising, and also help a customer remember where they purchased an item when it is time for more!

Ready to find out how these POS "helpers" can give you the edge you need to survive the modern retail marketplace?

If so, please give us a call at (734) 453-9200. Our well-informed staff is eager to meet with you and find out how a system can best serve you, and which one is the right fit for you. In addition to Randall Data Systems' relationships with IBM and Radiant for your software needs, we also provide printing and point of sale hardware from: Hewlett-Packard, Symbol, MMF Cash Drawer, PSC, Epson, Cognitive, Lexmark and APC, among others.