PoS systems are becoming essential for managing everyday commercial operations, from simple payment processing to inventory management and sales analytics in retail companies. In this article, we’ll dive into the main benefits PoS systems can bring and must-have features you should incorporate into your custom PoS software.
PoS system benefits
- Improved customer service
With multiple payment options, self-service capabilities, and automated calculations of discounts, PoS solutions streamline the checkout, allowing merchants to reduce queues and free up the staff. Integrated with loyalty programs, PoS systems gather customer data, including personal bonuses and discounts, helping merchants automatically provide a more personalized approach to each customer.
2. Saved managerial time
PoS solutions can handle a significant share of managerial tasks, such as sales tracking, inventory management, stock refilling, and tracking employee working hours. Modern PoS systems often offer cloud-based or remote access features, allowing managers to monitor business operations from anywhere.
3. Valuable insights
Using the PoS system’s reporting and data analytics or integrating it with a more advanced data analytics solution, businesses can track multiple metrics and performance indicators, like average customer spend, cart abandonment rate, conversion rates, average check size, labor costs, and staff productivity. A PoS system will let you know exactly which products are best-selling and which are not, what are your customers’ preferences and habits, or what time of the day your shop is the busiest.
4. Competitive advantage
Custom PoS solutions can give you an advantage over your competitors by offering multiple payment options, an efficient loyalty program, better customer experiences due to more personalized recommendations and faster service.
Essential features for your custom PoS
Custom PoS software is capable of dealing with a wide range of business operations while enhancing customer engagement. Here are some must-have features without which we can’t imagine an efficient custom PoS solution.
- Flexible payment processing
One of the reasons why customers abandon their carts is the absence of a preferred payment method, so integrating multiple payment processing options is a must. Apart from cash, modern PoS systems should allow credit card and mobile wallet payments, as well as those made online in web stores.
2. Inventory management
A PoS system should have inventory management capabilities to provide merchants with real-time visibility into stock levels at a particular store or the whole chain and help them avoid out-of-stock or overstock as well as timely reorder goods. Such tools also eliminate the need to keep track of sold goods manually: upon receiving the shipment, you can scan the goods into the system with a barcode reader, and when an item is sold, it will be automatically deducted from your inventory stock.
3. Employee management
Employee management functionality in a PoS system should include tools for tracking staff working hours and managing schedules, allowing employees to clock in and out via the system. Within the PoS system, each employee can have their own account with different levels of access permissions based on their role. This helps with tracking sales agents’ performance against set KPIs and ensuring security by restricting access to sensitive information.
4. Customer management
A PoS system with customer management capabilities will allow you to collect and manage such customer data as contact information, purchase history, and preferences, which is invaluable for understanding customer behavior and tailoring products or services to their needs.
PoS systems can also integrate loyalty programs where customers earn points, rewards, or personal discounts for their purchases, which can attract people back to your business and increase customer lifetime value. In addition, PoS systems can gather customer feedback about your products or sales agents and use it to continuously improve your offering and customer experiences.
5. Reporting and analytics
By equipping PoS systems with reporting and analytics capabilities, companies can get insights into sales trends, customer preferences, and the efficiency of existing processes. For instance, PoS analytics tools can show how sales fluctuate during different seasons, allowing managers to adjust inventory planning and marketing strategies. With PoS analytics, managers can get insights into peak sales hours and plan the working schedule accordingly.
6. Integration capabilities
The ability to integrate PoS with other enterprise software helps streamline commercial operations. By integrating your PoS system with other enterprise software, you can access data from a central PoS unit. Interconnecting your PoS solution with systems like accounting software, CRM, SCM, and data analytics tools enables automatic synchronization of sales, inventory, and customer data, reducing manual data entry.
7. Multistore managament
For businesses operating across multiple locations, the capability of PoS software to sync data from different stores can provide centralized control over goods, staff, and sales at all sites. The synchronization across multiple stores can help enhance customer experience, with in-store personnel at one location being able to check the availability of certain products at other sites and warehouses and provide accurate, up-to-date information.
In conclusion
When equipped with the right features, like inventory and staff management, data analytics, processing of various payment methods, as well as integration capabilities, a PoS solution can become a hub of major instruments necessary to ensure smooth business operation on site.
Still, despite the PoS software benefits, developing and integrating a new technical solution into existing business and IT ecosystem poses certain risks. So, to ensure the success of the PoS implementation project, carefully assess your requirements as well as your current business capabilities when deciding on your custom PoS hardware and software configuration.
