7 Things to Consider Before Buying a Retail Management System

The retail industry is leapfrogging each year to new heights. After that, people who are opening stores or have been in business for decades are facing challenges. They are facing issues with their retail operations. Therefore, choosing the right Retail Management System is an absolute necessity. However, if you select the wrong one then you will be playing with fire.

Mae West said, “An ounce of performance is worth pounds of promises”. It rings the truth even today. Many businesses do not take off or achieve desired results even after giving the best of what is available. Sometimes, established businesses run aground despite all their efforts.

Above all, the problem is not that they are not managing the stores properly. The issue is that the behavior of customers has changed. Furthermore, businesses have not been able to keep up with it.

Therefore, this is where a modern POS System comes into play with its modern features.

Let’s have a look at 7 things to consider before buying a Retail Management System:

1) Comprehensive Inventory Management:

A ‘Fait Accompli’ is that every POS Software comes equipped with a Retail Management system. But often, it is far off from what businesses require.

A POS makes it easy to keep track of the inventory. It allows retailers to manage inventory in real-time. After that, it is easy to know the number of products you own over a given period. 

Suppose these products are already in your catalog. Employees need to simply scan items. After that enter quantities. As a result, it will be recorded with your POS software. This saves a lot of time as compared to manual inventory tracking. Hence, it will help you with fewer errors in inventory.

A retail business has multiple vendors and suppliers for various items. If a business has multiple stores that sell different categories of items, then stock management is bound to toss. Therefore, your Retail POS Software should have inbuilt features. For example,

• Supply Chain Management that stores and directs shipping and return of products
• Procurement of items via manual and automated channels
• Centralized control with a dashboard that keeps you up-to-date about products
• Automated stock count options from warehouse to Retail Management System
• Ability to define stock prices, discounts and characteristics when purchasing
• Access control for all the operations and users working within the system

2) Smooth Purchase and Sale Cycle:

Procurement and sales are the essential activities businesses perform to run their daily operations. As a result, Retail Management Solutions can support the business with regular stock updates. Moreover, tight control over stocks is issued to stores from the warehouse.

3) Get Deeper Insights & Real-time Analysis with Retail Management System:

Retail businesses need a rolling stock to continue business operations. Therefore, a Retail Management System provides detailed insights about the running stocks, present stocks, availability of items. Furthermore, their purchase price and sales price. Moreover, various filters that allow real-time reports with concluding data. It will be helpful for quick and strategic decisions. Therefore, retailers should implement a Retail Management System. With this, store managers can measure the profitability of items and ensure that they are stacked properly for faster movements.

4) Analyse Workforce Management with Retail Management System:

Employees are an integral part of every business, especially retail. Consequently, they work in shifts and often on the same Point-of-Sale machines that their colleagues worked on. As a result, a modern Retail Management System has an in-built retail POS software that enables tracking of every staffer. After that, it has a record management feature for sales, and timekeeping. After that, extra hours of work. If you integrate with a payroll system, it can even manage salaries.

• Time and Shift Management
• Attendance Management
• User and Access Control

5) Money and Account Management:

Managing accounts and money is an extreme priority for retail businesses. Furthermore, from paying taxes to taking payments via POS, the Retail Management System should be able to do it easily. Also, it should be able to support your good return policies. Moreover, it should support traditional transactions. For examples, cash and cheques and digital payments like credit cards, gift cards, and loyalty cards. In other words, you must use POS machines to boost sales.

• Automated tax calculations for multiple jurisdictions
• Multi-currency support
• Cash and credit card support for payments
• Mobile and wallet payments
• Multiple Account Management for vendors and suppliers

6) Get Access Control with Retail Management System:

Controlling inventories, purchases, sales, and several other actions is vital to business success. In addition to that, which user will be able to perform which task? How many users will be able to operate sensitive tills? And who will manage the overall administration of the Retail Software is important. With retail software, a user can:

• Define User Access Roles and User Groups for tight access to the system
• Allot time and money for each POS users
• Create POS Groups to perform various tasks
• Define Business Partners and create their individual Sales/ Purchase Lists

7) Great Customer Experience:

“A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all,” says Michael LeBoeuf. He is the foremost business author and writer of modern times. After that, all the fancy functionalities and features of retail management software are not useful. It should be accurate for your business. In short, the success of every business is dependent on the customers. Moreover, it compels them to return to the store with the ultimate customer experience. Your retail management software should possess the following things:

• Gift Card module to enable customers to offer them to other people
• Loyalty Program Support to make a customer a loyal customer
• Promotion program module to enable a retail store to promote items/ products
• Discount and Offer support for staffers and customers
• One-step check-in and Online check-out options for customers
• Multi-store and Multi-currency support for global customers

A Retail Management System is built to boost the sales and efficiency of a retail business. Apart from all these points, it should also contain essential features. For example, faster checkout, auto-update inventory, and stock count with the warehouse. After that, open and close tills with currency counts and various other functions. In short, it should become easier to perform with retail software. You should consider buying a retail management system that saves costs and time with the automation of various processes.

Take a No Obligation Free 30 Days Trial of our Ari Retail Management System to boost your business.