The time has finally come; You’re ready to expand your business into a second location and you’ve spent months preparing for opening day. While your staff is excited about the grand opening, you’re thinking about how you can streamline your operations without doubling your work. A lot of it is coming down to cost. You’ve decided you need a way to see how each of your locations is performing as well as their revenue data. Unfortunately, your current POS system can’t quite keep up.
If you are like most growing businesses, your current toolset is a traditional POS system. While it’s served you well over the years, you’re starting to realize that you might’ve outgrown your old setup. You begin to wonder if there’s a better option, one that could scale alongside you without the usual growing pains. Lucky for you, there is. This is where the EPOS vs. POS battle begins.
Innovative Hardware and Software Platforms
While POS solutions bring with them a variety of hardware and software options, many of these lock you into lengthy contracts and don’t allow for upgrades at your discretion. EPOS systems present you with more flexibility and can offer you cloud-based SaaS solutions. The advantages of EPOS vs. POS in just the basics of hardware and software can make a large difference when comparing the abilities and adaptability of these two types of systems.
EPOS systems typically come with modern hardware functionality and a focus on mobility. Often compatible with tablets and, to a lesser extent, smartphones, the risk of hardware failure drops dramatically. These devices do not age out like their traditional counterparts, and can oftentimes be upgraded or replaced at little or no cost. Like POS systems, your data is typically still captured and stored automatically, but unlike traditional systems, EPOS data is not stored locally.
Thanks to utilizing SaaS, the information and data you need to run your business is stored in the cloud and is easily accessible via a website or an app on a tablet or smartphone. This protects your data from physical theft and secures your business by providing you around the clock protection.
You can access it at any time through an intuitive interface, making the transition from a physical model to the cloud seamless and without service interruption. With this level of technology as the backbone of your business, you can finally realize most of you’re the efficiency gains on your wish list.
EPOS vs. POS: Exploring Business Efficiency
If you’ve ever had to take a clipboard to your back room to do inventory tallies, you know just how easy it is to make mistakes, as well as how long it takes. It’s a sad but true fact that humans are slower than computers, whether it comes to financial tallies, inventory counts, or sales tracking. And yes, a majority of small businesses rely on manual, human processes and paper systems to track the health of their business, likely as a result of using a traditional POS.
One of the key advantages of an EPOS solution is that all of your devices remain interconnected, ensuring that real-time data is always being captured and is readily accessible for review. This arms you with the potential to monitor sales, staff productivity, and inventory levels to adjust your performance on an as-needed basis. Viewable through easy to read reports, you can customize your tracking to see how all aspects of your business are impacting your revenue streams.
Automated business operations, such as tax rates and inventory levels, will speed up the flow of your business while greatly reducing financial and inventory errors. Financial and stock audits can be performed with higher levels of accuracy and in rapid fashion, giving you the advantage by resolving cash draining issues almost immediately. The concise data analysis in an EPOS is available to you from anywhere, allowing you the freedom to enjoy life while checking in on your free-flowing business at your leisure.
Improving Customer Retention and Satisfaction
Most customers are creatures of habit and have certain service expectations that they expect you to meet and if you’ve ever heard the phrase “Well, I come here all the time,” you know this to be true. Your customers have particular brands and products they prefer. When your business is one of their shopping destinations, the customer expects you to have what they are looking to purchase, no matter the time of day. Otherwise, you risk them leaving empty-handed.
Running out of popular items at crucial moments can often create negative reactions to your business. Through intuitive, automated inventory tracking, EPOS systems provide you with accurate, up-to-the-moment, inventory and sales reports to identify where you are running low of items. With this, you can automate as much of your ordering process as you are comfortable with, further ensuring that the items you need on your shelves are always on your shelves.
When you are at a higher level of inventory management efficiency, you can do more than just provide products and services to your clientele. This gives you a great customer service edge, as staff can easily look up an item in your system and retrieve its price and availability. Adding to this advantage is being able to grant your customers the ability to look up items in your inventory via a mobile app or website.
This positions you a step ahead of your competitors while giving them the freedom to shop ahead, or even order for in-store pickup at a later date. This deepens and secures your relationship with your customer base and gives your business a progressive reputation as the place to frequent.
A Better View into Your Business
Still deciding on EPOS vs. POS systems? Your ongoing business operations deserve the best assets your budget can accommodate. The right system implementation will streamline your business and use your data to generate clear and accurate sales and inventory reports. Your new solution should require very little training, be user-friendly for both you and your staff, and come with clear pricing and high levels of support available, all without any hidden fees.
When you enlist the help talech, we work with you to show you the aspects of your business that an EPOS implementation can improve. This leaves you with an EPOS product that suits your exact needs, without any hidden fees or long contracts, so that your business can grow and remain flexible to the quickly evolving business world. Contact us today to sign up for a demo and to learn more about how talech can be your
valued EPOS partner.
