You hear footsteps in the distance, a low, quiet rumbling. Slowly, but surely, they start to get louder. It seems as though a stampede is approaching your store. That’s when you realize that Black Friday is upon you. Christmas comes early for retailers when Black Friday rolls around. It heralds the arrival of the much anticipated holiday shopping season and brings along promises of surging revenues and the clearing of inventory. It means increased hours and pay for your staff, festive and inviting decorations, and extra treats everywhere you look. It also means having a functional Black Friday point of sale solution in place.
Keeping up with the bustling holiday shopping season is heavily dependent on how well your business operates during this period. Black Friday is only the beginning; Cyber Monday and the three to four weeks in between Thanksgiving and Christmas means that there will be little, if any, let up in business. No matter if it is November 24th or December 24th, the margin for error is slim. You need a POS solution that can handle heavy volumes of transactions while presenting you with real-time data to ensure you stay ahead of the game.
How Can a POS Solution Aid in Creating a Discount Engine
The first step that a POS software solution must be able to help you in creating your Black Friday sale specials. Your Black Friday point of sale solution will allow you to identify items that would generate the most response in a Black Friday sale, thanks to in-depth sales reporting and data analysis. This will include customer response histories involving prior buy one, get one deals and the salability of clearance items.
A high-end POS system is required to achieve a high level of sophistication with your Black Friday sale offerings, and maintain fast and accurate transactions. It must easily allow you to adjust sale prices on specific items. Having an app-based mobility option is imperative as you can quickly shift gears from anywhere in your store or from home, based on real-time predictive data analysis. This keeps your inventory flowing out the door while revenue streams into your payment processing account.
Utilizing Data to Turn Your Black Friday Event Into a Sales Driving Force
The need for data is evident when it comes to effectively driving sales. Black Friday, while considered the holiday sales event of the year, does not differ so much from other holidays in terms of planning. Utilizing data captured by your POS solution can reveal trends and interesting purchasing nuances by your customer base. Even if your current POS system is not quite up to par, there are some aspects of data collection that can still be achieved prior to your Black Friday sales event.
Implementing an upgraded POS solution is the ideal solution, but for some of you this may not be realistic as the holidays rapidly come into view. In either case, Black Friday is still the perfect time to improve the customer data you have and expand your data analysis abilities with an eye on the future. Black Friday will see you visited by many customers that are either stepping into your store for the first time or seldom participate in your sales events. This is a prime opportunity to gather key points of information, such as email addresses and cell phone numbers, to be used for targeted promotions down the road.
At a minimum, this gives you the ability to make attempts at enticing these customers back into your store during this holiday season by using targeted marketing techniques. Your marketing actions can be related to their Black Friday purchases, or simply to remind them of the gift cards you are now selling as stocking stuffers or last-minute gift ideas.
This data will also help to determine if moving to an omni-channel presence would present a more enticing brand to your customers, both new and regular. You will also be able to determine how many backup POS terminals or mobile devices will be needed to achieve full redundancy throughout the holidays while ensuring that support (link back to the 24/7 POS support piece) is readily available when you need it most. Perhaps most importantly, you gain an innovative way to manage inventory in real-time, keeping your shelves full and backroom empty.
Using Black Friday to Streamline Year-Round Inventory Management
Black Friday point of sale goals provide businesses with the motivation to improve inventory management. Without the right Black Friday point of sale solution in place, however, you may find this motivation quickly turns into frustration. As we have written previously, there are still two primary items you need to consider when it comes to how your POS software helps you in the backroom.
While many love to use last year’s statistics as a model for managing inventory this year, you may find yourself disappointed in the results. You need to develop an inventory management strategy that is based on trending customer desires, and not last year’s Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl LII Christmas snow globe run. Equipping yourself with the inventory solution that best suits your business ensures that your hot ticket items will remain in stock, preventing awkward moments on the sales floor and keeping the revenue streaming into your business.
Managing Staffing Around Customer Expectations and Staff Personal Needs
One key element to having a successful Black Friday is making sure that customers get the help they need and minimizing the amount of time spent in checkout lines. Staffing must be completed during the bustling holiday season, placing an emphasis on how a POS solution can effectively aid you with staff management. There are three must-have functions that your Black Friday point of sale system must possess in order to easily get you and your staff through the holiday season with your sanity intact.
For Black Friday and the coming weeks, you and your staff will both need the ability to view and update schedules easily and while not being in the store. This level of flexibility provides you with the additional ability to change staffing roles, allowing senior staff members to perform limited management functions if covering for an unavailable supervisor. You can also empower staff to help train new or temporary employees, based on knowing who your top performers are via available reporting in your Black Friday point of sale system.
Lastly, you have the ability to easily match hours worked to scheduled hours when performing processing payroll. This is the time of year that can be prone to errors and is where having real-time reporting capabilities to watch your payroll will reduce expenditures and will set you up for an easier tax season. With costs reined in, sales revenue rolling in, your Black Friday point of sale solution will lead you on a path of success for this holiday season and beyond.
Getting Technical Help to Achieve Black Friday Point of Sale Greatness
The cases for modernizing your POS software solution are clearly evident. Automations built around inventory and staff management frees up valuable minutes in your day. This recovered time can be spent working with your customers and building up relationships that can extend into the post-holiday portion of the year. Realizing these efficiency gains requires in-depth knowledge around not just your business, but around the technical options available on the market.
Asking for help when looking to achieve a smashing success on Black Friday is the smart play. When an outside consultant can come into your store, understand exactly what it is you are trying to accomplish, and roll this into a customized Black Friday point of sale solution, success is at your fingertips. You will step to the head of the line and become the trendsetting retailer in your area, and build a reputation that makes you the go-to store for the community.
Modernizing your business requires cutting-edge technology typically found in a next-gen POS solution. Regardless of if you are in need of an entirely new POS solution, or just need to implement updates to your current solution; talech is ready to help modernize your business operations through the utilization of a modern point of sale system. Contact us today for a free demo and more information on how to bring cutting-edge technology to your customers.
