The grocery store checkout experience feels the same pretty much across the board. You arrive at a checkout line with a cart or basket full of goodies. When your turn arrives, you place your items on a belt while the cashier swipes bar code after bar code across a scanner before sending them down another belt. But then, there is that dreaded price check moment. It could be produce that is not in the system or a smudged bar code. Suddenly, the smooth moving line has stopped, testing the patience of both the customers in line and your staff. This is why you should invest in point of sale systems for grocery stores.
Taking Stock of Current Processes Aids in identifying Required POS Functions
In order to take advantage of these, grocers must first examine where they currently stand in terms of the POS system that is in place, as well as how current business processes are executed. Conducting a technical evaluation of your operating environment is the ideal place to start. The foundation can be established easier, and make your efforts at modernizing much more effective.
By being able to see exactly where you stand, you can begin making the choices required when examining the newly available POS features that are on the market. This may mean the simple introduction of a new element into your existing POS infrastructure, or it may result in a sweeping change by the introduction of an entirely new system. In either case, you will need to understand a few of the latest POS technologies that can make an immediate impact on a grocery store.
Keeping the Line Moving Swiftly and Accurately
One of the primary driving factors for the implementation of technology among grocers is to improve the checkout process. Unscannable bar codes, price checks, or payment processing issues can all lead to lengthy delays. These keep your staff in an almost constant mode of troubleshooting, which in turn can lead to a constant state of playing catch-up when it comes to creating a better customer experience.
Today’s POS platforms can provide a number of easy ways to keep those lines moving. Some examples of these are:
- Intelligent produce and fruit pricing. Instead of arming a cashier with a bulky set of laminated fruit and produce UPC code cards, you can utilize touchscreen interaction where they simply need to tap the picture of the product. This eliminates the need to fumbling for a UPC code and makes the weighing process faster.
- Reduction in price checks. This goes hand in hand with reducing a cashier’s dependence on bar codes. By introducing the same touch screen system as above, you reduce the delays and associated costs of price checks incurred by bar codes being either incorrect or damaged.
- Make processing coupons and discounted items easier and more accurate. By leveraging an automated pricing system, time spent scanning coupons or discount cards can be greatly reduced. This can be a time savings when accepting government food assistance vouchers or payment cards.
While these are just a sampling of where gains can be achieved at the register, the impact these alone can have on your bottom line makes them worth the mention. And, in reducing your checkout line times, customers will be more at ease and less anxious when it is their turn at the register, helping to further reduce stress on both them and your staff.
Inventory Management and Point of Sale Systems for Grocery Stores
Taking control over inventory is perhaps more crucial for grocers than any other business model with the exception of food service or pharmacies. The products on your shelf can become dangerous if they exceed the stamped best by dates. It is up to you to manage these products, from dairy and meat to produce and baby formula, accurately and with little margin for error. Throwing in product recalls for dangerous reasons such as E. coli or listeria outbreaks makes it imperative that you be perfect. But how?
Managing inventory in a grocery store requires a level of perfection that can only be accomplished through the use of an automated management system. Effectively integrating this into point of sale systems for grocery stores makes the perfect remedy easy to identify: the implementation of one POS software solution that includes inventory management automation as part of the platform. This presents you with trendsetting advancements, such as matching recalled products to customer purchase records for easy notification.
Additional benefits, such as automatically-generated alerting around expiring products or low stock level thresholds presents you with inventory reduction, and cost-saving, just in time ordering flexibility. This lessens the amount of space that you need to devote to storing items, increases customer presentable shelf space, all while ensuring that popular and sale items remain stocked at all times. This aids you in keeping the promise most grocers provide to their customers, those of product freshness, truthful and noticeably throughout your store. Not only does this greatly improve your reputation, but it organically expands the reach of your brand.
Developing a Sixth Sense Around Customer Trends
Taking control over the key aspects of customer outreach requires that you have the right POS functionalities in place. A number of customer engagement advantages can be utilized with a few touches of the finger that will elevate your reputation above competing grocers in your areas.
- Developing a customer rewards program. Organizing and executing a customer rewards program is both tedious and time-consuming when performed manually. In allowing your POS platform to conduct the heavy lifting, you can be assured of an accurate rewards program structure that will give you the precise customer data you need to keep your product offerings fresh and relevant to your brand.
- Executing precisely targeted sales and specials. Equipped with accurate data from transactions and your customer rewards program, you can easily see into your customer’s mind and develop enticing specials based on prior purchasing habits.
- Managing ownership records for co-ops. Co-ops are faced with an additional wrinkle that most grocers do not have to be concerned with; managing their ownership and shareholder records. The ease in which these records can be managed through the use of an updated POS solution can easily make an impact both in terms of applying accurate ownership benefits to the right parties and deepening the relationship with all co-op owners.
Creating the appearance of staying ahead of your customer’s wants and needs will broaden your branding voice beyond where you thought possible. By allowing your POS platform to control most of the menial aspects of customer engagement, you and your staff will have more freedom to interact with your customers while they are browsing your shelves. This serves to deepen the relationships you build with your customers while giving you a boost in operational efficiency and a reduction in costs.
The Experts on Point of Sale Systems for Grocery Stores
Choosing the right POS functionalities for your grocery store requires in-depth research and knowledge to maximize the benefits that can be achieved. This is why an important piece of the POS puzzle must include the engagement of an experienced POS consultant. The technical knowledge and business acumen that they can bring to your planning table will be a priceless addition to your POS implementation efforts.
When you partner with talech for your point of sale systems for grocery stores needs, we will devote our time to identify your key business challenges. From here we work to develop a concise solution that brings you into a higher level of business functionality. Reach out to us today to sign up for a demo and to learn more about how talech can be your valued POS partner.
