Volumes have been written on the subject of the most cost effective business practices. Universities have entire programs dedicated to their own, individual takes on the topic as well. Despite the indulgent investment in getting down the foundation of which business practices are most cost effective, the topic remains as elusive and misunderstood as it ever has been. If the business experts of the world and in academia have not been able to create the golden formula around cost effective business practices, what hope do you have?
Determining the business practices that are most cost effective will vary widely. And, almost all of the business practices you may learn about have their roots in a handful of simple foundational elements upon which you can build. Determining which business practices need to be more cost effective can be seen through the data you have obtained during your time in business. Analyzing the information at hand, you will gain a deeper understanding of which of the small business fundamentals you need to seek improvement.
The Customer is Always Right…Usually
Anyone in a customer service role has had the “customer is always right” adage a defining standard of customer interactions. But is this really true, especially in today’s data-driven world? Customer service can be a trickier proposition today than ever before. The introduction and improved accessibility of data analytics have equipped the modern business world with tools that often contradict the initial expectations and desires of the customer.
A decisive step forward towards winning the praise of customers comes in the form of achieving a balance between what the customer verbalizes and what the numbers are really indicating. Using an updated POS solution can easily provide glimpses into the psyche of a customer, allowing your sales staff to maneuver a particular customer towards what it is they are really seeking. This limits the risk of a customer realizing too late that the item they selected was not what they really wanted.
Introducing a cutting-edge POS solution into your business will aid you in gaining an advantage over the competition. You will also see improvements in customer satisfaction, thanks to the granular levels of personalized support you will now be equipped to provide to your customers. Gaining the ability to predicatively recommend products and services, while accurately balancing the customer experience between data and expressive queues. Will quickly elevate the standards under which you operate.
Introduce Trending Tech to Further Entice Customers
Utilizing a modern, cost-effective POS solution to develop a new sense around your customer’s shopping and thinking habits. Once in place, some businesses see their new POS solutions indirectly lead them toward further customer engagement opportunities, thanks to the use of trending technology trends. Using technology that customers are coming to expect presents a picture of you being a business on the cusp of greatness, thanks to having a keen eye on the emerging technical world around you.
Enticing options, such as mobile apps and payment acceptance, omni-channel business models, or mPOS devices on the sales floor, can create an exhilarating and inviting atmosphere that serves to firm your relationships with current customers while providing the hype to entice new customers to see things for themselves. This also works to reduce stress and pressure on your staff to meet the growing expectations of today’s customers by equipping them with next-gen tools that they themselves most likely use regularly.
Defining Staff Roles and Expectations
As much as you desire to hire self-starters onto your staff, the reality is that even self-starters need to have a defined role. Having these roles defined and appropriately assigned is a challenge for not only small business owners but for management in larger businesses and corporations as well. Developing roles will require you to take a look at all of your processes, and make a determination between items that an updated POS solution can automate, and those that require a defined set of expertise.
Performance metrics are a valuable tool when determining the appropriate roles for your employees. Developing these will be difficult without having concise data at your fingertips, and will make much of your task assignments guesswork at best. Implementing a highly function solution, such as an all-in-one POS software solution, will ensure that you are gathering the data you need. Also, you will gain an added benefit in the form of accurate, customized analytic reporting that serves to make your staff role assignments highly effective in boosting productivity in all areas of your business.
Improving Margins Through Better Staff Management
Once defined roles and performance metrics are in place, you will gain an in-depth understanding of where cost savings can be realized. Additional benefits, such as determining performance roadblocks, will be easily identified. This gives you a variety of opportunities to introduce process improvements and align staff towards their strengths, giving your bottom line a kick start, especially when your POS technology is among the industry leaders.
Taking advantage of an advanced POS solution can provide you with additional margin improvements. can be achieved through the use of automated payroll and timekeeping activities. In some cases, you can easily match up sales numbers to employees to better determine who your top salespeople are with the touch of a finger. Also, highly accurate reporting and monitoring features available in many of the leading POS solutions work to prevent over-payments due to misreported hours or sales commissions.
Innovative Inventory Management Improves the Bottom Line
Developing staff metrics and implementing advanced timekeeping methodologies will help you to widen your profit margins. However, stopping there would be a disservice to your business and your customers. Where would you be without inventory? Do you know how much money is languishing on dust-covered shelves in the back room? How often do you run out of stock on top sellers, or are caught unguarded by an exploding sales trend?
Managing inventory in the modern business world means ditching the clipboard and paper approach and moving into a technologically advanced software monitoring solution. Automating inventory management is a great start, and thanks to wide-scale usage of RFID tags and QR codes, tracking inventory from the time it enters your business to the time it leaves is much easier than it has ever been.
Tying all of this in with your POS register must be considered an operational requirement. Live monitoring allows you to be alerted when voids are inappropriately executed, or when returns are not scanned back into inventory. This greatly reduces product leakage and makes tracking staff sales performance even more accurate. Transnational data can shed light on emerging trends, allowing you to nimbly adjust inventory to stay ahead of anticipated increasing demands for a particular product.
Cost Effective Business Practices Requires Technical Improvements
Small businesses are finding the level of competition greatly increasing, threatening margins and overall viability. But this does not have to be the case for your business. Consumer technology is driving innovative solutions into the small business world, largely in the form of innovation POS software solutions. These can be used to transcend the legacy cash register and ledger setup to provide you with an automated infrastructure that aligns you with many of the best business practices right out of the box. This serves to secure your place as a leader of your niche, while enticing customers and staff alike to conduct business with you.
Seeking expert advice about how an innovative POS solution can align you with key business practices is where talech will step in to help. We provide you with the ability you need to understand and develop a data-driven technology architecture. We design and implement the most appropriate solution for your exact requirements, setting you up for a successful future. Contact us today to sign up for a demo and to learn more about how talech can be your expert POS partner.
