Salon owners are faced with many unique challenges including how to improve salon performance. Managing appointment bookings and coordinating with stylist schedules are only the tip of the iceberg. Having the right stylists on hand is a difficult challenge in an employment marketplace that is trending towards a gig economy. You must examine social trends that force you to invoke the latest “green” expectations around the products you carry while ensuring that your product line is getting the job done.
Diving into the chaos that surrounds your daily salon tasks can be remediated by making things simpler, faster, and easier to understand. To achieve relief from the daily stresses you face running your salon, you must first find a solution that promises an immediate positive impact in the way you do business. The solution you bring in must be adaptable to your changing business environment and should be simple to use and understand.
Integrating a powerful technical solution is the ideal direction to take control of your business. The innovative tools that are available to salon owners will revolutionize how you manage all of your customer experience and staffing. This places you in an advantageous competitive position and reduces the pressure on yourself and staff. This creates a relaxed atmosphere that serves to entice customers into your chairs.
Building a Technology Toolset Requires a Less is More Approach
Online booking systems. A calendar for managing staff schedules. An easy way to track customer preferences. Inventory. Accounting. The list will grow longer as you spend more time determining what the software requirements are to handle each of your processes. When researching all of the technical options that you have at your disposal, you may be tempted to implement a highly specialized software solution for each area. But is this the best way to go?
Utilizing multiple technologies in your salon may address your key concerns, but unfortunately will create some additional difficulties that can undercut the gains of your new systems. Data, a gold mine in the modern business world, will most likely translate easily across multiple software platforms, requiring additional manual steps to import/export data at best, or to manually enter in data from one system into another at worst. Neither of these is conducive towards reducing your stress, so where else can you turn?
Discovering a technical solution to form the foundation upon which your business is built requires simplicity. A crisp design, and a solution that can manage multiple facets of your business in one, data transparent, place. While this may appear to be a tall order to fill at a glance, it is easier than you think, especially when you engage with an expert in the field of POS software platforms.
Innovative Point of Sale Platforms Deliver Cutting Edge Technology
The impact that an all-inclusive POS solution can have on a salon represents the number of options for achieving performance improvements in all areas. Discovering the ins and outs of any one particular POS system will require that you invest time and effort into not only locating potential solutions but also to learn the basics of the technology. This time-consuming process is best left to an outside POS consultant.
The advantages of utilizing the skills and expertise of a POS consultant go beyond saving you time. Leaning on their experiences with other salons has equipped them with a variety of lessons learned. These, in turn, can help to dictate the POS solution that is the best fit for you, but without the trials and problems others may have experienced.
Your POS partner will guide you through the internal discovery process that must take place in order to properly identify the best suited POS features and functionalities for your salon. This leaves you with a POS solution that quickly becomes the solid foundation you have been seeking. There are, however, a few key areas that you should familiarize yourself with to ensure that you select the right partner and to give you a head start in the product selection process.
Building an Efficient and Accurate Appointment Scheduling Process
The very first place you must start within your process is looking into how you currently manage your appointment bookings. Relying on a receptionist or desk clerk to manage and merge multiple calendars, digital or physical, is obsolete and requires immediate action on your part to improve. Modernizing this aspect of your business gives you immediate dividends, and quickly earns you the trust and respect of customers and staff.
Any POS solution you are considering must at a minimum allow you to easily view and manipulate the calendars of customer appointments and staff schedules. This is especially important if you utilize independent stylists in your salon. An affordable, next-gen POS solution will provide app-based scheduling that allows customers to make or change appointments from the convenience of their phones, while your stylists can easily block out times they are unavailable or expand the length of appointments as per customer preferences.
Staff Management From Independent Stylists to Employees
With a mix of direct employees and independently employed staff, salons are facing emerging challenges when processing payroll. While managing the time and payroll actions of direct employees remain relatively the same, the use of independent stylists and staff calls for new and innovative payroll technologies. The POS solution you select must be able to handle payroll attributes based on employment status.
The nuances of mixing direct employees and independent consultants introduce new wrinkles that you must be prepared for, especially around taxes and rate determinations. Implementing a POS system that can automatically determine the difference between a direct employee and a contractor, and make the appropriate payroll and tax determinations without manual intervention is a game-changer that quickly pays for itself.
Effectively Managing Inventory in the Rapidly Evolving World of Styles
The last piece of the POS puzzle that you must be knowledgeable in is centered on effectively managing inventory. You need the data to determine a variety of inventory decisions. This means that your POS solution of choice must present sales data in easy to read reports so you can quickly determine when a trend is developing, or when it is waning. This allows you to rapidly adjust stock levels to address the ebbs and flows of the products you need to deliver on the fashions and styles that you must provide.
Your Future Salon Performance Gains Starts Here
Building a future for your salon requires that you utilize technology anywhere possible. Achieving the full benefits of cutting edge technology requires an experienced hand and a set of eyes with the wisdom to detect nuances that otherwise went unnoticed. This provides you with a technical foundation that will give you the performance improvements you have long sought while setting you up for future success.
Retaining an expert in POS and developing customer satisfaction is a priority to ensure your success. You will require a wide range of customizable features, scheduling and flexible hardware options for your POS to drive your success. At talech, we developed an appointment scheduling solution that seamlessly integrates into your POS system for salons to leverage to their advantage. Reach out to us today to sign up for a demo and to learn more about how talech can be your valued POS partner.
