Big retailers owe much of their success to penetrating consumer markets and aligning manufacturing supply chains with inventory management. Retailers maintained massive product lists with SKU numbers, bar codes, and item numbers based on the product type and industry to fulfill customer demand. Years ago, department managers successfully sold cross-merchandised products from different category types with an unattractive but reliable mainframe terminal. What that system accomplished laid the groundwork for large retailers to introduce new consumer markets, such as catalog sales.
People don’t browse through catalogs and drop orders in the mail any longer, but in today’s terms, eCommerce still requires reliable and accurate inventory management for customers to successfully place orders online. The experience should be visually appealing, easy to use, and reliable. Integrate your stockroom, retail store sales, and online customers with retail store inventory management software.
“Brick and Click” Sales Strategies
The impact of eCommerce on how consumers shop cannot be underestimated. Billions of people worldwide now have access to the internet, creating a virtually endless supply of untapped business opportunities. The challenges for you as a small business are to:
- Remain abreast of current market trends along with shipping and browsing habits.
- Put in place robust inventory management software that can integrate multiple sales channels.
- Hire people who can contribute creative ways to engage your customers online and in the store.
- Manage product turnover and cross-selling while mitigating chances for dead stock.
You may not need to open a second store or even move into a larger space if your retail store inventory management software can successfully integrate online sales, suppliers, and fulfillment services.
“Click and Collect” and the Endless Aisle Experience
Another streamlined, space-saving method of inventory management is to introduce a digital in-store customer experience by installing an endless aisle to display high-res photos of hundreds of products. Customers can browse by size and color on a digital screen and have their order shipped to your store or to their home.
“Click and collect” allows your endless aisle and online shoppers to pick-up orders and process returns in your store. If you show sales items on a customer-facing display (CFD) and those products are nearby on display, chances are good they’ll see something else they like. Free up space and cash by layering a clean and colorful virtual store shopping environment. Customers will certainly find the appeal in that!
Purchasing and Sale Department Cooperative Planning
Use inventory management software to produce relevant reports that keep communication accurate between sales and purchasing departments. If you’re not large enough for departments by name, as general manager, you can set-up up daily and weekly reports to monitor product levels by category or department and much more. Add a second report that drills down from there to individual product activity.
Sales growth naturally causes a corresponding product turnover increase. Easily track sales to adjust real-time inventory levels. Update purchase orders with ease all within the same application. If you have sales and purchasing managers, you can customize back-end permissions to ensure business rules secure user access by employee type or employee number.
This streamlined approach will also allow you to stay ahead of slow-moving inventory and even create promotional sales bundles to promote discontinued items.
Product Life Cycle Analysis
You don’t need to be a large retailer to make retail store inventory management software work hard for your small business. Cloud-based POS with inventory management software for iPad gives you the visibility you need at every stage of the product lifecycle (PLC):
- Introduction
- Growth in sales revenue
- Maturity
- Decline and replacement
Advanced, yet intuitive data analysis can be one of the biggest boons for a small business. No, you don’t process thousands of transactions in an hour, so you don’t need to hire a sales analyst. Detailed reports on POS data and warehouse levels can give you the same powerful capabilities as big stores like Best Buy or Target.
Increase the Footprint of Your Retail Store Virtually
Keep customers excited about your brands and continuing to buy your products with daily deals, BOGO, and flash sales. Give your sales associates better tools to interact with customers who aren’t exactly sure what they want to buy. They’re less likely to trek over to a competitor, plus they don’t have to stand in line. Tap in promo codes right on the iPad screen for your loyal customers that love a discount.
talech provides custom solutions for retailers that need robust store inventory management software. Integrated by a virtual cloud network, you can now work wirelessly while increasing your capacity to take on more business without the added cost. talech has made high-end retail and big-box solutions surprisingly affordable.
When you partner with talech for your retail store inventory management software needs, we devote our time to identify your business challenges. We use this information to apply an innovative POS solution that levels the playing field. Reach out to us today to sign up for a demo and to learn more about how talech can be your valued POS partner.
