The Benefits of complete EPoS systems

Complete EPoS systems are an electronic point of sale that integrate admin and your back-office with your physical store or shop operations. They are very powerful and can streamline your retail business in many ways. This great combination of hardware and software links up retail operations, whether processing customer transactions or putting together a marketing strategy from data collected.

EPoS technology has improved massively in recent years. These systems used to be solely focused on sales, cash management and the inventory side of the business, but they can bring a lot more to the table now. They provide real-world business efficiencies to retail and hospitality that are perfect for companies that need to consider every part of their budgeting.

If you are looking to bring an EPoS system into your business or possibly looking to upgrade, it’s good to know the benefits available, some of these are…

The customer is king! EPoS technology is agile, fast, effective and efficient and has overall been designed to enhance your store or business experience for customers. Physical retail is currently competing with online, so when a customer is in a retail store, they require quick service. This is where the latest scanning devices make sales at tills faster than they have ever been. As well as touchscreen and simple to use, registers make life easier and the learning curve more manageable for staff.

In a cafe or restaurant, the speed at which you can service a customer is essential. One way to speed up service is to provide staff with handheld devices that can take orders on the move; that way, the order can be underway as soon as it has been taken. These orders arrive instantly on a screen or printed as a physical paper ticket.

Another need the customer has is for the most detailed and accurate information about a service or products availability or specifications. This is where EPoS systems shine; they have real-time inventories available at the touch of a screen. This means it’s easy to complete a stock check or search whilst talking with a customer in real-time in your shop or business.

There’s also the possibility to order products straight from suppliers and then let your customer know the purchase availability for collection.

It’s vital that any retail EPoS system can receive your customer’s money. So payment integration is key with a contract or pay-as-you-go provider.

As mentioned, complete EPoS systems connect store sales with inventory in real-time. Meaning whenever a customer buys a product, the systems and stock levels are updated instantly. It doesn’t matter if the product is scanned or added manually, the EPoS system’s database updates stockholding records immediately.

When it comes to managing the inventory for a cafe or restaurant, it’s a bit more involved. For example, if one of your customers orders a meal, the process is different; meals usually have several ingredients within them, these all have different values attached to them. What’s clever about EPoS systems is that they can be programmed with said exact ingredients to guarantee precise inventories are available.

There are time efficiencies in that you can undergo regular stock checks to check that mismanagement, poor portion control or theft aren’t losing your company money.

A great EPoS system provides a clear view of your stock at all times. The benefits of this are that they can help reduce sell-outs and guarantee you’re not carrying more stock than needed.

Alongside the customer being king, Data is also very important. Access to up-to-date data can make or break a business. EPoS systems record every sales transaction in detail, and you can utilise this information to recognise trends meaning you can adapt your business accordingly and quickly. This means it’s possible to predict future revenues based on complex data, meaning planning and scheduling becomes more accessible and more adaptive.

Complete EPoS systems provide total end of day reports, providing sales analysis by the time, product category, staff member or individual product. This would be used to track product sale performance, trends in customer spending and profitability.

These are just some of the benefits of an EPoS system which we will be covering in future posts, so look out for those.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help your business grow with an EPoS system, please do get in touch; we are always happy to help and discuss your requirements.