Why Your Business Needs a 360 Retail Management System?

A POS or point of sale system is more than just a technologically advanced cash register. With the help of various built-in features, it can streamline several business processes by monitoring and managing stocks, managing prices, and creating dashboards and reports, among many other capabilities.

But streamlining operations is just one of many reasons why a 360-degree retail management system is a valuable investment for retail enterprises, no matter its size and whether or not it’s already an established name or a start-up. Here’s a look at other benefits of such a system for your own retail business.

It Can Help Address Most of Your Business Needs

Modern POS systems can indeed track your inventory and sales, but a 360-degree system can help you monitor the status of multiple store inventories using just one machine. You can also do this in other locations, as long as the hardware you’re using, say a tablet or a laptop computer, is connected to the POS’s central system. If something is out of stock, your staff can easily search another store’s inventory and have that item delivered to the store or even directly to the customer. If you need or want to use other languages and/or enable multiple currencies, say you have branches in other countries, you can easily do so using the same POS system.

Another important facet of retail is customer engagement. With a 360-degree system, you can view a complete history of your most loyal customers, no matter when or where they made their purchases. Using this information, you can then calibrate your customer engagement strategies and create more personalized loyalty and rewards programs.

Finally, a 360-degree POS allows you to integrate with almost any kind of system you have in place using open APIs. These include things like your payroll software, eCommerce platform (if you have one), human resource management, and even your enterprise resource planning system. This is important, since you don’t want to up-end everything just to upgrade your POS. What’s more, a good 360-degree system can also automate this integration process, should you prefer.

It Can Help You Create and Manage Promotions

One vital component of retail is the occasional promotion that entices customers to go back for more. With a reliable 360-degree POS system, you can easily activate promotions, whether it should be applied to one or multiple stores. You can also create and manage promotions using the same system; for example, you can easily switch between a product-based promotion that slashes a certain amount from the list price, or a transaction-based promotion that gives discounts based on how much the customer has spent.

Other features you should look out for in a good 360-degree system is the capability to stack non-transaction promotions, promo targeting, and promotion mixing (e.g., discounts, price tiers, and quantity breaks).

It Gives You Access to Business Intelligence, 24/7

Data is every business man’s best friend, and a 360-degree retail management system should be able to generate the data you need on-demand. These include inventory reports, sales reports, product performance (i.e., most and least popular items), promotions performance, and customer activity, at the very least. The system should also allow you to both import and export these reports, as needed.

Should the system go offline (an unwanted but highly possible scenario), a 360-degree retail management system continues to work. All the data gathered during the offline periods will be synced when the connectivity is reestablished, ensuring that no amount of data is lost.

As technology continues to evolve, so does the way that customers engage with brands. With the help of the same technology that has transformed the relationship between consumers and businesses, you as a retailer can easily adapt and evolve — a 360-degree retail management system is just the beginning.

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