Are you ready to surpass even your strongest competitors, delight your customers, and streamline your business operations? Believe it or not, all of these feats and more can be accomplished when you add just one crucial suite of hardware and software to your operations. Yes, it’s true: The humble point of sale system isn’t just a means to accept all forms of payments quickly and securely. Read on to learn how this all-in-one powerhouse can revolutionize your customers and your company.
Components of a point of sale system.
As we stated above, the point of sale solution (POS) is a suite of hardware and software. It generally consists of some or all of the following elements.
- A terminal or tablet.
- A card reader that accepts, interprets, and conveys a customer’s credit or debit card details to your payment processing company for screening, transmission to the buyer’s bank, and eventual acceptance or declination of the payment.
- Software that acts as the “brains” for taking payments and carrying out numerous other business-related tasks.
- Barcode scanners to record merchandise.
- Receipt printers.
- Cash drawers.
These POS solutions can connect to the internet via wifi or be hardwired. Readers may be directly attached to a tablet or terminal or operate using mobile technology that allows you and your associates to obtain product information and accept payments throughout your physical store or, for that matter, from anywhere at any time.
Why should you incorporate a POS into your business model?
If you still take payments using an old-school cash register or a traditional terminal that has no other capabilities, you truly are missing out on the revolution that is encapsulated in even the most basic of modern POS solutions. The following are just some of the feats that an updated POS can carry out with ease.
- Accept all forms of payments. Today’s customers demand maximum choice and flexibility not only in the products they buy but also in the payment options available to them. A POS can be configured to process transactions from credit and debit cards, ACH, e-checks, recurring billing, apps, digital wallets, and more.
- Optimal security. It’s one thing to offer payment diversity, but this is worthless if the transactions are unsafe. Today’s POS systems connect to account providers who are required to follow all of the requirements set forth in the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), a set of measures designed to shield the cardholder from data breach by protecting sensitive information.
- Inventory management. The barcode scanner accessory attached to the POS registers the unique code on each piece of merchandise that enters your warehouse. The details are then transmitted and stored in the system’s database. As soon as an item is purchased or returned, the POS software records the event. As a result, inventory can be tracked and reordered before supplies run critically low.
- Employee management. Just as stock and product counts are recorded and stored in the system, so is information about each of your staff members. In addition, the system allows you to set and monitor hours, make schedules and even communicate changes via email. Finally, the POS can also give you facts about each person’s productivity trends as well as their sales strengths and challenges.
- Customer relationship management. The system’s database can be a treasure trove of facts about your loyal patrons that you can use to refine inventory, grow your business and enhance the shopping experience. Just get their permission first, and you can then cultivate a dynamic repository of details about getting in touch, past shopping behaviors, likes and preferences. What’s more, you can use this data as the starting point for engaging content sent to interested segments of your buyers such as blog articles about new products, email blasts describing upcoming promotions and discounts and coupons that encourage inactive shoppers to come back.
- Report generation. Thanks to your stored data, your POS can create actionable documents that integrate with your third-party software and detail such important business facets as productivity and sales trends, profits and losses, and tax information.
By its humble appearance, you might not expect much out of even the most modern of POS systems. However, as you have now discovered, this solution truly will be a game-changer for your brick-and-mortar or online store. Don’t wait another day to take advantage of its numerous capabilities.
