Making the transition to a POS
can be a daunting task for most small businesses, particularly those that have been in business for years and have large inventory counts. Those companies who’ve relied on basic cash registers and inventory hand counts oftentimes get stuck in their old ways and fight the reality of changing times and technology’s evolution. Managers may also view it as a loss in control to this artificial being capable of processing thousands of transactions simultaneously, updating inventory in real time, and creating POs on the fly; or it may come down to a business owner simply enjoying the laborious nature of putting pen to pad, the time-old tradition that makes us all feel a little bit more human.
Get with the Program
As someone who considers himself somewhat of a traditionalist (i.e. prefers a book to a kindle or a call to a text) I can relate to the frustration that may be posed to a mom and pop store or even somebody with a more sophisticated operation. If you’re currently tracking your sales and inventory
count by hand, the time it takes to input that information into an excel spreadsheet along with your customer information can be as little as a few hours. If you don’t have a few hours to spare, ask your son, daughter, grandchild, or even nephew to help you out. Once you get a digital record of it all, most POS software providers, including Erply, will do the leg-work of importing the data for you and walking you through your new, supremely efficient and organized database. Plus, most vendors will provide your inventory in CSV format, making life a lot easier. The benefits of joining the Erply cloud are far-reaching.
Consider this: how about being able to effortlessly pull up what Joanne ordered the last time she walked into your store and preparing a new product pitch as she peruses the shelves? How about knowing which of your salespeople are the best performers and rewarding them accordingly? How about being able to automatically place a new order when your stock of a certain product reaches a designated level? Or how about being able to run promotions and offer coupons in-store, online, and through a third-party application
to broaden your reach? Those are just a few of the benefits that a cloud-based POS system offers. Targeted email lists. Done. Faster transactions. Done. Did I mention you can print your own product labels and barcodes? No more pricing errors or counting receipts, greatly reducing the probability of human error. And for those of you that have an online store (I hope you do), a purchase made anywhere be it online or in-store will update your inventory count in real-time and be accessible on any device – that’s the power of Erply’s inventory management.
Cloud Nine
What about those of you already on the POS bandwagon but shuddering to move off your physical servers to the cloud? The process is as seamless as someone being first introduced to POS and happens to even be more beneficial. First, you probably already have your inventory and customer lists on a computer which makes it convenient to then export them into a spreadsheet. We can then import
and organize that information into your account. Secondly, you actually end up saving more money since a) you’re not paying to lease or buy any existing or future servers, b) you’re not locked into a long-term contract with a provider who doesn’t feel pressured to back up the quality of their product, day-in, and day-out, and c) the software you’re using is outdated and lacks integration into many useful apps, mobile devices, and missing important security checks.
So how do you pick yourself up by your bootstraps and save yourself a lot of future aggravation, losses from mismanaged inventory, and up your customer loyalty game? Give Erply a call, schedule a demo with one of our friendly experts, heck use our 14-day free trial if you’d like. We promise you’ll love it.