How a POS System Can Help You Manage Your Margins

Small business owners tend to operate with fairly slim margins. Especially when you’re just starting out, you probably don’t have a lot to work with when it comes to time, money or other resources. That means you need to make the most of the tools you do have access to and use them to learn and grow as quickly as possible.

A POS system is a tool that a lot of small businesses already need to use. Aside from the practical value these products provide, they can also be important sources for information that can help you deliver value to customers and reach your business goals.

But in order to reap the benefits, you need to choose a tool that offers all the features your business uses on a daily basis in an easy-to-use format. If you’re just getting started with a new retail store, restaurant or service business, or if you’re simply looking for ways to help an existing business grow faster, here are some of the capabilities you should look for.

Inventory Management

Tracking the products you have available is especially important when it comes to making sales. If you’re out of a particular item, you need to know that right away so you can replenish your supplies and make sure customers know what’s available. The last thing you want is for a customer to place an order only to find out that the item they wanted isn’t available. Having a solid handle on your inventory gives you a better chance of creating positive experiences.

Marketing and Customer Engagement

How are customers interacting with your products or offerings? If you know this information, you have a better chance of creating communications and marketing materials that actually get their attention. Rather than only facilitating payments, your POS system can also give you access to detailed reporting that gives you insights into your customers and their journeys.

Is there a particular product that sells better during a particular time of year? Or perhaps there’s a section of your menu that your staff should be pushing a bit more. Your POS system already collects a ton of information from your customers. So if it can break down that info into trends and actionable insights, you can potentially use it to reach your customers more effectively and close more sales.

Employee Management

Your team is a huge part of your business. But it takes time to manage them. If you do everything manually, you could waste hours creating schedules, handling time off requests and checking on all the essential information you need for payroll. By having a POS system with an employee portal and scheduling features, you can handle all of those functions in one spot. This gives you more time to focus on growing your business, instead of managing those day-to-day tasks.

Speed and Ease of Use

All of these features are great. But they won’t do your business much good if they’re complicated and time consuming to use. With time at a premium, small business owners need a system that provides all the information and functions they need within just a few clicks.

That’s where NCR Silver comes in. NCR Silver recently got an upgrade, with a brand new interface designed for speed and efficiency, while still delivering all those features that businesses need to grow.

Kristin Schoonover, Director of Product Management for NCR Small Business says, “The new interface helps you perform everyday tasks like ringing up sales and getting to reports faster. It improves the overall NCR Silver experience and helps you serve your customers better.”

NCR customers are already reaping the benefits of this option. Tejas Chocolate and Barbecue is an artisan chocolate shop and barbecue restaurant that recently brought in a ton of new customers thanks to a major press mention. The sudden rush could’ve spelled disaster for an unprepared company. But that wasn’t the case for them.

Scott Moore Jr., co-owner of Tejas Chocolate and Barbecue says of the product, “NCR Silver has helped us get customers through the line faster than the kitchen can deal with them. So it’s been super efficient, super fast in helping us process orders very reliably.”

To deliver this functionality, all the info and functions you need are organized into tabs. The tool also reduces popups and cuts down on the number of clicks overall required to complete common tasks.

Schoonover adds, “With seconds saved on each transaction over thousands of transactions, you’ll spend less time at the point of sale and serve more customers quicker.”

The margins in your small business may be razor thin. But by choosing the right tools that allow you to work quickly and manage multiple functions from a single platform, you can save time and gain more of the valuable resources your company needs to grow.

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This article, "How a POS System Can Help You Manage Your Margins" was first published on Small Business Trends