In the great struggle to compete with the multiple, Gainsmore are complete believers that you need Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) equipment to maximise your profitability. We are not talking about all the bells and whistles that many offerings lay claim to, but there are a couple of reasons why employing a till that can tell you precise details of sales that all your well honed product knowledge cannot match.
Only ALDI is a notable exception in the overwhelming presence of scanning software in the multiples and they still retain precise sales details as their poor staff have to remember every product code and key them in manually (ALDI allege that this is quicker). So if they are all at it, the independent retailer should be at it too. Reasons why are:
• Shelf pricing is what customers expect and it saves you buying the gun and labels and wasting loads of your (or your staff’s) time
• Re-order functionality can take a lot of the headache out of the weekly slog round the shelves and stock room.
• Stock take can be done on a rolling basis all around the year, even on an individual product to highlight a picky pilferer at work.
• Proper category management CANNOT be done effectively without it.
It is this last point that can make all the difference. You can’t improve sales unless you know what the sales are, particularly where success in a given product might be an uplift of 10%. In terms of re-order this could just be one extra case over a 10 week period. You need to be a serious anorak to spot that kind of trend especially when 10 weeks can take you right into, or indeed out of a busy season.
However, if you could uplift sales over every product by 10% you would be deliriously happy and would have paid for a modest EPOS system in its first year.
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