‘The more we reduce ourselves to machines in the lower things, the more force we shall set free to use in the higher.’
Anna Brackett, American female philosopher
We are currently witnessing a growing pace of automation and simplification of many technological and business processes. In this regard, more and more people are wondering how they should keep up with the overall progress and stay on the same page with leading experts and entrepreneurs.
Many small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) still use outdated business methods in the old manner. Because of this, they suffer in competition with other entrepreneurs using high-tech processes which allow them to increase the efficiency and scale up the business.
Nowadays, the time has become one of the greatest values in life. Therefore, the less time a customer spends on purchasing a product or service, the more valuable the seller becomes in his eyes, the sooner he becomes loyal to the brand. And the increase in the number of loyal customers is the main factor in the growth of your enterprise profits.
POS meaning
Selling point or point of purchase is called today as simply as POS. Everyone is acquainted with this shortcut of Point-of-Sale system. So let’s take a closer look at the POS meaning and its main features.
The main function of any selling point is cash acceptance and registering. Thus, POS means a lot for the successful work of a company.
One of the most important and much-needed POS feature is its ability to be cloud-enabled. In such a case, a SME can perform its back-end operations without maintaining servers in many locations. This means that payment processing, as well as customer relationship management will be running smoothly and more efficiently.
Being owner a small business implies dealing with inventory. Point of purchase undertakes to handle all kinds of inventory recording and accounting. POS will easily show all your receipts and expenditures, so you can manage them faster. You will see each employee’s performance, your best-sellers and worst-sellers, even if you have more than one outlet.
What is the POS meaning? It’s flexibility at the level of payment. Today, customers are using various payment methods, and this doesn’t need to be an issue for your company. So, make sure your selling point is able to support all modern systems of payment.
Most of POS systems include some of the following components (from a hardware perspective):
- Terminal
- Credit card reader
- Touch screen
- Cash register
- Cash drawers
- Scanners
- Printers for receipts and barcodes
From a software perspective, a selling point must surely include:
- POS software
What are the key features of a point of purchase?
In brief, a POS allows you to:
- Get paid for your goods or services provided
- Track inventory
- Manage sales from your onsite outlets and your online sales
- Manage staff
- Attract more customers
Payments
As said above, your POS must be able to maintain all methods of payments that customers may be using. This means payments in cash, by checks, by cards, by NFC protocol or by online payment services like Amazon Pay, for example.
Small business owners should keep in mind that there is a type of payment method called EMV, which means the standard for Europay, Mastercard, and Visa chip cards. To be able to accept these smart card payments, additional hardware equipment may be needed.
Payments processing can require a percentage of a take or a monthly subscription payment. This processing can be made by the POS system itself or by third parties. Or, another option, the selling point can provide processing services by working with third-party processors.
Make sure your POS interface can please your customers and ensure compliance with all payment security standards, such as PCI DSS.
All these factors should be taken into account by the business owner or manager before selecting and purchasing a POS. Because POS is meaning a perfect tool to strengthen the security of payments.
Support
Another area that requires careful attention of the business owner is product support. The biggest revenue comes during peak hour. The crush of the POS system within these rush hours can be harmful to your business. You have to know who you will contact in this case and how fast you will get help. This is a thing that should be envisaged when choosing a good support plan.
If your peak hours are on weekend or late in the night, then it’ll be better for you to use 24/7 support services.
Hardware
One of the important and useful features of a point of purchase is its mobility. Many of those who ask the question ‘What is the POS meaning?’ have no clear image of how it should look like in the restaurant. The employees of a retail shop or a restaurant should be able to move POS in order to provide more customer-focused services. This aspect brings attention to wireless connectivity and security of payments processed via tablets and smartphones. You will need some hardware add-ons, such as card readers, barcode scanners, etc. A tablet-based selling point will give your company strong competitive advantages on the market. You will be able to process payments on different floors of your store, in an outdoor patio, during off-premise sales, at an exposition or pop-up shop.
Mobility of the point of purchase will increase the comfort of the client when using your services. And the more satisfied he leaves from your store, the sooner he will return to you again for new purchases.
Back-Office
Today’s selling point does much more besides taking payments. The meaning of using a POS is to be able to track your inventory, employees, and customers and attract new customers as well. A robust point of purchase accounts sold and remaining items. You will be notified by your POS system about the items which need to be restocked. The point of purchase will categorize the items to make it easier for you to print out barcodes in order to scan them when selling.
Analytics is a highly important issue for any kind and size of business. Even if you have a small shop or café, the analytics provided by your selling point will enable you to see what products are selling to whom and in what time. This data will give you a clear picture of your business operations. You will be able to predict how many items to order for each month.
You can also see what products are sold on certain days of the week and even hours of the day. This data will lead to the conclusions about your need to hire additional vendors to ensure an uninterrupted flow of visitors during peak hours.
Employee tracking
When selecting your ideal point of purchase, make sure it can clock your employees in and out,
collect customer information, track the delivery and help you to build your loyalty program and take promotional actions. The POS system should know when to send emails to customers to thank them for purchases, wish them happy birthday, offer coupons, etc.
The offline functioning is also a very important feature. You need to keep selling even if your selling point is temporarily disconnected from your back office.
Using the same inventory database between your brick-and-mortar store and online store may be necessary for you if you have both. Nowadays, we cannot deny the importance of the online presence of a company. The POS should provide risk-free operations which prevent the loss of unauthorized access to the personal data stored in the cloud storage. To do this, use the services provided only by a secure storage provider and ensure utilizing the virtual private network (VPN) between your point of purchase and any remote place. The meaning of any kind of POS is to help the entrepreneurs to run their business, to make it faster, easier and more effective.
Once you have chosen the selling point or point of purchase that suit your SME, consult with its providers. Then try it out and make sure that it has all of the features that will help you to grow and expand your business in the coming years.
So, if you know now what ‘POS meaning’ is we should say that our ROMPOS system can satisfy all the key requirements.