Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) systems have replaced traditional till systems across the world as the best way to process retail transactions. Encompassing the hardware and software to run till operations, modern EPOS systems will provide many additional benefits to specialty retailers.
What are the advantages of using an EPOS system?
A modern EPOS system provides many benefits to retailers that go far beyond just taking payments. The array of features offered by an EPOS system can include customer data management, stock management, pricing, staff profiles and loyalty programmes, etc.
Manage your business better with data analysis
With one system managing tills and back office, an EPOS system records all the data on sales, stock and purchasing, allowing specialty retailers access to detailed reports covering how their business is performing. When new items are added to stock, scanned and purchased this will be tracked by the EPOS system. Stock levels can then be monitored through stock reports, indicating when inventory needs to be replenished.
These real-time reports help business owners make accurate decisions about their business, such as new product campaigns, pricing and promotions.
Improve the customer experience
With rising customer expectations, customer care is a significant metric for repeat customer visits. Strong customer care is in the top three priorities for retailers in a study carried out earlier this year. Customers expect items marked in stock online to be available in store, and will be turned off by long queues at the till. An efficient EPOS system can help reduce these pain points.
A modern EPOS system will provide a smooth omnichannel shopping experience as it is integrated with your eCommerce platform and multi-branch stock levels. This will allow stock levels indicated to accurately reflect what is in the store room, and if something is available in one branch customers can be told what branch they can find it in.
Furthermore, modern EPOS systems offer advanced functionality such as paperless receipts, and gift cards in place of refunds on out of date returns.
Boost customer loyalty programmes
With the value of customer loyalty, it is more important than ever to have an EPOS system that incorporates some level of customer loyalty schemes. A modern EPOS system will allow a degree of customer management and create profiles so you can better understand customer shopping trends. This allows retailers to identify loyal customers and reward them with benefits from a customer loyalty scheme.
Customer benefits can include broad catch approaches like seasonal or birthday discounts, or bonus points for every purchase. By tracking the customer’s shopping history, customers can also be given discounts for specific product ranges. In this way, your EPOS system can provide tailored promotions for every customer, helping retailers stand out from the competition.
Increase efficiency and accuracy
A strong EPOS system is an integrated solution offering benefits to all levels of a specialty retail business. EPOS systems can boost efficiency across all levels of the business with a myriad of features that go beyond till systems, such as employee management, and multistore management to label printing and processing tourist tax refunds. These are all tasks that would have required many manual hours to execute. By having all of these features built into one system, a business with multiple branches across the country can carry out these tasks from one central location, reducing manual hours, reducing human error and improving the accuracy of each task.
Transform your retail business with Meridian Retail
Retail Integration’s Meridian Retail system is a powerful yet easy to use EPOS system that has been used by some of Ireland’s leading specialty retailers for over 25 years including Eason, Avoca, Nourish and Great Outdoors.
It provides all the advanced functionality needed by specialty retailers to manage their business with the ability to control as much of this as possible from their tills. It includes extensive reporting, powerful stock management, online integration and multi-store capabilities.
To see how Meridian Retail can transform your business, contact Retail Integration today.
