POSWizard

Welcome to this weeks roundup featuring articles on point of sale and retail news. The first article we showcase this week shows how one restaurant saved money by using the iPod as a POS solution for its staff. Then we have an announcement of a new real time reporting tool for Counterpoint point of sale software. Then we move on to the third article which is all to familiar to many small retail businesses, the dreaded swipe fees. These fees are under stack by many small and large retail establishments plus the Senate is already taking steps for regulation of these fees. The fourth article in this weeks roundup is an opinion article from The Retail Specialty Expert and it talks about avoiding dumb discounting, We then end the roundup with a small tutorial on how to gain retail marketing insight from the data that you collect daily in your POS database.

1. Helping speed up flow of restaurant orders – Mobile point of sale device have been a largely talked about subject as of late, including here on the Wizard of POS. This article shows how one small restaurant chose an iPod over another POS installation for their staff to use while taking orders on the floor. The author talks about Michael Benaroch a man who developed this point of sale software to run on both a touch screen POS and the iPod.

“It takes about 20 minutes to be trained on the touchscreen, and then if you know the screen, it’s almost no adjustment to use the iPod,”

2. Radiant Systems Announces Launch of Real-time Alerting Tool for the Retail Industry – This week Radiant Systems announced the launching of a new real time reporting tool that will work alongside their Counterpoint POS software. The new tool will help small retailers monitor activities within each location and send SMS text or email alerts to prevent fraud and provide better customer service. The president of Red Bandannas states that the new software has enhanced employee morale and improved customer satisfaction since its implementation.

3. Swipe fees are hurting small businesses in North Carolina – The only thing I disagreed with in this article was the title because it’s not just small businesses in North Carolina, every small retailer across the country is dealing with these fees. This article is a good hard look of the truth of what retail businesses are dealing with currently with the large increase of credit card swipe fees. The ceiling is limitless and companies like Visa or Mastercard have no limits on how high these fees could rise. Congress has already starting discussing some regulations that might be put into place to help struggling small businesses but it’s yet to be seen if anything will really be done about it.

4. Opinion: Do not give in to ‘dumb discounting’ – For an opinion article this one hit it right on the nose. If you’re a small retailer that thinks you have to use deep discounts to draw in customers and make sales think again. This is a great source of information to see examples of large retailers using deep discounting that ultimately confuses the customer.

“Discounting is a great tool when carefully designed to increase frequency with your core and must-have customers. When applied with a shotgun, it is usually dumb discounting.”

5. Finding retail marketing insight from within your database – This informative article might give you an insight on how you could be using your point of sale data information to fine tune your marketing efforts. This in depth article goes into data discovery, analysis and data strategy.