Simplify your multi-store business with a unified ePOS solution.

When you’re a multi-store retailer, you benefit from all kinds of efficiencies and economies of scale, including greater buying power and resource pooling. But, many retailers who grow from one site to multiple sites suffer from a fundamental issue which dates back to the time they set up their first store: their chosen retail management system is not built to handle more than one location.

Of course when anyone starts out in business set up costs are a major focus. Even if you have multi-store ambitions for the future, you make practical decisions based on the present moment, perhaps overlooking what might come later, and so it’s common that retail start ups choose a single site solution. If that sounds familiar and you’re now operating multiple sites, you’ll know the pain of incongruent systems.

Multi-site retail can be incredibly complex and, in order to gain those economies of scale, you have to be as efficient and lean as possible. That might sound obvious but there are areas which can make a significant difference to your efficiency and your profitability which are easily overlooked, particularly when you are just setting out on your retail journey.

Software Integrations

Ok, so it may not be first on your list of priorities, particularly when you’re just starting out, but if you select a retail management system which doesn’t readily integrate with your other systems such as your accounts package, email marketing package or other social media channels, you’re really making a rod for your own back.

It’s important to avoid the temptation to select an option with limited functionality in a misguided bid to save cash and you’ll no doubt regret it in the future. Whether it’s because you have to download and upload data back and forth to your accounts, you have to manually update stock in-store, on your eCommerce website so you don’t oversell, it all contributes to unnecessary complications and a lot more work. And it all gets worse when you open another store because further 3rd party integrations are often required just to link your stores to each other!

Comparing Your Store's Performance

Imagine you own three stores (and maybe you do!), they sell the same product range and are, to all intents and purposes, identical except for location. Now imagine that in order to compare their performance you have to download data from each store on a regular basis and spend hours pouring over spreadsheets to see which one is performing the best, and then more time working out why.

One of the most difficult operational issues to overcome when you select a single-store ePOS solution for a multi-store business is understanding which store performs best and why, and it’s is crucial to improving underperforming outlets.

You could be losing some serious cash through poor employee performance, wasting money on a product in one location that doesn’t sell as well as it does in another store, or even running successful promotions in one place which fall flat on their face in another. But, chances are you don’t even know it because comparing your stores’ performance is impossibly complicated with disparate systems.

• Identify your best performing staff and help those who aren't performing as well
• Identify peak hours and days so you can efficiently manage staffing hours across locations
• Track individual store and group performance

Transferring Stock

Once you’ve mastered comparing the performance of your locations (regardless of whether you do this the hard way or the easy way!) you’ll no doubt have times when it’s vital that you move stock from one location to another in order to avoid stock outages.

If you’re ePOS systems are unconnected, you’ll need to pull stock levels from each one along with individual store sales data to determine the most appropriate action and by they time you’ve done this, you’ve already missed out on sales! You then have to physically transfer stock while simultaneously updating your in-store ePOS systems to reflect the changes. It’s a veritable minefield.

This probably sounds like a lot of hard, time-consuming work – and that’s because it is. With a unified system you can view all the live reports you need to make informed stocking decisions, transfer stock instantly and ensure you don’t miss a single sale, leaving you with just one job left to do – move the stock.

• Create full or partial stock takes - view progression in real-time
• Stock level changes are instantly synchronised across all your locations
• View low stock from all stores

Replenishment

We’ve covered what happens when you need to transfer stock, but an equally important phase of stocking your business is replenishment. Buy too early and you risk facing storage issues and spending money on products you don’t need yet which can hammer your cash flow. Buy too late and you miss out on vital sales while your shelves sit empty. Effective stock management is a delicate balance between supply and demand; getting it right can be tricky, but getting it wrong is costly. And if you think your customers will just come back later when you have the stock in place or travel to one of your other locations, you could be sorely mistaken.

If you’re doing things the old fashioned way, or your ePOS system’s don’t speak to each other across locations, stock management reaches a whole new level of complexity, especially when you operate more than one store.

Once you’ve ascertained what stock you need and where it needs to be, you need to place your Purchase Orders (POs). When you have multiple locations and different cost centres, the most sensible means is to create a PO for each store and place separate orders. This not only keeps your financials nice and tidy for each location, but it also means you can have the correct amount of stock delivered to each location, at the right time. Do you really want to do this manually? The savvy retailer will ensure that their ePOS system can do this for them, with as much automation as is possible.

• Track open orders, confirm partial receipt of order or return faulty items
• Check stock in/out, transfer stock or write-off damaged stock
• Pre-populate PO’s with stock that has reached its re-order point
• Stock levels are instantly updated upon receipt or return of stock on your PO
• For larger retailers with warehouses, receive stock from all stores to your warehouse with automated transfer requests, ready for when stock arrives at each store

So, if you already operate a multi-site retail business, or you are just starting out, there are clear operational benefits to selecting the right retail management solution for your future business as early as possible into your journey. Not all ePOS is created equal, and both features and functionality differ wildly across products – as does cost! Ensuring you choose a solution which will grow with your business is a sure fire way to future-proof your operations.

To recap, Saledock solves these common issues, all for an affordable monthly subscription:

• Full cross-location solution
• Compare store performance and easily identify issues
• Effortlessly transfer stock across locations and sales channels
• Centralise your ordering and stock replenishment

With this and more, it’s clear why ambitious retailers choose Saledock for their businesses. Why not sign up for our FREE 14 day trial and see for yourself how Saledock will revolutionise your retail operations. No credit card is required and you could be up and running in minutes!