POS (Point-of-Sale) systems are simple yet highly efficient technologies that transformed the food service industry. A high-tech, robust POS solution can affect your work environment positively in many ways and bring innovation to your business. A great POS system will save you a lot of money, increase your revenues substantially and save a lot of time for your employees and customers.

The latest POS systems with a lot of features can help you gather data you can analyze later to optimize your business, enhance your marketing strategies, and develop healthy relations with your customers.

How can a Good POS Technology Save Money for You?

A mobile Point of Sales Systems device to aid collection of funds from customer. | Copyright: Olivier Moritz;

Let us know the four primary ways in which a good POS technology can save a lot of money for you and your business.

Analyzing your business data

To manage a business effectively, you must be well-aware of its strengths and weaknesses. For this, you must have access to the data that is reliable like facts, statistics and number, instead of just depending on your instincts such as many old-school shopkeepers still do. Gathering data can be a time-taking process that may require a considerable effort, and sorting by hand through all these numbers is nearly easy.

One of the ideal features of a modern POS technology is the accumulation of all of your business data like:-

• Discounts,
• Items sold,
• Food and labor costs,
• Number of customers, and
• Sales by the hour and type.

They provide you with access to the highly popular “Big Data,” enabling you to understand about your numbers using a practical approach. POS provides the available reports that streamline the sorting process through your taxes and expenses, plan your future deals and promotions and define your marketing strategies. According to few well-defined KPIs(Key Performance Indicators), getting to know how well you performed will get you a step closer towards reaching your goal.

Enhancing Customer Experience

It is not easy to argue that the clients who are happy can make successful businesses, particularly when you run a coffee shop or a brewery which are quick ticket businesses. With the specifically designed features, some POS solutions can improve your customer experience substantially. These features can also enhance their engagement. Imagine your restaurant guests can make their reservations online, view their order status in real time, and enjoy their waiting by watching some food pictures.

The delightful menus that can be customized as required may attract the Patrons in cafeterias. They can display your convenient next-week-only promotion, an enthralling upsell or your amazing food that may convince the customers to come back again.

If POS is integrated with tablets and iPads, servers can take orders from customers on the spot, thereby reducing waiting time and mistakes, turning more tables and enhancing the service quality. The better your customer experience and the faster your service, the more likely a customer is going to come back again. Gift cards and loyalty programs can be programmed easily with a few clicks, and they provide you a simple method to tightening your bond with your guests and increasing your brand exposure.

Making your Business More Effective

The image above gives us an idea of what a retail POS looks like along with its peripherals and functions.

You can save a lot of money by enhancing operational efficiency and you can smoothly run your daily operations in many different ways by an advanced POS technology. Here are 2 instances of how a POS can help you in running an eatery.

Order efficiency and speed – a traditional order system needs your server to write down the order after talking to the customers by going their tables. Replacing this traditional order, a guest can send an automated order through online or by clicking on a table menu instead of through phone, cutting down the time to just few seconds. The higher success rates can be achieved on the orders if the tickets are easier to read. The more orders you can receive and process accurately, the more amount of money you can make.

Order Accuracy – the workload can become hectic if you have more number of customers. Due to this, mistakes are bound to happen as in these kind of situations, the cooks must prepare dishes quickly and servers must run back and forth. You are saving more than $200 per month, if you avoid one mistake per day and if this error costs you $7.

Save Environment and Money by Going Green with Technology

Saving cash and going green have a direct relationship. Putting money in technology that is environmentally sound is wonderful not only for the business but also the environment. These technologies are highly efficient in enhancing the daily operations’ productivity and they will help in saving a large amount of money. The easy and simple ways of cutting cost are provided by POS technologies to businesses like restaurants. During the day-to-day operations of a restaurant, a lot of paper is wasted. By adopting better items, you can eliminate paper waste and paper costs.

A transaction can be completed from a credit card and the receipt is sent to the customer through email by the signature capture pads. It is efficient and doesn’t need any paper. You must invest in rechargeable gift cards if you are offering gift cards to the clients. They can be utilized again and again by reloading. The trouble with printing new ones can be avoided in this regard. The cost of kitchen receipts can be saved if you can use the kitchen display system (KDS). Without decreasing the service quality that you are offering, these techniques are ideal for saving money.

Conclusion

Choosing the appropriate POS for your online or retail store can save a lot of money for you, probably much more than you can imagine. Though most of these solutions need an upfront expense, they are highly economical in the long run. As we quickly progress towards an era of digitalization, having the appropriate “tools of the trade” incorporates having the highly reliable and advanced POS tech as well. In order to succeed in this competitive world, it will provide you with the edge you need.