The 10 Most Important Retail Technologies To Give Your Small Retail Business a Boost
If you are a small business, keep reading this article as you will be coming across a few crucial technologies and tools that can help your business grow seamlessly with sustainable and satisfying ROI.
Smart businesses across the world are relying on new technologies to stay market competitive and serve their customers the best. The retail industry in UAE has grown over the past years. We have listed out the top 10 important retails technologies that will give the retail business the required push.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software
When your customers are happy, your growth is sustainable. Hence, it is important to build a credible customer relationship. A CRM Software will help to maintain your customer’s details and good relationship.
Customer Relationship Management software is an important tool for every retail business. A CRM will not only help you raise customer loyalty, but you can market to potential prospects and create new business too.
In simple words, CRM software lets you track your customers, determine market segments, and allows you to engage in a conversation with customers via different communication channels.
You can either buy a CRM software or purchase a POS system that includes CRM features.
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
EDI technology lets you send electronic purchase orders to your supplier via phone line or the internet. This technology not only saves your time but can also mitigate errors. EDI makes sure you never have to face a situation where you are apologetic to your customers. This means the technology brings in accuracy and reduces human errors.
Bar Code/ UPC Codes Scanning
Bar code scanning allows you to browse through products much faster at the time of sale. This helps to serve your customers quickly. You can search for products more accurately. Apart from saving your time this tool will impact your inventory management system too.
Entering a wrong product number can cause trouble to keep an proper tracking of your items. Your business runs on your inventory, its availability, and its quality. And hence accuracy is important. You must understand that even small errors can lead you to lose sales, enhance inventory costs, and waste your crucial time, impacting productivity badly.
Point of Sale (POS) Software
A good POS Software helps to save your time and money. And that’s why for retail business POS system is a must.
A credible POS system will monitor and track your sales so that you can have a detailed and clear idea of how your business is performing (at any time). Consider a POS as a smart and accurate alternative to your cash register.
Here is what a good POS system can do for your business:
- It can improve your customer service.
- It can simplify and streamline inventory management processes.
- You can expect improved effectiveness in your marketing efforts.
- You can easily see the areas where you’re making and losing money.
- Automation of bookkeeping and countless other retail tasks is possible.
However, though a POS system is crucial for business, one has to consider many things before making a final purchase decision. Check our article 5 Things To Consider When Choosing A POS System
Retail Accounting Software
Nowadays, many small businesses or retailers perform their accounting in-house as they can quickly generate required up-to-date financial statements and understand the performance of the business at any time they want.
This is much more user-friendly accounting software that makes it even easier for small businesses to perform accounting processes.
Store Traffic Counters
If you wish to increase your sales conversion rate, then you must have an accurate tool to count your store traffic and measure the closing ratio.
You can rely on credible automated traffic counters as they are accurate and objective. They offer detailed data that helps you to get rid of the guesswork while measuring closing ratios.
These vital tools are can be used to schedule schedule your sales staff as they witness the actual foot traffic in your store during working hours. You can also check if footfall or customer engagement has gone up or down during marketing promotions so that you determine the best performing campaigns/ideas for your shop/store.
Websites & Shopping Carts
Whether you plan to sell products/services online or not, having a website for your business can be a effective tool to promote your retail business. It gives you a platform that you control completely, and you can connect with your targeted and existing customers easily.
Whether you are small or large business, a website is mandatory for any business. A website will give information about your product and services to customers. A good website can bring more sales enquiries for your business. If it fits in your plan, then you can also open an online store and use the website to accept an order.
HR and Payroll Software
An HR and Payroll software can allow you to do HR related activities and payroll in-house and can save lots of time. The software calculates multiple deductions and automates the payroll processing, etc. It can also print checks after making all the deductions according to the payroll and other applied criteria.
Graphics Design Software
As a small business owner, you know it better than everyone else that no matter what, you have to pay attention to every aspect of the business. It demands you to juggle multiple balls. And Marketing is one of the balls. However, with digitization and computers, you can boost your marketing efforts by creating interactive graphics.
You can save lots of hours and dollars by creating flyers and other marketing materials using your own graphic design software.
Portable Data Terminals (PDT) Device and Handheld Computers
A PDT device will help to count your inventory and update your POS system. It is easy to carry around, and you can also use it to scan goods and count your on-hand inventories, etc.
Now that you have gone through some of the crucial modern-day technologies that can help your small business to be competitive, you can make an informed decision about what you need the most for your business.
