The benefits of an effective Epos system are by no means reserved for larger multi-site retail companies. They have every bit as much ability to transform the profitability and the efficiency of smaller operations. Here are 5 reasons why you should be looking at an Epos System for a small business and how to take that business to the next level.

1) You’ll feel it on your bottom line.

Profitability is all about knowing your margins. A properly functioning Epos system can not only help you identify the products with the biggest or smallest margins, but can also allow you to react accordingly.

You might be surprised at the impact of raising your average margin by just a single percentage point – we estimate that it could deliver savings equivalent to one staff member’s wages, with no extra work. Knowledge is power, and you’ll be fully informed of what you’re making from every single product line once you have your new Epos system up and running.

2) You’ll enjoy a whole world of added security.

An effective Epos system can identify a raft of areas where you could be haemorrhaging money, including drive-offs on a forecourt, or non-charges on the part of staff. Your Epos system can be set up to alert you if the cashier uses certain functions, such as sweet-hearting or undercharging. And with somewhere between 2% and 3% of your stock accounted for by shrinkage, anything you can do to reduce this figure is money in your pocket.

You’ll also enjoy the peace of mind of being protected against prosecution in areas such as seeking proof of identity. The system will not just confirm that your staff have asked for I.D., but it will also report on what form of identity was presented.

Similarly, the Epos system can automatically preclude sale of alcohol outside of permitted times, or limit sales of Paracetamol to one per transaction.

3) You’ll enjoy major new efficiencies in stocktaking and inventory.

You can harness your new Epos system to make sure that you are hitting your KPI’s around stock movement. For example, your system can communicate directly with your wholesaler, identifying if prices are going to change next week, for example, and allowing you to adjust your own pricing accordingly.

And a figure that might interest you is that using handheld devices for price changing can save around seventy minutes per day, or over four man-days per month.

4) Your customers will thank you for it.

At the end of the day, your business can’t succeed unless your customers are happy with the service that you provide. And speed of service is one of the top requirements of any retail customer.

Your Epos system can dramatically speed-up throughput of your customers by initiatives such as self-checkout or integrating your promotional programme so that there’s just one simple transaction required.

And did you know that if you can speed up each transaction by as little as five seconds, you can deliver an additional eighteen transactions per hour. That corresponds to 18 happy customers who might otherwise have gone elsewhere due to the length of your queue.

5) You’ll future-proof your technology.

Nobody likes to feel that they’re investing in technology that might shortly become obsolete, and cost a small fortune to replace. A quality Epos system, however, will make sure that you’re future-proofed against whatever is coming down the lne, whether it’s accepting contactless payments or rear-screen ads that let your customers see what they are being charged for, raising their levels of trust and customer satisfaction.

And just to hammer home how important this can be, it’s estimated that using contactless payment will save you 14 minutes for every 250 transactions. Multiply that by the number of cashiers you have and you see how quickly the impact mounts up.