Are you managing your retail stock the hard way?

The hard way of managing your retail stock normally costs you in time and effort, produces frustration and errors, often involves rework and unnecessary conflict, and generally gives you poor results.

Does this sound like the situation within your retail business? Yes? Then ask yourself, as an intelligent person with an abundance of common sense who is building a business to generate a good lifestyle for you and your family, why consciously decide to jeopardise the realisation of your lifestyle goals by managing your retail stock the hard way?

Well, sometimes it may have come about due to circumstances at a previous stage of the business’s development which prevented you from planning effectively or assessing the quality of the way in which you were going to manage your retail stock.

There are several other reasons, but fortunately there is a far easier and more effective way to manage your retail stock and overcome them.

In this Blog we examine the easier and more effective way to managing your retail stock to ensure you are not a prisoner to your business ………………

Often doing retail stock management the hard way over and over again happens simply because the hard way is taking up so much of your time, it is preventing you from taking the time to learn from experience or question the status quo.

Some people continue doing their retail stock management the hard way because it appears to minimise risk, falsely making it appear to be the easy way.

Alongside Cash Flow, retail stock management is the most important aspect of running your retail business so it makes sense to do it the easiest, most effective and most profitable way.

Typically, retail stock makes up about 70% – 80% of the financial assets in a retail business – meaning it is the largest drain on your cash. Therefore you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand that the health of your business is directly linked to how well you manage your retail stock.

Fortunately there is a far easier and more effective way to manage your retail stock through EPoS Retail Operations software such as OpSuite.

Before you click off this page because you don’t understand EPoS software or automatically think of an EPoS system as an upheaval to install and fund, think on the following:

Sitting on retail stock ties up and wastes a lot of your cash.

That’s why a good retail EPoS software management system is crucial for growing your business or just maintaining its health. Just like cash flow, it can make or break your business.

Used properly, an effective EPoS retail stock management system will save you money in a few critical ways as follows:

 

EPoS Retail Stock Management Software Improves Cash Flow

An effective EPoS retail stock management system can not only save you money, it can also improve your cash flow through an invaluable array of easy to produce and read reports.

Onscreen ‘Dashboards’ allow business owners, executives, and managers to monitor key performance indicators (KPI) through easy-to-read graphs and charts that display the information which is important to them.

When you have an effective EPoS retail stock management system, you’ll know exactly how much product you have, and based on sales, you can project when you’ll run out and make sure you replace it on time.

Not only does this make sure you don’t lose sales (critical for cash flow), but it also helps you plan ahead for buying more so you can ensure you have enough cash set aside.

Save £££’s by reducing Out-of-Stock

Retail Out-of-Stocks cost the industry billions every year with research into the problem revealing an average OoS rate of 8%.

That’s disappointment for one in every 13 customers wanting to spend their cash!

Every time you don’t have the size, colour, or type of stock item that a customer wants to buy, it is a lost opportunity to acquire more profits for your business and an opportunity for your competitors to gain market share.

Being Out-of-Stock during peak sales seasons causes missed sales opportunities, and overselling alternative products whilst trying to retain the sale fuels aggravation, frustration, and brand distrust in customers.

Retail stock is the lifeblood of your business and you should never ever be Out-of-Stock of fast moving items.

In order for retailers to master stock management for their multi-channel businesses, they must integrate all the essential tools and information throughout their retail business into one centralised solution.

An efficient and automated EPoS stock management solution allows retailers to track purchase orders, stock quantities, sales invoices, and detailed reports across all their sales channels enabling them to professionally avoid Out-of-Stocks.

Save £££’s on dead Retail Stock

Carrying unneeded retail stock can very quickly destroy your profitability and cash-flow. Dead stock doesn’t just tie-up cash, the lifeblood of your business, it also causes your business to lose profits.

Dead retail stock is the result of failing to take markdowns on a timely basis. Without a commitment to not let dead stock build up, it will build up, until it represents a significant percentage of your stock, tying up cash desperately needed elsewhere in the business.

Remember, dead stock is product that you’ve paid for with cash, and you’re going to sell for cash, but while it’s sitting in your storeroom or warehouse it is definitively not cash. Just try paying your landlord this month with 300 skateboards.

Dead retail stock is stock that can no longer be sold, not necessarily because it passed its expiry date. It could have gone out of season, out of style, or otherwise been superseded.

By managing your retail stock better through OpSuite EPoS software, you can avoid dead stock and free up your hard earned cash for use towards other things.

Save £££’s on product Spoilage

If you’re selling a product that has an expiry date (like food or makeup), there’s a very real chance it will go bad if you don’t sell it in time.

Effective EPoS retail stock management software such as OpSuite helps you avoid unnecessary spoilage and prevents your cash going in to the waste bin as spoiled product.

Save £££’s on Storage Costs

Warehousing is often a variable cost meaning it varies based on how much product you’re storing. When you store too much product at once or end up with a product that’s difficult to move, your storage costs will go up. Avoiding over-stocking with an EPoS retail stock management system such as OpSuite will save you money.

Retailers who are overstocked have unsold products taking up space on warehouse shelves and cutting into their profits.

Indications that your retail business is telling you that it is time to invest in it for a profitable future include the following:

1.      You have begun to notice stock inaccuracies. When retrieving from the storeroom a product requested by a customer you find it is not in stock yet your paper records say there should be one in stock!

2.      It all feels like hard work. You have become a prisoner to your business in working long hours into the evening trying hard to judge how much product needs ordered, what products need put in a ‘Sale’, which suppliers offer you the best product prices, which products produce the most cash profit for you, and which products produce the least cash profit for you.

3.      Mistakes become too frequent. You find yourself cursing that you didn’t notice that the trend for a previously popular product had dropped off and you now have a shelf full of them. Or, bungled customer orders, quotes that actually lost you money and other errors are proving costly to your business.

4.      Your profits disappoint you. You dread the visit from your accountant with the results of your quarterly or annual accounts. You know what your sales turnover was, but will your gross profit be sufficient to cover all your cost of sales and expenses? Your business is all about making profit for your family, but is it?

5.      Trying to find space in the warehouse to store new products is a challenge. After each seasonal period you find you have accumulated products which are well past their sell by date, out of fashion, or all one size.

6.      Conducting a stock-take is a burden on your company. It takes several days to physically count and record everything in stock, and weeks, even months to value it from purchase orders. To cap things off, you needed to bring your staff in on overtime to carry out the stock-take resulting in a high wages bill this week.

Imagine the opposite of all of the above. Sitting at home having quality time with your family with all the above having been calculated automatically for you by the touch of a button on an effective retail EPoS system.

So if you and your team are experiencing the above, then you could do no worse than organise a demonstration of OpSuite EPoS to see how easy it is to operate and how it can improve the efficiency and profitability of running your business.

Please don’t hesitate to talk with RMS today should you have any questions about training or anything else concerning your retail EPoS system which prevents you obtaining maximum sales, productivity and profitability.

You can Freephone RMS today on 0800 138 0050 or complete our on-line enquiry form to speak with one of our dedicated team. Either way, we look forward to helping you with the EPoS  needs of your growing business.

You can also follow RMS on Social Media for all the latest information on the benefits, features and great deals on EPoS Hardware.