In this communiqué, retail and eCommerce consulting firm YRC highlights five key areas of retail store management where the use of Store Management Information Systems (SMISs) can bring transformative results for retailers.
Empowered Inventory Management
Store management systems, inclusive of software capabilities and hardware and physical infrastructure, provide a window to keep a real-time watch on inventory levels and movement. This ability provides an edge in avoiding situations of understocking and overstocking.
SMISs also come with the ability to automatically initiate procurement orders (auto replenishment) when stock levels fulfil the designated conditions. This reduced reliance on human intervention not only helps in securing timely replenishment but increases the accuracy of purchase decisions.
Analytics and Insights for Robust Strategies
Since store management information systems enable data-driven retail management, it brings a sharp advantage in demand forecasting. Data from all corners are assimilated in one centralised system from where the required inputs can be drawn and utilised for improved accuracy in projecting demand and predicting trends. For the same reason, SMISs also help in coming up with more focused personalisation strategies. Essentially, the use of SMISs opens up avenues for analytics which then could be used in all business functions.
Superior Customer Experience
Personalisation is one such area that is capable of significantly increasing conversions, especially in online retailing. By providing valuable insights into user behaviour on brand websites, past purchases, spending patterns, and other such relevant parameters, retailers can make much more informed and focused decisions for the personalisation of offers, recommendations, discounts, etc.
POS systems, which nowadays come integrated with SMISs digitise and automate (fully/partially) the checkout process in retail stores. This shortens the process, lowering the waiting time for customers in queues.
Improved Operational Efficiency
As SMISs lead to or enable the automation of many activities like ordering, billing, and counting to name a few, they directly contribute to improving the operational efficiency of retail enterprises. With reduced human efforts, employees could be deputed to more productive and creative tasks. For startups, this offers savings in labour costs from the beginning. Digitisation and automation also improve the quality of analytics and decision-making helping retailers make their business processes more accurate. The use of retail SOPs (Retail Standard Operating Procedures) is highly recommended to derive the maximum operational benefits of store management software for retailers.
Stronger grip over financial information With digitisation and automation, some of the fundamental activitiesof financial management like collection of data, recording of transactions, storage and retrieval of data, and reporting get highly accurate. With more advanced features like blockchain, meddling with these data becomes nearly impossible with transparency and fixation on accountability.