7 Ways Your POS System Can Help You Grow. An ebook from Epicor

Transcription

1 7 Ways Your POS System Can Help You Grow An ebook from Epicor

2 Contents Fast Track to Growth Doing Retail Right Reduce Your Inventory Costs up to 25% Sell 10% More at a Higher Margin Grow Revenues by 6 Percent With Better Service Say No to Fraud, Hacks, and Other Exploits How Eagle Software Helps You Make Better Decisions How the Eagle Solution Simplifies Staff Scheduling More Than Great Software Help, Training, and Business Advice Wherever, Whenever Ways Your POS System Can Help You Grow

3 Fast Track to Growth Doing Retail Right What does it mean to become a better retailer or even the best around? It means you want to serve your customers well. You want to operate smoothly, efficiently, productively and to help your entire retail team do the same. You want to maximize profits, margins, and customer loyalty. It also means because standing still means falling behind you want to grow. Today more than ever, in an increasingly digital and mobile world, that means you want technology and not any technology will do. Under-powered point-of-sale (POS) software might get you through the day, but it won t help you grow. Growth-focused retail software such as the industry-leading Epicor Eagle solution can do both. It can make getting through the day decidedly easier, and help you achieve your growth goals. What s different about Epicor Eagle? From the day you begin using your Eagle solution, you tap into retail best practices learned and refined over 30 years of experience with leading retailers, co-ops and the National Retail Federation. These practices are built into every screen, report, menu, and dialog in the Eagle solution on PCs, POS terminals, and mobile devices connected to the cloud. Even better, it s easy to learn to use the Eagle solution s considerable capabilities. Take advantage of built-in, in-context help and learning videos, presets for specific types of retail and for popular co-ops, and much more. With Eagle software, you get retail right and that can help you to translate into happier customers, expanding sales, and bigger profits. Read on to learn seven ways Epicor Eagle can help you get retail right. 3 7 Ways Your POS System Can Help You Grow

4 1. Reduce Your Inventory Costs by up to 25% Eagle customers have used the powerful software tools to stock less, buy smarter, sell more, turn faster, and reduce their inventory. For example, Eagle customer, Mclendon Hardware experienced almost 25% in its inventory costs. by up to 25%. How much is 25% to you? For $300,000 in inventory, you could reclaim up to $75,000 in cash flow that could come in handy for remodeling, growing, paying off debt, or other priorities. Four keys to mastering inventory Eagle is designed to streamline, simplify, and reinforce four key strategies for maximizing your return on inventory investment: 1. Clear out unprofitable inventory analyze, identify, promote and dispose 2. Order wisely right products, right quantities, right suppliers, right timing 3. Refine the receiving process by following best practices Eagle reinforces them across relevant business operations and by using technology like RF scanners, EDI, and vendor analytics We rely on tools like Epicor Advanced Receiving and Epicor Inventory Planner to understand exactly what we need to order and when calculating our order points and keeping our stock levels just right. We also use these solutions to transfer inventory between all our stores instead of ordering additional products. Adam Carroll, Vice President Big R Holdings One thing that automatic replenishment has allowed us to do is cut almost 25% of average inventory across the company, just by a more effective forecasting and replenishment model. Nathaniel Polky, Information Technology Manager Mclendon Hardware 4. Master targeted cycle counting, and, where appropriate, managed inventory accuracy services 4 7 Ways Your POS System Can Help You Grow

5 How the Eagle solution helps you cut inventory costs Inventory management tools Here s a selection of Eagle solution tools that can make managing inventory more efficient, accurate, and cost-effective. XXThe Eagle Inventory Viewer gives you visibility of your inventory, from big-picture to shelf-specific detail. Easy-to-use item and quantity lookup tools improve accuracy across a wide range of everyday business functions XXEagle Inventory Manager helps you optimize inventory levels and track sales volumes. You also get direct access to electronic catalogs and other helpful tools XXEagle Inventory Planner helps you maintain inventory levels that optimally balance customer satisfaction and profits. You ll find tools to help you analyze lead times, usage rates, order points and other key factors XXEagle mobile tools provide on-the-go or in-the-aisles access to real-time inventory information. These solutions also include comprehensive checkout capabilities, so you can serve customers promptly wherever they are 5 7 Ways Your POS System Can Help You Grow

6 2. Sell 10% More at a Higher Margin You can achieve 10% 1 in revenue increases sometimes more by strategically increasing margins. By analyzing buying patterns, you can identify specific opportunities to charge more for certain goods when you intelligently bundle, promote, and merchandise them. Eagle Dynamic Promotions, Eagle Market Basket Analysis, and Eagle Performance Manager allow you to track which products sell together. You can also track the performance of all your promotions, determining which ones maximize your profit. The results can add up quickly. Apply these strategies to a current sales volume of $1 million, and you can generate $100,000 in additional sales without any increase to inventory costs. 1 InfoCepts, Using Market Basket Analysis to Increase Sales and Heighten Marketing Effectiveness 6 7 Ways Your POS System Can Help You Grow

7 How the competition helps you Another strategy for boosting prices is based on competitive analysis. When you know specifically how your prices compare to the competition, you open up a range of new possibilities: XXPrice with confidence too often, retailers shrink margins unnecessarily, thinking the competition is doing the same. The reverse is true in a surprising number of cases, and retailers find out their prices are fine or that there s even room to raise them XXSeize the blind item opportunity many items that are purchased less frequently can command surprisingly high margins. The gains you make here can allow you to stay competitive on your customers everyday purchases. Eagle Pricing Planner helps you identify and price those items for maximum margin XXMatrix pricing works the more you slice and dice groupings of items by category, location, price elasticity, etc. the more you can fine-tune margins for each grouping. It all adds up, resulting in a substantially higher average margin. Once again, Eagle Pricing Planner gives you the tools to do this analysis quickly, easily, and accurately Having inventory, cost, and pricing information in the palm of my hands has been instrumental. I m able to make smarter buying and pricing choices that fine-tune margins. Eagle gives me peace of mind, and that s invaluable. Mindy Baker, Store Manager Thompson Pharmacy 7 7 Ways Your POS System Can Help You Grow

8 3. Grow Revenues by 6 % With Better Service Serve your customers well, and they ll likely make more purchases and share their high opinion of you with others. They ll also become more loyal. Here are some ways Eagle software can help you deliver exceptional service, enjoy greater revenues, and ramp up loyalty: XXSpecial orders these provide your customers with an endless aisle of products with zero inventory costs for you. They can increase revenues 2 by as much as 6 percent and, because special order items can often command healthy margins, your profits can jump by as much as 10 percent XXEagle software makes managing special orders a breeze. All the lookup, transactional, and tracking capabilities are built right into the Eagle solution, and it s easy to keep customers informed of their order status. You can even set up automated customer notifications via text message when their orders are ready for pickup XXShopping experience another important way to serve customers is making checkout easy and quick. The Eagle solution gives you the widest range of options for doing just that with intuitive, customer-facing displays at POS, powerful line-busting tools, mobile- and tabletbased POS capabilities, and more. Other mobile tools help you provide fast answers in the aisles, when and where customers need them 2 Motorla Solutions, 2011 Holiday Shopping Survey 8 7 Ways Your POS System Can Help You Grow

9 Better service, greater revenues Loyalty programs Consumers have come to expect loyalty programs from retailers and maintaining one is an essential part of serving them well. Eagle software gives you all the powerful loyalty tools used by even the largest big-box retailers yet keeps it easy to use. You can easily identify your best, most profitable customers, then promote, merchandise, and reward them accordingly. Customers also appreciate your ability to instantly look up loyalty program IDs and enroll new members, right at the point of sale. We have just over 27,000 customers registered for the Klem s loyalty program, powered by the Epicor Eagle Loyalty Manager solution. It allows us to track customer purchases, giving us invaluable information for marketing purposes. It also provides for better customer service when there is a return, recall, or question about an item they may have purchased. Jessica Bettencourt, President Klem s Tractor 9 7 Ways Your POS System Can Help You Grow

10 4. Say No to Fraud, Hacks, and Other Exploits As many as 3.5% 3 of retail returns are fraudulent, and you could be giving away money at the register. The Eagle solution helps you put a stop to it and streamlines the returns process for your customers at the same time. Eagle software Return Validation features make A/R, credit, and debit card returns a breeze and you can electronically scan driver s license or state ID information when there s no receipt present. Other features of the Eagle solution let you set a limit to the number of noreceipt-present returns that are allowed over a specified time period and help you direct refunds to the original payment method, whether on-account, debit card, or credit card. Of course, Eagle software makes it easy to accept chip-enabled (EMV) payment cards, protecting both your business and your customers against fraud. With the Eagle solution, if someone tries to commit fraud, you ll know. 3 NRF, National Retail Federation, Retailers Estimate Holiday Return Fraud Will Cost $2.2 Billion In 2015 December Ways Your POS System Can Help You Grow

11 Eagle software helps protect your data, your customers, and your business The Eagle system is designed to protect essential data in a number of ways. Eagle Transactional Security protects against costly security breaches, so you and your customers can do business confidently and conveniently. First, point-to-point encryption protects payment transaction data as it travels between your Eagle system and payment gateways. Next, tokenization technology lets you avoid storing or transmitting actual customer credit card numbers. Even if this data is somehow stolen, there s not a real credit card number to be re-used by criminals. In addition to protecting your data, these features also simplify vital PCI certification processes. Epicor Data Security Review Epicor offers more than Eagle technology to help protect your business. The Data Security Review 4 service, performed by an Epicor expert Local Platform Specialist, gives you an on-site inspection of your network, plus a written report of findings and recommended steps for PCI Data Security Standard compliance. Once you ve reached compliance, you re insured up for to $50,000 against damages associated with a data breach. 4 Epicor Sotware, Data Secutity Review November The Epicor Data Security Review program was simple to implement, and brings major benefits to our business in terms of data security and preparing for PCI compliance helping to bring peace of mind to us, and ultimately to our customers. Jennifer Kelly-Heppler, Office Manager Ace Hardware and Outdoor Center 11 7 Ways Your POS System Can Help You Grow

12 5. How Eagle Software Helps You Make Better Decisions Eagle software includes a wide range of decision support capabilities that help your team perform virtually every important task more quickly, accurately, and effectively. On-screen, in-context analytics help you get quick answers relevant to the task at hand. You can identify and fix issues and make faster, better, margin-enhancing decisions as you manage critical everyday business functions from purchasing and receiving to inventory and accounting. Epicor Compass Analytics lets you bring all your Eagle system information together, then adds advanced reporting and drilldown capabilities that can quickly take you from distilled summaries to the raw underlying data. Epicor Eagle N Series has definitely decreased the workload and allowed us to do more work per person. We get numbers and information faster at the touch of a finger. Dennis Diefenbacher, accounting and IT Mar-Span Home Hardware Building Centre Most recently, the big story is Epicor Compass. Real-time access to accurate data from every part of our business has helped all of our senior staff make smarter decisions with greater confidence. Rick Ungersma, president of retail operations Murdoch s Ranch & Home Supply 12 7 Ways Your POS System Can Help You Grow

13 Smarter pricing decisions drive margins higher Eagle Performance Manager gives you deep, up-to-date visibility on customers, vendors, sales, inventory, and more it s the dashboard for driving your business forward. Say a $20 product with a historical run rate of 10 per day has jumped to 20 per day for the past week Performance Manager would alert you to place an order and help you avoid $400 daily in otherwise lost sales. Eagle Pricing Planner gives you in-depth insight and analysis of margins, competitive prices, supplier/catalog prices, your pricing across multiple stores, and the likely sales volume impact of a proposed price change. Gather competitive prices from the web, from competitive advertising, or in a competitor s store with Pricing Planner s mobile app then analyze with ease to set prices that optimize sales and margins. Since we began using Eagle, we ve increased our overall margins by 10% with the same sales volume, and increased our retail GMROI by about 1.2%. It s a great system for us. Melissa Young, CFO Cook s Pharmacy 13 7 Ways Your POS System Can Help You Grow

14 6. How the Eagle Solution Simplifies Staff Scheduling The advantages of easy, precision scheduling Overstaffing is expensive, but it happens too frequently because retailers are committed to serving customers promptly. This strains staffing budgets. If you guess too low, customers are left waiting or worse, moving on to other stores. Scheduling errors can compound the problem, leaving both staff and customers unhappy. Businesses powered by Epicor Eagle use Epicor Scheduling+ to minimize these problems. This fully hosted, cloud-based solution is seamlessly integrated with the Eagle solution to help businesses: XXShrink labor costs by reducing overstaff periods while still targeting adequate coverage on busy days XXOptimize hot- and cold-floor coverage by automatically using POS data from their Eagle systems to forecast staffing needs XXSpeed and simplify scheduling tasks including schedule creation and sharing, timeclock entry, tracking, payroll export, and more XXMore easily assign and track employee tasks Retailers can manage schedules anytime, anywhere, from virtually any web-enabled device and they also find that Epicor Scheduling+ helps them enhance regulatory compliance with automated alerts that warn them when overtime hours are higher than desired. Our entire team is just more organized using Epicor Scheduling+ software. We save time creating schedules and spend less time correcting schedules. It s fast and convenient. Vicci Rhoden, human resources assistant Gasser True Value Hardware and Farm Supply Epicor Scheduling+ is substantial, yet very simple to use. It has all of the features and analysis needed to help manage labor hours. It was obviously designed by someone in the retail business who really understands our needs. Mike Gunning, general manager Fusek True Value Hardware 14 7 Ways Your POS System Can Help You Grow

15 7. More Than Great Software Help, Training, and Business Advice Wherever, Whenever How Eagle Training on Demand helps retailers powered by the Eagle solution You re not left to fend for yourself after you implement the Eagle solution you get thousands of hours of in-context video training, embedded throughout the system. With one click, the Eagle system brings up videos pertinent to the task you re currently doing. One-click, in-context Help and Chat is everywhere, too. For more comprehensive training, many businesses use Eagle Training on Demand a complete elearning solution that provides rich, job-specific training tailored to the needs of individuals at every skill level. Training is divided into self-paced modules, most of which take less than ten minutes to complete so they easily fit into busy work schedules. The curriculum includes a wealth of individual lessons focused on retail best practices, Epicor Eagle features, or both designed to teach new skills, strengthen existing skills, and empower retail employees to grow in their jobs or train for new positions. Epicor also offers a range of classroom and online training options including the popular five-day Eagle Online Academy that s free for Epicor customers. Local technology platform support, remote phone/chat support, and onsite consulting services are available, too. We typically hire three to four cashiers each spring. Before [Eagle] Training on Demand, we spent three to four afternoons with each new cashier in training. Now I save an average of 12 hours per cashier! Preston Bullock, Jay s Hardware, Wrens, GA The Epicor Training on Demand program helps us provide our employees with essential training tools, which, in return, improves our customer service and helps our business grow. Kyle Little, ecommerce and IT manager Little Hardware With Epicor Eagle, your business is positioned to grow because Epicor is there for you every step of the way Ways Your POS System Can Help You Grow

16 About Epicor Epicor Software Corporation drives business growth. We provide flexible, industry-specific software that is designed around the needs of our manufacturing, distribution, retail, and service industry customers. More than 40 years of experience with our customers unique business processes and operational requirements is built into every solution in the cloud or on premises. With a deep understanding of your industry, Epicor solutions spur growth while managing complexity. The result is powerful solutions that free your resources so you can grow your business. For more information, connect with Epicor or visit Contact us for more information on Epicor Products and Services eagle@epicor.com epicor.com/eagle Corporate Office 804 Las Cimas Parkway Austin, TX USA Toll Free: Direct: Fax: Latin America and Caribbean Blvd. Antonio L. Rodriguez #1882 Int. 104 Plaza Central, Col. Santa Maria Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, CP Mexico Phone: Fax: Europe, Middle East and Africa No. 1 The Arena Downshire Way Bracknell, Berkshire RG12 1PU United Kingdom Phone: Fax: Asia 238A Thomson Road #23-06 Novena Square Tower A Singapore Singapore Phone: Fax: Australia and New Zealand Suite 2 Level 8, 100 Pacific Highway North Sydney, NSW 2060 Australia Phone: Fax: The contents of this document expresses Epicor s viewpoints on the benefits of an ecommerce strategy and are for informational purposes, only and are subject to change without notice. Epicor Software Corporation makes no guarantee, representations or warranties with regard to the enclosed information and specifically disclaims, to the full extent of the law, any applicable implied warranties, such as fitness for a particular purpose, merchantability, satisfactory quality or reasonable skill and care. This document and its contents, including the viewpoints, dates and functional content expressed herein are believed to be accurate as of its date of publication, March The usage of any Epicor software shall be pursuant to the applicable end user license agreement and the performance of any consulting services by Epicor personnel shall be pursuant to applicable standard services terms and conditions. Usage of the solution(s) described in this document with other Epicor software or third party products may require the purchase of licenses for such other products. Epicor, Eagle, and the Epicor logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Epicor Software Corporation in the United States, certain other countries and/or the EU. All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Copyright 2017 Epicor Software Corporation. All rights reserved.