4 IT considerations for your new retail business
Thinking about opening a retail store? Maybe you've got an existing business and are looking to set up your first brick and mortar outlet, or perhaps you're new to the retail game entirely. Regardless, setting up shop can be a pretty big task.
You may already have a plan for how the shop will be laid out but have you considered what point of sale system you'll use? Do you know how you'll manage the store employees? And what about security? Here are four things you'll need to consider before your grand opening, and LOOKUP.COM can help with all of it.
1. Point of Sale
A reliable point of sale system is absolutely imperative to your daily operations. Not only will a strong POS system keep track of stock levels and daily sales, it'll also be able to compile and report sales data to allow you to manage your business efficiently. You'll also be looking to integrate a retail POS system that has a simple user interface – you'll want to be able to pick up how the functions of your POS system work quite quickly, as well as train your staff in this system. We can't all be members of MENSA, so it's important to have an intuitive interface.
2. Employee management
How many people will you be employing? Do you have a system in place to help you roster, calculate pay, and manage holidays? Employee management services can take a lot of the stress out of this part of your new business. These services can include automated timesheets, cloud-based payroll and and roster creation, as well as providing your employees access to their own information. Having a system in place to do it all for you can save you a lot of difficult and time-consuming administration work.
3. Security
Security may be the last thing on the list of things you'll need to organise to get your retail outlet up and running – but it's an important factor in maintaining success. LOOKUP.COM can help with your store security on two fronts; firstly – we can provide security to keep your data and private information safe, and secondly, we can provide physical on-site security. Cover all of your bases by integrating a security system to keep what's important to your business safe.
4. Cloud access
As your business grows, the cloud will become a great tool. As it stands, cloud computing offers retailers a great many resources. It can initially be a useful tool to streamline your processes, or for internal communications between you and your suppliers. As you scale out, however, it can be used to analyse data and find new and improved ways of engaging your customer base. Cloud computing has huge potential for retailers.
LOOKUP.COM provides tailored services. If you need a hand setting up (or even improving your existing infrastructure), let us know what you're looking for and how you hope to operate and we'll have a unique solution just for you.