Enhancing Efficiency: Advice on Navigating the Retailer-POS System Relationship

I’ve dedicated my career to retail as both a retailer and as an employee of Lightspeed Commerce working in the Point-of-Sale (POS) space, plus I’ve shared my life with numerous pets since I was little. In my opinion, the purpose of technology in a retailer’s life is to make our lives easier and our shops run more efficiently. Combining a modern-day POS with your retail shop is one of the most common ways that technology helps brick-and-mortar businesses survive in 2024. Understanding that partnership is as important to pet retailers as understanding the relationship between pet and pet owner.

But first, a disclaimer…

None of this POS advice matters if you aren’t already adhering to basic best practices for running a retail shop. By this I mean offering a great in-store customer experience with a clean and organized space to entice customers back into after their first visit. Technology can take you far, but nothing beats having a welcoming store that makes people excited to return like a dog about to go on a walk! With that, let’s take a walk through some of the ways that a POS can be the best partner for your retail business.

1 How can a POS system incentivize customers to return to a pet store?

In order to improve any metric, we first have to start tracking it. So that starting point to incentivizing return customers is to use your POS as a record of who your customers are (both their names and their pet’s names), what they spend, how often they come back, and what their contact preferences are. A modern day POS should include an amazing Loyalty program, to help you market directly to your client base.

Like good training for a canine companion, a Loyalty program rewards consistent behavior, builds relationships, and encourages positive outcomes. Having that Loyalty program integrated to your POS lets you customize rewards for in-store or online purchases, and tailor your messaging to your audience. Marketing from a Loyalty program comes in all shapes and sizes, from things like automated emails, abandoned cart emails to e-commerce shoppers, first-time customer and birthday messages, and more.

Lastly, once you get a customer in your store, you’ll want to drive retention with the merchandise you already carry – many pet food manufacturers establish a “Buy 10 bags, get the 11th Free” offer on many items – which provides you with a great opportunity to do the same on additional items throughout the store. You can go even further and get fully customized related items for every customer based on their purchasing habits helping you show curated items to upsell on every transaction.

2 How can a retailer get the most out of a POS system when it comes to inventory counting, reordering and tracking?

Inventory management is challenging due to manual counting errors, demand forecasting difficulties, and synchronization issues across multiple channels. A good POS system automates real-time inventory tracking, generates automatic reorder alerts, and integrates data from all sales channels to provide a comprehensive view. This streamlines operations, reduces errors, and ensures optimal stock levels, enhancing efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Anything inventory related needs to feel intuitive for it to work, which is why I like systems that include scanner applications for your cell phone. What is cool about that is having multiple staff members log into the same inventory count using different devices, reducing the hardware cost of additional barcode scanners and speeding up inventory counting. I like systems that backup data for you automatically and operate in real-time. A good system has reports, but a great system (like Lightspeed) includes forecasting that allow merchants to confidently predict how much inventory to order and easily draft purchase orders or connect directly to vendor portals for ordering.

3 How can a POS system make a retailer more efficient? What kind of reports are useful for a pet store?

Efficiency is almost the whole point of having a POS! Everything that a POS does can be done very slowly without a POS but that’s why having one is so important. Improved efficiency equals more time and having time is the most important thing when it comes to both running and growing a business. Some business owners may want to automate things to operate when they aren’t around, but whatever your goals are, a POS system should support them.

I like to think of there being two ways that a POS can make a retailer more efficient through reports: By giving a retailer important information that they know they need, and by giving them important information that they don’t even know that they need.

For example, most businesses know that they need to track their Revenue, with detailed Inventory and Sales reporting, and most POS systems will allow retailers to access that kind of information anytime they want. But this is basic, most retailers (especially those that are just starting out) don’t know to look for a system that also allows them to do more, like track Inventory Turnover, give insightful Forecasting for ordering and sales volumes, allow customizable reports that can be scheduled to be sent out when retailers need them, and lastly give in-depth business analysis in order to drill down into less obvious metrics such as dusty inventory, sell-through rates, individual employee performance, and sales by hour, giving retailers a more comprehensive view of your business.

At the end of the day, you’ll also want to make sure you’re working with a system that lets you export data whenever you like. As amazing as all these modern POS systems are, sometimes you just want to grab the data by the horns and put it in a spreadsheet yourself. A good POS partner will allow that!

4 What are the most common mistakes that retailers make with their POS system?

There are two main mistakes that I see, and fortunately they both come down to communication. The first one happens at the outset of the search for a new POS. Retailers need to be honest with themselves and honest with whoever they are talking to when it comes to a search for a POS. This is a decision that can have a huge impact and might be the second most important decision after where you physically locate your store. Be honest with yourself when it comes to your needs and make sure to communicate that to any potential POS partners. Don’t assume that your system has a feature because you think it should, if a feature is important to you then make sure the POS company knows as well. They will tell you honestly if their system does what you need it to, and if they don’t tell you honestly then that’s a red flag in itself.

The second thing happens after you get a new POS, and that mistake is when retailers don’t take full advantage of all the features offered in a system. There is an instinct to look at software and automatically assume it’s too complicated or that you won’t use all the features right away, and so we do what humans do best and we procrastinate. My advice is to learn everything you need to learn to operate the store on a day-to-day to begin with, and then to give yourself a feedback loop of what you need to keep learning it. A lot of POS companies offer additional trainings, a lot of them have retailer groups that are both official and unofficial, and you can surface interesting POS tips and tricks from your own staff as they use it as well. Plus, a good POS company will release updates that you should learn about too and it’s a mistake to finish your initial training and assume you know it all. No one knows it all, we can only hope to learn more by staying receptive to new ideas.

5 What does an ideal retailer-POS provider partnership look like?

It needs to be a partnership in the truest sense of the word in order to work. Clear communication and aligned goals are essential to any partnership, business or personal. In a POS sense, clear communication means 24/7 support, transparency in pricing and features, and collaboration anytime there is a speedbump. No business partnership happens without a few hiccups along the way, and it is important to watch how your POS partner deals with these hiccups in order to understand what to expect from them in the future. Do they take ownership of any issues or do they place blame? Do they work as partners to you, or do they speak to you only when they need you?

Aligned goals means that your POS partner should want you to grow, give you the tools to grow, and should only scale up with you. If your main focus is innovation, then working with a company that prioritizes innovation would be a smart move. If you plan on opening new stores, then ask early on what a multi-store set-up looks like for your POS.

Ideally you can set-up regular check-ins with your POS team in order to make sure you stay aligned. Getting aligned is a constant work in progress, not an end-goal, so make sure to keep those lines of communication open!

Paul Landry is the senior manager of strategic retail sales at Lightspeed Commerce. He is highly skilled in general IT solutions, cultural heritage collections management, telecom and the world of retail, including ownership, operations and software.