fbpx Increased profitability in retail can come from many different places. Better inventory management, smarter buying and markdowns decisions, and keeping down expenses are all places from which retailers can pull bigger profits. So, what’s the one common theme in improving performance in each of these business areas? The key piece to the puzzle? Efficiency. It sounds simple enough. We all know we want to be more efficient. We all want to maximize our work hours and be more effective at running our business. The question is how do we improve that efficiency? And the answer has never really changed. We get better tools.

Retail Efficiency

Running a retail business without the right technology for automating buying and markdown decisions, or getting access to key performance indicators on merchandise and employees, is tantamount to waiving the white flag in this increasingly competitive environment. We must stay dynamic and always be looking for ways to improve our processes. The importation of data into our POS and inventory management system is another one of these key efficiencies that will add more time back to your day, which equals making more money in your business. It will add to the efficiency of entering purchase orders, processing special orders, and insuring data consistency across all your stores. If your POS system doesn’t allow for the importation of things like products Customers, (SKUs), prices, Vendors, and UPCs, then my guess is that you are spending a lot of time entering them manually. Think about being able to request a product file from your vendor, copy and paste it into a template, and drop that file into your POS system! Import those UPCs for all the products in your system off an Excel sheet instead of scanning each item individually. Use the tools available to make running your business easier and more profitable. If you don’t have the ability to do this with your current POS and inventory management system, then maybe it’s time to look for a new one.