Automation is a Great Tool for Your Cloud-Based POS Software

It gets plenty busy at any store that operates a POS system, and sometimes, it gets tough taking care of everything. Sending customers notifications on their orders, contacting vendors to replenish your stock, tallying up your sales for the day, reviewing shifts of your employees, emailing invoices to people… sounds like a lot, doesn’t it?

Fortunately for cloud-based POS software, a little software automation takes care of all those tasks that pile up, so you don’t have to worry about taking care of all your chores at the end of the day.

Similar to how Amazon is using machine learning and robotics to run its enormous business, your own small business can make use of software automation to run its processes better. It takes care of tasks on your behalf, and allows you to focus more on running your business and expanding it by offering various productivity tools in one complete package. To help lay down the different ways that automation works with your POS software.

One of the simplest ways to add automation to your workflow is to set up a framework for notifications and reminders. For the purpose of explaining, let's take the example of a repair store that uses something like Lightspeed or RepairDesk.

Customers come in, give whatever they need repaired to the person on the counter, and get a ticket telling them when they can expect it to be fixed.

Through automation, this process can easily be improved by dropping them and email and SMS message at frequent intervals. The system can schedule notifications to be delivered when their repair is complete, or reminders on when they book their appointments. That way, customers are kept informed without the store owner having to manually send out a single message.

When customers buy stuff from you, there’s a fair chance that you can convince them to get something extra to go along with their purchase at the checkout counter.

For instance, if a customer buys a Samsung Galaxy phone from your store, you can offer to add a protective case or a memory card to their purchase at checkout. This sales tactic is called upselling, and with the right kind of POS software, you can automate this process.

Simply associate your most hot-ticket items with others that complement it so they show up at checkout, or leave it to the system to determine which one would be better, and recommend them to the customer when they’re ready to pay.

It’s like how Amazon shows you what other customers bought or any bundles that the item is associated with. This helps keep customers engaged, allows you to make more sales, and add products with a single click at checkout instead of scanning codes or diving into menus.

Of course, the people manning your counters are also a part of the equation, and creating some automation rules for them would be helpful. Having the system automatically clock them out if they’ve forgotten to after their shift makes things easier to manage.

Also helpful is assigning shifts automatically and delivering alerts to your employees on their cellphones.

Your practice of automation doesn’t just have to stop at overseeing your employees either; with the right kind of software, you can even place a rewards system to incentivize employees and have it automatically run based on their performance.

That way, you won’t have to keep track of who deserves that next bonus either.

Just like how you are able to set rules for employees, you can set rules for your inventory as well. Let’s say you want to be notified of when certain stock starts running low. You can configure your cloud-based POS
software to automatically ping you when you’re running out of a specific item.

Depending on the software in question, it can even place the order for you right through the system, letting you simply replenish your stock with a click of a button.

Running a business means being able to see how much progress you’re making on each aspect, and developing it effectively for further growth. For this purpose, you’ll need a bead on your sales, customer activity, employee activity, inventory, costs, etc. through accurate reporting.

Automation can make it very easy for you to get regular updates on how your business is performing. Since your software tracks everything, it should be able to give you detailed reports on a monthly, weekly and daily business.

Having these reports prepared automatically and sent to you makes it a lot easier to get a top-level view on everything, and plan your business’s growth accordingly.

Automating many processes within your cloud-based POS software can cut down a lot of extra work for you and your employees, and really help your business grow bigger.

The purpose is to ultimately make things easier and more convenient for everyone who is using the system, and it saves a ton of time. Plus, there’s a lot less chances for human error, since everything is being done automatically by software.

If you’re going to go for a POS system, be sure it has some automation baked right into its core features, so you don’t have to worry about doing the heavy lifting.