What Might My Business Priorities Be?

Determining Your Business Priorities

Ask yourself: what is paramount from an EPOS system for restaurants, what else would you like from it and what is a luxury that you might be able to do without?

All too often, businesses are put off adopting an EPOS system, which could do so much for their company’s operations because they either look at a high-end solution which offers far too much or a low-cost system with limited functionality. By determining what is a priority and ruling out those things which are not, it becomes much simpler to see where the cost-benefits are.

Put another way, by focusing on the essential business needs, you are more likely to find a system which matches your requirements at a cost that is affordable. When talking to a potential supplier about their EPOS system, it is essential to work out whether they are offering a fully scalable solution. Although you may want to cut down the functionality to what your firm needs at the moment - thus keeping installation costs at a minimum - it is important to know which functions can be rolled out should something from your wish list become a genuine business need in the future.

Essentially, your paramount requirements will shape the initial proposal and form the first phase of any implementation. Nevertheless, you may not want to stop there and it is a business risk not to check whether the proposed EPOS system possesses the ability to be extended in phases down the line. This factor can have a huge influence on deciding which system is chosen.

What Might My Business Priorities Be?

Deciding what you need now and what you might want available to you in the future comes down to the sort of business you run. However, there are certain key functions which many sorts of company ought to be considering as potential add-ons from the start.

For example, booking management modules might not be needed at the moment, if you are only engaged in retail or ecommerce sales

at the moment. However, if you choose to sell maintenance inspections or upgrades down the line, then managing these services through an EPOS system is perfectly possible, so you want might this sort of module included. Equally, if you offer a customer loyalty scheme at the moment - a common enough way of promoting repeat business – then issuing customer loyalty cards which can be swiped or loaded with credit that function with your chosen EPOS system might be a priority.

For warehouse businesses, an EPOS solution which can plug into the stock and inventory system can be invaluable, especially as a point of sale function frequently reflects downward trends in stock. An EPOS system can be used to trigger buying instructions, for example, so that you don’t run out of stock at key times. While small businesses, which can track their stock more easily, don’t often need this sort of integration, growing companies often find that they do benefit from it.

Such functionality can be especially useful for firms which have their warehouse and despatch areas located in different physical location from the point of sale.

Other areas which are important to look out for when considering an EPOS system include how one might interact with your other software solutions.

Do you have a customer relationship management (CRM) package which you might want to integrate with your point of sale functions one day?

As well as CRM, you may want an EPOS system to feed your marketing functions, perhaps generating data for an email campaign, for instance?

In addition, many specialist areas of industry rely on third party software solutions which are specific to their sector. It is certainly worth working out how any EPOS system you choose might integrate with third party software.

 

Specialist Functions & EPOS Solutions

As already stated, some EPOS systems are suited for ‘one size’ of customer, but what about if your business falls outside of that model?

 

Check that an EPOS system has the specialist functions your business might need.

For example, art dealers, second hand goods sellers and some antique businesses are subject to VAT margin schemes and not all EPOS systems can deal with this. Likewise, some EPOS systems are perfectly good at handling transactions for multiple stock items at the point of sale, but cannot account for different sizes, colours or styles of similar products – something which can have a negative impact on re-stocking and even returns procedures.

Other specialist functions that you might like to consider are being able to use weights and measures in more than one unit, for example Imperial and metric. Being able to process multiple currencies may be a requirement for any business which conducts its commerce in overseas territories. There again, you might need an EPOS system which can issue tickets or print in kitchen environments, something that is essential for any business that operates in the food production or food retail sectors.