In Retail, inventory management is the most vital component for any successful business. With increasingly tighter margins, competitors with larger promotional budgets and the increasing number of substitutes, inventory management is a key factor in remaining competitive and profitable. However, your inventory management system is not at its best unless integrated with an EPoS system. This link up allows for stock to seamlessly move throughout your business based on customer transactions, continuously avoiding any overstocking or lack of. If executed correctly, your inventory management system will increase sales, maximise overall profits and boost customer satisfaction.
Knowledge of your customer types and their particular demands is important when trying to keep stock levels at an optimum. If an order that is too small or placed too late, this will risk the product not being available, causing missed sales and leaving customers dissatisfied. On the flipside, excess stock ties up capital and leads to reduced margins when it has to be sold off reduced at a later date.
Achieving the right balance for inventory management requires in-depth business intelligence and joined-up thinking. Purchasing decisions have to be based on solid sales data telling you which products are selling and how fast. This must be linked to your supply chain and logistical management, ensuring orders arrive when needed and stock can be moved from warehouse to store as required.
EPoS systems play a key role in simplifying and improving how such data is processed and used. Opus Retail Manager clients benefit from using our Stock Manager module to make this process as streamlined and efficient as possible. Below, you will find four smart ways to use your current EPoS system to boost your inventory management.
Automated stock control
Your EPoS system provider should naturally integrate their system with your inventory management process, allowing for stock data to be updated in real time, whenever a sale is made. Inputting an SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) at point of sale not only processes the transaction, but it can also automatically change inventory records and accounts. Additionally, retailers using Opus Retail Manager can benefit from add on hardware provided by VariPos, this includes handheld scanners or laser scan modules , all assisting in the further automation of this process.
Intelligence-led ordering
A vital feature of any EPoS system is automated alerts. This will trigger when stock reaches a certain level, warning that an order needs to be made. Beyond this, you need sophisticated analysis of sales data generated from your EPoS system, which can be used to predict demand for products in the future, helping to ensure that stock is ordered in the correct quantities.
Multichannel management
In order to survive, retailers are now operating online as well as their traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Opus Retail Manager links sales across all channels to a centralised inventory management system, meaning customers, online or offline, are kept happy. You want to avoid, for example, a situation where an online sale cannot be fulfilled because an item runs out of stock due to sales in store. Integrated systems will both automatically remove products from e-commerce sites the moment the last item is sold in store, and instantly send notice to stores to ‘pick’ a product when an online sale is completed.
Product Pricing Flexibility
Opus Retail Manager’s Stock Manager module is also designed to provide a focus for profit control within the business operation. The merchandiser is able to allocate the appropriate selling prices against planned profit margins. Promotions can be determined and confirmed for use within all other modules of Opus Retail Manager. Prices are entered for all products, including against current and pending cost price adjustments. Price changes can be applied to specific products or by a range of products, such as all inventory from a particular supplier. New prices become active as soon as the changes are confirmed and are then immediately available at the point of sale. Suggested price changes can be automatically created based upon profit margins. Also, a range of specific discounted prices can be applied to special customers. Opus Retail Manager will create suggested selling prices automatically based upon product profit margins.
Flexible customer service
Not so long ago, a customer’s request for a certain product in a different size, colour or style could only be answered by a dash to the stockroom to search for what they asked for. Now, with a touch screen EPoS terminal, staff have full inventory details at their fingertips, meaning they can answer customer queries in seconds rather than disappearing for ten minutes. In addition, for chains of stores, integrated inventory management systems mean that staff can instantly check availability in other stores or even at the warehouse. Mobile EPoS terminals even allow staff to answer such queries before the customer approaches the payment desk, using tablets to access stock and product data to arrange orders and cross or up-sell anywhere in store.
Opus Retail Manager
Opus Retail Solutions specialise in providing Retail, Wholesale, & Integrated e-Commerce Solutions through its Software suite Opus Retail Manager. Opus has been developing software for over 30 years and was one of the first Windows based EPoS systems in 1997. Opus Retail Manager is hardware independent and we offer hardware depending on client requirements, policy or budget.
The key to Opus’s success lies with its ongoing investment in Research and Development and Training to keep our Software products and services and staff world class. Services range from specifying client requirements to providing custom modifications, system implementation, training with a special emphasis on after-sales support so our customers can get the most from their system. The Company invests c £100k pa in R&D to ensure it’s software remains world-class.
The entire Opus operation is managed from Opus’s Headquarters in Belfast, Northern Ireland, along with regional development and support offices in the UK and Russia. Opus has partners all over the world and currently ships the software in five languages. Please contact us if you would like to discuss a partnership.
Although our Retail Manager Software and services procedures have evolved over the years from DOS through Windows enabling us to stay ahead of the curve, our core objective is still to provide innovative, best in breed, easy to use and robust EPoS solutions, no matter what the industry, the size or the individual need.
