You are in trouble if the POS software you chose for your business isn’t helping you grow on many levels.

Growing your business, especially restaurants and retail stores requires a dynamic POS software that enables you to adapt to the market changes and accelerates innovation, and supports growth.

So, if you’re already reading this blog, it means that you’re not satisfied with your POS provider and you’re thinking to switch for another one that is more reliable and that doesn’t hold you back from catching up with the latest trends.

When do you need to upgrade your POS software?

Opening several locations

You need a POS that centralizes operations in one location so you can have better insights into your performance and needs. The POS should be able to exchange data among outlets automatically without any human intervention to minimize the likelihood of the error that normally occurs when humans share data.

What you specifically need is a POS that synchronizes data in a real-time manner ensuring constant communication and consolidating data between different outlets maintaining uniformity and enabling better reporting.

You also need a POS provider that helps you focus on your operations and start up your new venue by saving time and effort.

Increasing sales

It’s imperative that your POS enables you to have different sales channels with up-selling techniques to increase your sales and your market share. You need a POS that supports online ordering with a digital QR menu that offers you integration with different third-party delivery companies. Another sales channel that became crucial to today’s business is the self-ordering kiosks that allow you to receive more customers and process more orders without any additional staff.

Ensuring that your customers will return also increases your sales since existing customers tend to spend more than new ones. Increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%.

You need a POS that offers you a CRM feature to help you create loyalty programs and a customized reward system to retain customers.

Real-time reporting

Restaurateurs need to follow up on data, assimilate it and act upon it. Get yourself a POS that generates real-time reporting and analytics that open up different insights for you to solve recurrent problems.

The POS should give you a thorough analysis of self-generated reports that clearly show you where you stand on different levels such as your cost control, revenues and sales, waste management, menu profitability, KPIs, and so on.

You need this data to make insightful decisions for problems you are encountering or even for better performance.

Frequent crashing

Does your software crash frequently causing service interruption? It happens to all software but if it begins to happen frequently then the software might be outdated or too old to apply fixes and prevent bugs and crashes. 

You need a functioning system to ensure customer satisfaction and continuous service. Upgrading your hardware to the most modern ones contributes as well to crash prevention.

Inventory management optimization

Inventory management is essential and it’s about time to manage inventory without service interruption or interference with your daily operations with real-time stock depletion.

At the same time, you need an auto-purchasing feature to prevent out-of-stocks or overstock. A reliable POS should provide your business with the option of auto-purchasing for stock replenishments based on historical data estimating your needs from each item. Automating this task leads to fewer human errors and more efficiency.

Bulk price update

The hospitality sector is a dynamic one and it’s subject to price fluctuations that affect your prices on the menu. Imagine you need to keep updating your prices manually upon every change in raw material costs.

The bulk price updater feature enables you to change your prices in bulk based on different factors like currency exchange rate, ingredients’ costs, and costs of the supplies and it’s directly updated in your selling price list as well to avoid the risk of selling lower than your cost price.

Customer support

All systems need a constant follow-up and what you need for uninterrupted service is a 24-7 customer support that is always ready to serve you and fix your problems. Not providing customer support round the clock interferes with your service and affects your own customers in the end.

Relying on technology and on a POS software that accelerates your growth is what you need the most in today’s world so make sure to invest in software that provides you with all the above features and more.