Running a retail business is all about smooth operations, but let's face it, the daily grind can sometimes feel like a maze of admin duplication, outdated spreadsheets, and a constant battle to sync up information between your ePOS system, ecommerce website and inventory.
We get it – retail life isn't always a walk in the park. So, we've rounded up eight common retail challenges that might just hit close to home when selling your products and how you can tackle them.
Do any of these sound familiar to you?
1 - Product Duplication Woes
Adding new products should be exciting, but the reality often involves repeating tasks. Inputting the same details into different systems – inventory, ecommerce website and ePOS till system – it can become a time-consuming ritual.
It might seem minor, but this duplication steals moments that could be better spent connecting with customers or brainstorming innovative business ideas.
Streamlining these tasks isn't just about saving minutes; it's also about directing energy where it truly matters.
2 - The Overselling Challenge
Overselling is a genuine headache for retailers, causing a ripple effect on customer trust, efficiency, and financial health. A report by Forbes (2023) revealed that overselling leads to a 15% increase in customer complaints and a 10% loss in sales for the average retailer.
The main culprit? A lack of real-time harmony between various sales channels and inventory systems. When the ePOS, ecommerce and inventory systems don't chat in real time and have communication hiccups, it opens the door to mix-ups.
Imagine someone buys the last product in-store, and due to lag during busy periods, it accidentally sells the same item online. Managing overselling then involves issuing refunds and fast restocking, sometimes at a higher price, impacting sales and your overall profitability.
To avoid these pitfalls and keep customers smiling, seamless real-time systems are crucial.
3 - Gift Voucher Limitations
When retailers and customers are unable to redeem gift vouchers both in-store and online, it creates several issues. Customers face inconvenience, reducing their satisfaction and potentially deterring them from using the voucher, which can lead to lost sales opportunities, as vouchers are incentives for additional purchases.
Also they might be less inclined to repeat purchases or recommending you to others.
Integrated retail systems that manage voucher redemptions across multiple channels are therefore key to maximising sales and customer satisfaction.
4 - Spreadsheet Struggles
Relying on spreadsheets for inventory management has significant drawbacks.
Manual data entry as well as keeping them uptodate and relevant, not only consumes time but is also prone to errors, leading to inaccurate stock levels. This can result in either overstocking, tying up funds, or understocking, causing missed sales opportunities.
As a business grows, managing spreadsheets becomes even more complex, and collaboration issues may arise due to version control problems. Moreover, spreadsheets lack advanced analytics and forecasting tools crucial for optimising inventory. Their struggle with scalability and seamless integration with other business processes further adds to the reasons why you shouldn't use a spreadsheet to manage inventory
5 - The Price Update Marathon
Deciding to tweak a product's price shouldn't feel like a system-hopping adventure. Yet, when using multiple systems, updating prices can become a marathon – first it’s your inventory system, next your online shop, and finally your ePOS system. And if you get a phonecall in between then it’s easy to forget where you are!
A fully integrated system where you only need to change the price in one location and it automatically updates it everywhere is the answer, imagine how much time you would save.
6 - Return Policy Hassles
When customers can't return items across different sales channels at a shop, it disrupts their seamless shopping experience, and can lead to frustration and a decline in trust towards the shop.
Inflexible return policies may even make customers think twice before making future purchases, impacting their loyalty.
This issue isn't merely inconvenient for customers; it also complicates the inventory management. Without a unified return process, tracking and managing stock levels become more challenging, potentially resulting in inventory inaccuracies.
The National Retail Federation (2022) said 67% of shoppers check the return policy before buying so a unified return process is essential for customer satisfaction and efficient inventory management.
7 - Customer Data Disarray
Without a consolidated customer view, retrieving customer data is cumbersome.
If you have a separate ePOS system from your ecommerce online sales your customer data can become duplicated and incomplete across the sales channels. This will also make it tricky to offer impactful loyalty programmes and promotions.
From a customer perspective, the absence of a comprehensive view may result in disjointed interactions across various touchpoints and mis misunderstandings. Data from Salesforce (2023) suggests that retailers who use integrated customer relationship management systems see a 35% improvement in customer satisfaction.
This underlines the importance of a unified approach to managing customer data.
8 - Real-Time Report Dilemmas
Operating without real-time reports is akin to navigating blindfolded, decision-making is tough when relying on outdated information.
Managing inventory becomes difficult with the risk of ending up with too much or too little stock, resulting in financial headaches and customers encountering outdated stock levels or prices, can grow frustrated, impacting your business's reputation.
And if you have more than one location it can make it difficult to compare the performance of each shop.
Balancing finances and running effective promotions becomes a juggling act and the lack of real-time data causing missed opportunities and strategies that may not hit the mark, can leave you trailing behind and on the back foot.
Do any of these common retail challenges seem familiar to you?
So what can you do to improve your current situation?
The above challenges underscore the need for a streamlined and integrated retail solution when selling your products.
Imagine being able to seamlessly track and update inventory levels across all sales channels and get real-time stock synchronisation so that when an item is sold, whether online or in-store, your inventory levels are immediately updated across all platforms ie the ePOS system and the ecommerce website.
There's a central hub where products only need to be entered once in the centralised area, saving any unnecessary duplication, and reports can be generated for each sales channel, as well as all channels, so that you can gain a more comprehensive understanding of your business operations and make better inventory, marketing, promotions and financial planning decisions.
Imagine the long-term benefits of implementing a retail system that does all the above and seeing improved accuracy and customer satisfaction, with reduced costs due to improved stock decisions, and overall more efficient and streamlined business operations.
So how can ShopTill-e help you?
ShopTill-e is an all-in-one retail solution specifically created to solve the problems retailers face when selling in both physical shops and online shops.
It provides a unified solution that integrates the ePOS system, ecommerce platform and inventory management, into a single system so you can process sales and manage inventory and customer data, across multiple channels, using just one system.
The all-in-one retail solution includes centralised inventory, gift vouchers redeemable in-store and online, promotions, click and collect and so much more ensuring streamlined processes and an enhanced customer experience.
With real-time synchronisation of inventory levels, stock tracking and alerts for low stock levels and reorder points, helping to prevent overselling and ensuring accurate stock information everywhere.
The ePOS system within ShopTill-e provides smooth in-store transactions with the user-friendly point of sale interface making it easy for staff to learn and use the system effectively. As well as including ePOS integrated payments, barcode scanning, receipt printing, and integration with POS hardware.
And the ecommerce platform allows for easy product listings, one page checkout with guest checkout and online payment processing.
Book your demo today and see how ShopTill-e can take away your retail headaches.
