When people hear the term “point of sale” or POS, what usually comes to mind first is a cash register to cater to customer payment transactions. Punch in a purchase, take payments and off they go. However, modern POS now offers a lot more than that! A POS has evolved to become an integral and powerful part of your business. It can help you boost your sales, make better customer experience and help you make smarter decisions to run your business.

Today, POS offers greater capabilities than ever before thanks to “cloud technology.” Have you heard of the team, “cloud computing?” This refers to the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the internet to store, manage, and process data, instead of a local device.

Imagine getting all the benefits of a regular POS but you are able to access reports and perform tasks from any terminal, anytime and anywhere!

A Cloud-based POS is no doubt, a significant upgrade from traditional cash registers. 

If you’re still having second thoughts about switching to a cloud-based POS,  then you have come to the right place. Here, we will break down to you how a cloud-based POS system works and how it will help you streamline a lot of your basic business processes.

We’ve put together a list of the eight most important benefits of choosing a cloud-based POS software for your business.

1. Better Remote Control Of Your Operations

Hey, we get it- managing a retail business is a fulltime job. But no matter how hands-on you would want to be about running your business, you too deserve a vacation! There will be times when you would not be physically around and things you just can’t guarantee that things will run smoothly and go as planned. Isn’t it funny how things seem to fall out of hand when you’re not around? Even in the middle of a vacation or while you’re in another business matter you urgently have to attend to, you may have to resolve an issue despite not being physically present.

You may have also noticed that your employees seem to slack around when you’re away and that goals and targets are not met because of a decline in employee efficiency. Also, while you’re away, you may find out that some of your managers and supervisors may not work well together and may not achieve the same quality of work as when you are around.

These are what give business owners a lot of headache and anxiety. You may always have to think that being physically present is the key to your business success. This is where a good cloud-based POS system comes into place. With this, the aforementioned problems are avoidable, and being physically around to run your business doesn’t have to be necessary.

A good cloud-based POS allows you to better control your operations remotely by helping you monitor the various departments and how they are running even when you are away. This allows you to swiftly react to any issues that may arise even when you’re not within your store’s premises. 

For instance, you can know when stocks run out or that a new order wasn’t placed when stocks ran out. In just a glance, you can see which products are selling well and which one’s you may have to check off your menu or product list because it adds more cost than profit. You can also tell that activity at certain checkout terminals aren’t as high as usual. You can see which employee has clocked in and clocked out at a given time. 

This information can help you resolve common business issues as soon as they arise, even when you’re away, and prevent coming back to a bigger crisis.

2. Better Mobility

Not only does a POS software automate the sales and inventory management processes, it can also be installed on different workstations and smoothly be integrated with internet-connected PC or mobile devices. Yes, including your smartphones and tablets.

This offers a dynamic duo of convenience. First for you and your team, and secondly for your customers. Picture this, you will now be able to access your data, create receipts and invoices and prepare orders, while you are taking care of other important things. Just let the system streamline all these tasks for you.

For instance, during a retail bazaar organized by your local community, you can punch in orders, create invoices and accept payments without having to go back and forth through your back door. For your customers, and your cloud-based POS has a customer display feature, all they have to do is punch in their order on your tablet themselves. Save the hassle of having to bring around a bulky cash register to punch in sales, save yourself so much time and energy, and paper- send your customers’ invoices to their emails.

As you make sales, and you want to see how you are doing. View a detailed summary of your sales and inventory report right from your smartphone or tablet.

However, take note that some cloud-based POS may not work on Android devices, and some may not work on iOS devices so be sure to check their compatibility with your available devices.

Well thankfully, more people have become adept at using modern devices, so your employees won’t need a lot of training as you shift to this advanced technology to manage your retail business and serve your customers.

If you and your team have been using the traditional cash register for a while now, expect that you might need some time and effort to learn how the POS works. Once you get the hang of it, you should be good to go!

In the past, employees needed weeks of training before they could master the use of POS software. This is no longer the case. After only a few hours of training, your employees will understand and have adapted to your innovative POS system. In other words, with this modern system, you are sure to hit the ground running!

3. Risk Reduction

Having a good POS system can significantly reduce all kinds of risks compared to a cash register system.

And with a good cloud-based POS software, you can rest assure that your data is in good hands because strict security protocols have been put in place to ensure the management of the system.

Cloud technology ensures a full and automatic periodic backup on one or even several remote servers. It even allows the POS software provider to include automatic and regular updates. These updates heighten the security level of the software.

You can also help reduce risk by properly managing employees’ access restrictions according to their roles within the POS system. For example, a cashier might be unable to access how much is currently in the cash drawer, alter a bill, or give extra points to a customer without the manager’s consent.

A cloud-based POS software will include automated data backups, customizable access controls, and data encryption to protect against employee negligence or theft. You’ll have peace of mind knowing your customer’s information, such as credit card numbers, is safe.

Without a POS system, it would be very expensive to enjoy these benefits while you’re on the go. However, a good modern POS software includes these security features directly in the system you use for your business.

4. Easily Accessible Reports

Without access to enough information about what is going on in your business, you will have no choice but to trust your feelings when making important business decisions. Well all know this, emotion and feelings can be fleeting and this means you can’t always make the right decisions. 

You can kiss this dilemma goodbye with a good cloud-based POS. With this, you can easily have access to clear comprehensive data and statistics on your operations, anytime and anywhere.

With such a system in place, you can always get important insights about your business whenever you need them. This would save you and your employees a lot of time as there would be no need to manually compile, tabulate and prepare reports. The system summarizes all reports for you in clean, comprehensive figures. 

The POS system can easily create accurate and reliable reports that are shown to you at the click of a button. This way, you can know when certain products are running low on stocks or are selling too quickly, so you change your reorder schedule. If we haven’t stressed this enough yet, thanks to cloud-based technology, you can access these reports from anywhere.

These reports can even let you know which products are popular and selling well and which ones aren’t, or you can use them to assess whether your recent promotional and marketing campaign is effective. Did we mention that you can get this information in real time? This is the best part.

With cloud-based POS software for multiple stores, you can get all the information you need about various branches within your retail franchise or chain in one place. 

Now when making a smart decision for your business, you can combine your retail experience, intuition, and accurate and reliable data to help you.

Keep in mind that since a cloud-based POS is highly reliant on your internet connection, if you have unstable wifi or internet connectivity, you might experience some down times inpunching in sales, transactions, etc. Some advanced POS can work offline but with some limitations. For example, you cannot enter a customer detail to your system without the internet, you may not be able to see real-time sales summary or reports.

5. Better Promotional Marketing Management

Tracking promotional campaigns can be difficult, especially today, where there are several ways to market your products, services, or brand to your customers. Therefore, having a system in place that makes it easy to apply and communicate the promotion can be a huge advantage to you and your business.

With a good POS system, not only can you track promotions, but you can also integrate them into the system. Modern POS software allows you to create special offers by customer or product category, discounts, coupons and other promotional options like special discounts or loyalty programs to market your brand to your customers. 

Say you’re a business owner or head manager working at the check-in counter today, you can add a special discount right at the POS for certain loyal customers to reward their recurring engagement to your brand.

Not only will you boost customer loyalty and retention by keeping them happy, you will save a lot of effort and money.

Once the campaign is over, you can access the reports section and analyze the results of your promotion to find out what impact it had on your customers and sales.

6. Cost Reduction

On the financial side, profitability and expense control in a retail business are top priorities that must be carefully scrutinized when choosing POS software. Without a POS system, it becomes difficult to control expenses and assess daily operations.

With a good cloud-based POS, you don’t have to hire more employees to handle things like inventory management and have them manually tracking all transactions within your business. For multi-store retail businesses, you don’t need to hire more managers just to coordinate the different branches within your franchise.

In addition, buying traditional retail management system equipment can be pricey. Also, you would have to go through the trouble of purchasing all the equipment needed for the server and cash registers in addition to managing updates, backups, and security aspects.

But by choosing a POS system, especially a cloud-based one, the project easily becomes profitable. The initial investment is minimal, and the software provider takes care of most of the IT management.

These days, cloud-based POS software can be very affordable and offers many great features at lower costs. Aside from reducing labor costs, these systems also ensure more efficient personnel use. For example, instead of having your inventory staff toil for hours or days going through the inventory to confirm out-of-stock issues, they could spend that time on more productive tasks like providing excellent after-sales service.

7. Greater Efficiency

With everything mentioned above, we’re guessing you now know how POS really became an essential in efficiently running your business. So many resources would be needed to handle the tasks that a good POS system can handle by itself. Businesses should strive to avoid these drawbacks by making use of the right resources in the right places and highlighting their employees’ strengths so that they can achieve a higher level of performance.

POS software, as compared to the traditional cash registers, makes everything run more smoothly. As mentioned earlier, with this system in place, inventory management will be easier and you will see lower operating costs.

But the key point to take away here is that better efficiency leads to greater productivity and better performance, which ultimately converts into greater profits.

In other words, a retail business looking for an excellent way to improve its bottom line needs to add a good POS system to the picture.

8. Better Customer Service

Obviously, customer behavior changes all the time. We see this just by looking at the difference between the needs of millennials and other generations. We observe this as the global market transitioned and battled through the pandemic. To appeal to everyone and earn their loyalty, companies must learn to use technology as a way of coping with these changes.

One of the best ways to improve while taking advantage of today’s technology is to improve the speed of in-store service. With traditional cash registers, customers must wait as the cashier manually keys in details of their purchase into the machine, one item at a time. With such a fast-paced lifestyle, modern consumers no longer have that kind of patience.

But this should be at the least of your worries if you have a modern POS system. These systems make entering information a lot faster.

The customer experience is all about being able to meet customers’ needs. For example, would the customer like to receive a copy of their invoice by email? This feature is available in a good POS system. The customer won’t have to hold on to another paper receipt, which will most likely end up as another crumpled trash in their bags, or which they often can’t find when it comes time to request a refund or an exchange.

Generally, technology-oriented customers like simple processes and are often satisfied with services provided by a business with a POS system.

By choosing a cloud-based POS system, you ensure that you can always respond quickly, effectively and efficiently to your consumer needs.