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Grow into the Features of your POS System As a smaller retailer, you won't necessarily be able to take full advantage of all the POS system features when they are first installed — but the benefits for many of the features will come along eventually. For example, a one-man operation doesn't need to standardize or document everything because he handles everything himself. But the minute you add a second person to your operation, you now have a problem. Millen remembers a friend who owned a ski shop. He knows what he sells — what kinds of tops, for example — but only instinctively, from his own experience. The minute he adds a second person, he will fall apart, because the second person will be winging it too. It's when you add that second person to the storefront that you grow beyond your mom & pop shop origins. It becomes critical to segment your business and the products. POS systems will support that segmentation. Being able to, in effect, package the business knowledge makes it possible to expand, to open more than one store, to franchise, and to one day sell your business. Trying to do any of these things with a business you are running out of your head will cripple you. Bear in mind that many facets of POS will become important to you as you grow large. You will learn to take advantage of such capabilities as allocation algorithms, labor, forecasting, and markdown projections (comparing the loss you will take if you mark down an item to sell versus the cost of continuing to warehouse it). IT Support As You Grow In a small retail operation, even with a five- or ten-store chain, you don't necessarily need a computer department in-house. You can rely on your vendor, or contract with a local service to maintain the computers and the network. (It does help, though, to have someone in-house who is familiar with computer systems, as it's hard for you to recognize who is a good IT contractor if you aren't an IT type yourself.) But as you grow — and especially if you plan to grow nationally (or across several states), and especially as you add a distribution center (at the 10- to 15-store mark), you will need a professional IT operation of your own. www.allbusiness.com Back to Industry News |
