Microsoft RMS Reports

Retailers are recognising how competitive the industry has become and are striving to find out exactly what will give them an edge over their competitors. In a rapidly changing environment like retail one of the keys to success is ensuring you know exactly what is going on in your business whether you have one or more shops. What items are your best sellers? Who are your best customers? What needs to be re-ordered or should there be automatic reorder levels? Who is your best cashiers? etc. Reports detailing vital real time information instantly, is the key to increased sales, efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Microsoft’s RMS provides a wealth of reports as standard including customer accounts receivable, sales, item quantity information, quotes, orders and layaway as well as a host of others.

Retailers can customise reports using different filter criteria but from experience my favourite feature of RMS reporting is the ability to memorize customised reports.
The export feature is very useful should you ever need a member of staff to email you on sales reports, or in the event that you need reports sent to your accountant, the report can be exported to a comma delimited file which allows you to open it in excel.
Filtering the reports allows you to generate a report according to specific criteria for example if you wanted to find out how many items you sold between specific dates you can use the “Date Sold” filter and set the start and finish date of the report. There are also filters for stock on hand, cashiers, categories, department plus a lot more.

Reporting features in RMS include:
• Preview, print, or export data in multiple formats.
• Filter, hide, sort, and group data the way you want.
• Add your logo for formal reports.
• Drill down to modify the database directly from reports.
• View and print daily sales graphs and journals from any register.
• Preview, search, and print journals by register, batch, and/or receipt number.
• Print X, Z, and ZZ reports.
• Adjust report headers/columns on screen.
• Quickly drill down from summary reports to detailed reports.
• ”Memorize” report settings.

I am attaching a youtube demo of Microsoft’s Retail Management System Reporting, if you have any queries post back

This is the first post of a series of posts we’ll be doing on how to get the most out of your web store. So to begin we’ll start with the basics of effective content.

When it comes down to it, you get business from web traffic and traffic either directly (someone types in your www address) or from search engines. So when you are optimising your web store for search engines, don’t let yourself get bogged down or confused, there’s no magic secret. No special little code you hide somewhere that gets your site listed number one, it really comes down to just a few things done well.

First off, search engines simply want to provide the most helpful and relevent results to what their user has searched for, yes? So to get better ranking you need to be as helpful and relevent to your industry or topic as you can. Start with writing your content to include, in a natural way, the product names and phrases describing your items. Try also to think about how a person would look for your products in a search engine. What would they type? Try to use that in your content. However, it must read well. Simply overloading your text with keywords will not work. In fact, it will more than likely get you blocked.

Secondly, keyword and description meta tags should be provided for each of your pages. Nitrosell does this automatically for you so there is no extra work for you on this point. Keyword and description meta tags are not so important these days as the bigger search engines don’t use them a whole lot. Google for instance will use your Description tag when it first lists your website if it hasn’t found a particular part of your content to highlight and it may review your keywords tag but it certainly won’t rely on it.

You really want to work with the search engines to be as helpful/relevent as possible. Don’t confuse this with having millions of pages - that might give your customers so much choice that they end up going no where!

The last thing we’ll cover today is ‘call to action’. When you’re writing a page you should always keep in mind what you want the visitor to do after they have read the page. Providing the page is not a product description or special offers page, which are self-explanatory, you should present the user with a ‘call to action’. This is something that prompts the user to do what you want them to do. So it could be a text link to a product, a ‘Buy Now!’ button or a contact us form.

If you implement the practices outlined above, you will see an increase in traffic as Google rewards you and also an increase in sales as you will be converting more visitors to customers.

2008 has been great to us here at Positive. We can’t believe it’s May already. We have to apologise for how quiet we’ve been on the blog as of late, but not to worry, we have some great posts coming in the next few days.

In other news a new store, Brown Cow, has been opened this month. Brown Cow is a luxury salon from the owners of the infamous tanning product Fake Bake. The store is breathtaking with chandeliers, beds and luxury furnishings, not to mention the beauticians and medical staff to carry out botox procedures and teeth whitening among the rest!

Positive team members were present throughout the launch to ensure a smooth process for the staff and the night went off without a hitch!

The slowdown in the U.S. economy, whether real or
perceived, can ironically have a very positive effect for retailers who put
their Dynamics RMS-powered businesses online with an integrated NitroSell
WebStore.

NitroSell President Tom Keane asserted, “The reason for this is clear – in a tough
economy, retailers need to do two things:
increase their revenue from their existing customers, and gain new customers.” There is no better way to achieve these objectives than for a retailer to go multi-channel. Adding a NitroSell WebStore to an existing or new Dynamics RMS installation involves a relatively low expenditure of capital costs, compared to the potential increase in revenues and profits. It has been the experience of NitroSell customers time and time again that ongoing costs are only a small fraction of the increased revenues.

More and more retailers are looking for this competitive advantage, and this is being reflected in NitroSell’s sales figures. Compared to Q1 2007, NitroSell sales of integrated WebStores in Q1 2008 increased 196%. The outlook for the rest of 2008 is for even more dramatic increases.

NitroSell’s very healthy sales numbers are reflected in the state of online retail, as reported in April 2008 by Forrester and Shop.org. Online sales (excluding travel) grew a whopping 17 percent last year to $175bn, or six percent of total U.S. retail sales. Shop.org’s annual report predicts that this year the amount will  increase to about $204bn, or seven percent of total retail sales, despite the overall slowdown in U.S. consumer spending. This is in sharp contrast to traditional in-store sales, which are flat. An article in USA Today referring to the report went on to say that “the sluggish economy has bruised many bricks [only] based retailers”.

Sucharita Mulpuru, a Forrester Research analyst and lead author of the report, says that the rise in online shopping is being driven by two types of consumers, including “the price-sensitive shoppers who appear to
be buying more items online as they look for better prices. And then there are the more affluent customers, who have been increasing their online spending because of the convenience and vast offerings.” Tom Keane adds, “While Forrester is correct regarding the macro online trends, here at NitroSell we are also seeing a significant number of NitroSell-powered retailers benefiting from customers who love shopping
online with those retailers with whom they already have an in-store relationship.

Retailers leveraging NitroSell’s multi-channel tools can achieve online conversion rates that are higher than with online-only merchants.”

Shop.org’s finding provided some interesting statistics: “Online clothing sales were the most valuable online category in 2007, worth $22.7bn, exceeding sales of computer hardware, peripherals, and software, which were worth $20.7bn.” Not long ago, it was perceived wisdom that clothes could never be sold online, because they needed to be tried on first.

Now it’s clear that with a NitroSell multi-channel solution, the retailer can leverage his relationship and in-store sales to his loyal customers in a manner that will facilitate ongoing online sales from these same customers. NitroSell is having real success with the apparel vertical market, and this success is mirrored in
footwear and fashion.

Scott Silverman, executive director of Shop.org, gave some other insightful details to the press in relation to the marketing methods (predominately search and e-mail) that are employed by the retailers sampled in
the report. Every $1 spent on winning orders via search marketing resulted in $12.79 in order value. For every $1 spent on e-mail marketing, $17.51 in order value was delivered. On average, the retailers in the Shop.org/Forrester study manage approximately 32,000 search terms and send 77 e-mails per year to customers, spending roughly $300,000 and $1.9m on e-mail and search, respectively.

These are big budgets, which are commensurate with the high sums that the sampled retailers have paid to put their operations online. Dynamics RMS + NitroSell-powered retailers don’t need to spend anywhere near these amounts to successfully extend their businesses to the Web.

For example, pay-per-click search advertising is very important in driving online revenues. NitroSell is leading the way with its free, tight e-commerce integration with industry-leading analytics engines, which is critical to any successful AdCenter or AdWords campaign (see NitroSell Knowledge Base (KB) article #267). In addition, NitroSell is tightly integrated with the leading U.S. e-mail marketing provider Constant Contact (see KB articles #193, #269, and #129), enabling retailers to target their customers with compelling product offerings that drive online sales. Constant Contact’s offerings start at as little as $15 per month.

What’s also clear from the Forrester/Shop.org report is that some of the bigger players are beginning to experiment with new initiatives, such as social marketing, through community Web sites and mobile marketing. This is something that NitroSell-powered retailers have been able to do for some time via features such as Facebook integration (KB article #313) and RSS feeds (KB article #387).

The report also forecasts that, despite bright prospects compared to traditional retailing, the total online sales growth in the U.S. will slow over the next five years, as the channel matures with fewer first-time users.

NitroSell President Tom Keane disagrees: “The companies on which this study is focused are the bigger retailers who spend hundreds of thousands (if not millions) on their in-store and online systems. Many of these systems are not truly multi-channel and don’t have a fraction of the features of a Dynamics/NitroSell-powered solution.

NitroSell is offering enterprise-class, multi-channel e-commerce at SMB prices – something that has not been previously available to small and mid-sized retailers.”

There are millions of independent retailers in the U.S., Europe, Asia/Pacific, and beyond.

Once the “NitroSell effect” starts reaching this mass market of retailers, and their customers begin to learn that their favorite local retailer can service them online as well as in-store, the whole picture is going to change.

Conversely and just as importantly, local retailers, particularly the ones with unique products, can reach a customer base beyond their local community – regionally, nationally, or indeed internationally.

NitroSell delivers affordable mass-market, multi-channel retailing, which is going to drive online sales through the roof. Early adapters are already reaping the benefits!

Return on Investment (ROI) Analysis

There are two sides of the ROI analysis that need to be considered. First, what is the investment to purchase the restaurant automation solution. Second, and perhaps more important, what is the cost associated with not purchasing the solution. In 100% of Restaurant Manager software customers, the ROI has far outweighed the monthly investment required to purchase the restaurant automation solutions.

According to the National Restaurant Association’s Restaurant Industry Operations Report 2002, the average restaurant spent a total of 35% of their annual sales on salaries, wages, and benefits. Labor costs are the highest expense. Restaurant automation integrates key business functions in order to maximize efficiency and reduce labor costs.Most restaurants operate on low profit margins. In fact, the average restaurant keeps less than a 10 cent in profit for every Euro earned. Furthermore, the restaurant industry has seen modest growth of 1% to 3% annually since 1991.

Low profit margins combined with modest growth result in numerous challenges. Restaurant automation offers opportunities to increase revenue and sales per customer.The following ROI analysis is based upon a restaurant with €500,000 in annual sales and €175,000 in labor costs.

*All of the figures above are based upon the monthly and annual averages, and in no way guarantees specific performance.

So from the information above don’t you think its time to invest in a product and solution that will earn you money just contact us and we’ll show you how.

Hi All, Just a quick note I’d like to add this week in relation to the up-take of POS software in retail here in Ireland,

In researching our market here with retail software I found quite a few published documents on the up-take and the benefits of POS software and the lack of should I say, I found that over 75% of retailers are still using old ECR’s (electronic Cash Registers) and gaining little or no value for these machines,

When I looked deeper into this I found the many retailers just did not feel the need for EPOS mainly due to the fact that our economy has been so strong for the last 10-15 years or so and that having up to the minute reports and a good over-all picture was for many retailers not needed they could afford to lose money without any consequence as things were going so well ( a few points here and there wasn’t an issue ).

Well folks times they are a changing, there is still a lot of money to be made out there in retail but things are getting tighter and most retailers are seeing the need and benefits of EPOS and most wish they’d done it earlier (some could have probably retired on what they supposedly didn’t care about) again all is not lost why don’t we look at the big retailers what are they doing to keep their customers flooding in well I’ll tell you.  

Investing in the future and making themselves EPOS sound to drive forward into the future and it’s not just big retailers who can do this a good EPOS system doesn’t have to break the bank you too can have a system as good if not better that the big retailers and have it tailored to your specific business.

There is an investment and a time investment of course but think of this if an EPOS system saves you 5% per annum and you turn over 1 million thats 50 thousand I wish I could sell an EPOS system for 50k so think about it if you spend 25k and save 50k its really a no brainer.

If you want to have a look at a super EPOS system that won’t break the bank have a look at this Microsoft RMS.

By the way don’t be afraid to ask us any questions on anything relating to I.T in retail.

In today’s competitive environment, it has become essential for retailers to provide great service for example I went into a book shop the weekend and asked did they have a particular book in stock. The lady was very friendly but unfortunately her reply was “the system I have can’t give me that information, but you can look in the business section over there” and she pointed in the general direction. This was really no help to me as I didn’t have the time to go searching though the shelves and then to find that maybe they didn’t have the book. The end result was I popped into Eason’s, asked them did they have it, they checked the system and told me there was three in stock and where they were located. I found the book and had paid for it within five minutes.

In todays demanding and hectic society this is the way things have become, simply put time has become a precious commodity. My example above is for a book store but the retail sector is not what is important but how many times have retailers lost customers because of similar scenario?? The number of retailers still operating with a cash drawer is very surprising but how much damage could this be doing to the business! Even if the owner of the bookshop was there, which they would normally do, do they believe an employee will make the effort when they are not around!
Retailers including golf shops, book shops, off-licences, convenience, hardware, cafes, restaurants etc should be performing I.T. audits to assess their business and its future –> survival or expansion .

For more information on this issue follow this link http://www.pss.ie/pos-articles.asp?s=advice

Further to my post last week on Nitrosell webstores, I wanted to elaborate on some of the more specific benefits of these POS integrated webstores.

Another Store without buying a building

Probably the most beneficial factor with these web stores is that it adds a completely new store without the cost of buying a new building. You have a new presence, new traffic and new business all processed through your current store without the need for new staff or property.

The costs of establishing a new store, I’m sure we can agree, can be massive. You need to be in the right position financially with an opportunity in the right location for traffic for your business - a headache to achieve at the best of times. That being said, a new store in the right place can do wonders for your business and even out perform your original store in some cases. It’s a matter of finding the right opportunity.

Location, location, location.

An old phrase, but a valid one at that. Setting up a new store has to be based on a good location. Why? Traffic. You’re trying to find the balance between lots of traffic and appropriate traffic. A snowboarding shop in a retirement community isn’t going anywhere. This is where the beauty of your web store comes in for a second time. Virtually unlimited traffic. I know, it sounds a big claim but have a look at this. Google gets over 4 billion searches daily. That’s one search engine, albeit the largest, out of a whole host of search website’s people use, that can be advertised on.

As for traffic, how does it relate to you? Well here’s where it gets even better. You can target your exact market and reach far more appropriate traffic through websites and web advertising than you can through a physical store and walk-in traffic. Are your customers predominantely males in their 20’s with an interest in clothes? or mothers of new born babies? Not a problem. That’s how specific you can target on the internet. In fact you can take that a step further and limit it to a specific town or location anywhere in the world.

The value for money and indeed the return on investment here can be exponential. There are websites alone, with no physical presense that generate enough business to go public - and I’m not talking about the Googles and Amazons. Regular, ordinary businesses for subjects such as weddings, training, services, even knitting patterns (i know..) are doing exceptionally well online - your imagination is the limit.

So is this option for you? Well at the end of the day you’ll convince yourself of what you want to believe but do I think anyone could make a valid argument not to be online? No.

Stocktaking can be daunting and expensive to say the least - extra staffing, training and closing the business for the duration of the count etc.. Then you have to collate the data gathered into a logical and legible format which can take as much time as the count itself. Nevertheless, having control of your stock and monitoring the value of your unsold goods is vital to business success.

Thankfully technology has provided us with some solutions that can help streamline this process. Many EPoS systems have Stock/Inventory management functionality which can be employed to carry out stocktakes and control levels on a day to day basis. This data can be used to generate purchase orders for your suppliers based on criteria such as re-order levels and quantities sold. Portable handheld computers with built in barcode scanners can be utilised to speed up the process of carrying out a stocktake with minimum disruption to your business.

 So now there’s no excuse … Get counting!

In an age of great technical advances it is surprising to find how many retailers have not kept up to date with changing technology. Retailers not understanding the value EPOS can bring and only looking at the initial cost of set up could very well be holding their business back.

The need to accept coupons, keep track of inventory, ensure fast sellers are always in stock, increase accuracy, utilise detailed reports and provide hassle free refunds, credit notes and vouchers. These are just some of the reasons cash registers are no longer the most effective way of doing business.

Knowing when your business is expanding and allowing it to expand is a critical point. For a better understanding of why to choose epos 10 Reasons to Automate your Business with a Positive POS Solution.

A number of EPOS systems exist and finding the right one requires research. Use this Retail Technology Assessment form for guidance on purchasing your system.