| With the good news that retailers are increasing their | | | | in the past. |
| IT spending, I thought I'd give a brief overview of how | | | | 3. Monitor the sales floor in real time |
| smaller and medium-sized retailers can improve their | | | | If you set daily sales goals, you can monitor sales in |
| performance with business intelligence tools. | | | | real time through-out your store or multiple stores (if |
| As a small or medium-sized retailer you face many | | | | your POS systems are connected in real time to your |
| challenges, not the least of which are increasing | | | | HQ). At various times during the day you can see how |
| competitive pressure from superstores such as | | | | sales are trending. If by performing trend analysis you |
| Wal-Mart, from smaller niche players, Internet-only | | | | can see that sales for that day will not meet your daily |
| Ecommerce sites, and many more. | | | | sales goal, you can take immediate mid-day action, |
| You can start a social media marketing campaign, as | | | | such as instituting a promotion, setting up a Point of |
| that's a good low-cost way to improve your marketing | | | | Purchase Display, instruct sales people to sell ad-on |
| reach. | | | | items, etc. |
| However, you can also do some really cool stuff on | | | | 4. Order more popular items |
| the back-end that can make you more competitive. | | | | By tracking and analyzing sales data and inventory, |
| With low-cost business intelligence applications here | | | | you can identify the items that are selling well and buy |
| are some of the things you can do: | | | | more of them, as well as do creative things like create |
| 1. Institute a loyalty program | | | | a special promotion for that item. |
| When you institute a customer loyalty program you | | | | 5. Get rid of unpopular items |
| can track and identify your best customers, and at the | | | | By tracking and analyzing sales data and inventory, |
| point-of-purchase reward them for their business. | | | | you can identify slow moving items that are just |
| 2. Stay on top of your vendors | | | | gathering dust in the warehouse. Stop ordering those |
| During the critical Christmas selling months of | | | | items sooner than you normally would to cut costs. |
| November and December you do NOT want to be | | | | What else can you do? Leave me a comment below |
| caught without a key popular item. Analyze your | | | | with more ideas on what you can do with a business |
| suppliers' past performance and make sure you stay | | | | intelligence tool to increase your competitiveness, gain |
| on top of those that have been late in delivering to you | | | | more customers, or cut costs. |