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Key Aspects of Intelligent Supply Chain Management

Developing an effective supply chain is an issue that various businesses face. Many of the difficulties show up in the shape of inventory optimization, demand forecasting, Inventory Tracking, communication, and so on. Some businesses manage their Supply Chain Operations with Supply Chain Management.   Supply Chain comprises various elements such as operations management, logistics, procurement management, etc. Having these elements integrated, businesses can successfully streamline the flow of products and services: from raw material to the final product, through the pipeline, and to the end client.   When a business is capable of designing, planning, implementing, executing, controlling, and monitoring supply chains via interlinked systems, they create value, boost their competitiveness, and get even more leverage.   Getting an intelligent supply chain can help tremendously. You can get insights into aspects you did not know existed. With such reports at hand, you will figure out how to shun unnecessary costs. Moreover, with an integrated software service such as Microsoft Dynamics, the entire organization is connected to one another. Therefore, communication becomes seamless.   You need intelligent supply chain management as your business needs to keep up with the following aspects:     Delivering Accurate Products and Services Whenever they are Needed    Many businesses might not realize but, product as a service adds up to the supply chain woes. These days, the traditional supply chain management alone is no longer responsible for manufacturing and delivering the product. Instead, it needs more coordination of parts going into products, conducting predictive maintenance, and updating software to products. To achieve this level of synchronicity, an organization needs instrumentation across a multifaceted dynamic network that usually spans the globe.    Balancing Between the Customer Service Level and Budgeting Requirements  Manufacturers face a tough time maintaining a balance between cost and services. Using a product as a service, one cannot calculate customer satisfaction effectively. It usually computes customer reports based on the number of products or services a company has sold instead of the actual performance of the same. Providing these services at any cost does not reflect their effectiveness. In addition, cutting costs by decreasing inventory can even cause some unexpected downtime and sometimes penalties. You must adopt a smart way to make a balance between customer service and budgeting requirements.   Enabling Tighter Upstream and Downstream  With a shorter product life cycle, speed and innovation are the key ingredients to thrive in the marketplace. Therefore, you need a faster and smarter collaboration across the value chain to innovate and to bring the latest market products and services to stay ahead in the competition while meeting your customer’s expectations.   The most exciting news among all these is that you can seek assistance from technologies like cloud computing, IoT, and AI, which offer real-time visibility while helping you attain these three imperatives.   An intelligent supply chain offers the following features that help your organization streamline the supply chain:   Integrated Business Planning  You can connect teams on a collaborative planning form providing real-time and transparent visibility into your business’s future and current states. You can align teams, initiatives, and strategies, use real-time data to adapt dynamically and plan effectively.   Demand Forecasting  Organizations can make better decisions with real-time data of markets, demands, services, and products. Make an amalgamation. Analyze factors impacting your business from the outside such as data available in the public domain, weather, customer spending pattern, what is popular on social media, and so on. Such data amalgamating with your company’s data lets you validate your current strategies, figure out hidden performance drivers and get a 360-degree view of future demands.   Real-Time Tracking and Tracing   Product as a service produces various complexities. Therefore, it becomes even more essential to track and trace a product and services connected to it followed by its overall journey. Be it preventing counterfeit products from going to the customer, impeding fresh food from spoilage, or ensuring product safety by confirming maintenance.   Multi-Grade Inventory Optimization    You can even increase customer satisfaction and lower costs at the same time with automated demand modeling as-well-as inventory management throughout the supply chain. You can then analyze your current data intelligently, use advanced analytics and optimize inventory, and eventually boost service levels and working capital.   Partner Integration   You can even integrate your systems with the vendor while accurately predicting fulfillment times, bringing products to the market faster, and perhaps offering more competitive pricing to the customer.   An intelligent Supply Chain Management fights supply chain woes while assisting with seamless operations. Offering unified supply chain management software, Microsoft Dynamics 365 accelerates time markets and resolves product quality issues, optimizes logistics and stock, and much more. If you are looking for a Microsoft Implementation Partner, contact Trident Information Systems.  

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Beat the Skill Gap in Manufacturing

The manufacturing industry contributes a massive part to India’s GDP. India’s gross domestic products at current counts at Rs. 51.23 lakh crores (USD 694.93 billion). In the first quarter of FY22, according to the provisional estimates of gross domestic product for the first quarter of 2021-22. The manufacturing GVA at current prices was estimated at USD 97.41 billion in the first quarter of FY22.   This pandemic has pushed this sector back causing skill gaps. Unfortunately, various manufacturers were exposed to crisis fallouts. Despite manufacturing companies trying their hardest to strengthen and rebound in the post-COVID 19 eras, this has impacted hugely on the existing workforce. To overcome this scenario, manufacturers may opt for Manufacturing ERP Software like Microsoft Dynamics 365 which integrates every aspect of manufacturing under the same platform and hence provides a centralized and streamlined manufacturing experience.  There are multiple ways in which manufacturers have changed the way they operate their business. For example, Manufacturers all over the world had to cut budgets and let workers go to secure their bottom line. Apart from reducing the effectiveness of the remaining workforce, it fundamentally altered the functioning of the organization overall. With limited employees left behind, they have to pick up the slack. This leads to increased workload and adjusting with more than what they are assigned to. And not to mention employee safety becomes the top priority (an even bigger priority than it ever was).     Can Digitalization Address Skill Gaps As-Well-as Safety Compliance?  The manufacturing industry has been transforming even before the COVID 19 pandemic hits the world. It was so rapid that it was even tougher for your workforce to keep up with it. Rapid digital transformation contributes to the growing skill gap on the shop floor as well as brings new challenges to the worker’s safety and productivity.   In simple words, your workforce needs to transform to keep up with it. They need to embrace resilient technology like Microsoft Dynamics 365 that can attract, train, and retain the next generation of workers while embedding skills they need to recreate manufacturing and shape a sustainable future.   The talent hunt needs to be done keeping the uneven and protracted recovery environment to balance productivity and achieve desired business outcomes.   Manufacturers can rejoice now as by integrating suitable productive applications, intelligent cloud services, and security, the industry can easily set its workforce up for victory. This is how digital transformation can help employees fill the skill gap:   Connecting empowered technicians and remote assets security to troubleshoot issues, therefore dispatching technicians only when required.  Providing frontline workers with expert assistance remotely to avoid downtime while allowing them to do their best by unifying devices, relationships, processes, and data into intelligent apps, and guiding them securely through the compliance requirements and the most suitable practices.   Ensuring better productivity with team collaboration tools, remote assists, mixed-reality, AI-enhanced applications, and IoT-enables machines to keep up with the boosted process complexities and operational maintenance.   Technology Transforms Manufacturing Operations  Technology-centered agile businesses ensure business practices from anywhere. This is especially useful for businesses having a workforce scattered remotely and, in the workplace, globally. Research commissioned by Microsoft reveals that 97% of entrepreneurs require more agile and mongrel techniques for working in the longer run. With a dynamic as-well-as cohesive workforce all around the world, businesses have numerous opportunities to encompass a technology-centric approach like Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Manufacturing.  Manufacturers can balance productivity with remote work. They can reinforce their organizations and frontline workers with robust and intuitive tools delivering a remote, integrated as-well-as in resilient business experience.   COVID 19 pandemic has raised a grave concern about employee safety and health. As soon as they enter the workplace, their safety and health will be the major priority. Having such technology can help with the health and safety compliance set by the government.   With the rise of connectivity and mobility, security compliance becomes a big issue. Since the data is more prone to various malware, viruses, etc., manufacturers have to find new ways to keep their data safe. Microsoft Azure ensures bank-level security and backup.   As words, manufacturers have to deploy remote and more agile business practices and optimally boost their productivity. Microsoft Dynamics 365 allows manufacturers to grow and attain excellent customer service while:   Transforming your workforce by integrating intelligent cloud services, productive apps, and security to reimagine the way you operate your business.    Engaging more customers with innovation by delivering exponent customer experience throughout marketing, sales, and service channels.   Creating more robust, secure, and safe factories with IoT (Internet of Things), IT, and industrial IoT.   Building more flexible supply chains with intelligent supply chain planning ensures more resilient services and profitability.   The world is transforming, and therefore mounting pressure on the manufacturers to address skill gaps in their factories and deliver impeccable services. Centering trust, security, innovation, and compliance, Microsoft, ERP for Manufacturing Industry, enables the digital transformation of your business. Trident Information Systems is a Gold Microsoft Partner. If you are looking for Microsoft implementation, you may contact us.  

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How Retailers Thrive Moving Their ERP to Cloud?

  Retailers these days are mounted with the pressure of providing excellent products / Services while satisfying customers at the same time. COVID 19 has contributed the most to this mindset. Where people were restricted to their homes, retailers had to upgrade their services in order to reach their customers and survive. Unfortunately, some of them could not take the load and shut down, however, those who innovated and implemented technologies like Microsoft ERP Implementation are immune to the crisis.   However, technology consequently advanced to deal with the same. With powerful tools and intelligent AI-based technology, this seems possible. As soon as a retailer starts using the cloud, his entire team can access the real-time data whenever they need it, enabling every employee to take steps right when they are needed. In addition, moving your ERP to the cloud can deliver the following benefits to a retail business:  Complete security  Reliable and unified real-time data    Cost and Time Efficiency  Helps keep up with trends  Adds intelligence to the business   Scalability     Provides Security   As soon as you move your ERP to the cloud, you no longer have to fuss about a security breach. The entire responsibility shifts from the in-house system to the cloud service provider.   Be it data legislation, security protocols, privacy requirements, or preventing the latest threats: each one of these is the provider’s responsibility. Therefore, even if there is a malware attack, you do not have to run and turn on the (figurative) fires in the middle of midnight. Microsoft experts will handle your problems anytime, anywhere.     Provides Real-Time and Unified Data  When you move your ERP to the cloud like Dynamics ERP Implementation, you and your team can easily access real-time data (in the shape of reports, dashboards, charts, etc.) and make more logical and quicker decisions. Having a unified AI-based platform like the one Microsoft offers, you can get intuitive reports extracted from big data. Various retailers struggle with inventory management and do not even realize how much it drains their money. Being backed up with live data, retailers can manage their assets more effectively.     Cuts Time and Costs Bot  As compared to on-premise IT infrastructure, Cloud infrastructure is much more reliable and cost-efficient. On-Premise IT needs assembly, testing, implementation followed by other costly development stages. Since every piece of data is stored in-house, ruptured hardware needs to be replaced as soon as possible. However, it is a lot simpler in the case of the cloud: there is no dedicated server at work which greatly reduces the implementation costs.     Keeps Up with the Current Trends  Traditional IT environments can take months to add new functionality. Meanwhile, businesses might lose some great opportunities due to this delay. Competitiveness depends a lot upon the effectiveness and efficiency of a business to grasp trends and make valuable decisions. Having the cloud at your service, you can enable yourself to use some power apps to keep you intact with the current trends. To stay at the top of the competition, you must understand customer behavior, spending pattern, and preferences.    Adds Intelligence to Business  One of the greatest benefits of using the cloud is that businesses can benefit themselves with advanced computational power. They can leverage the potency of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning-powered technology. This way, they get valuable insights into their business, make more logical decisions, improve productivity, and increase competitiveness. Applications like Power BI extract big data into insightful reports, these reports can essentially help understand every customer contacting your business, if combined with AI, it can even provide valuable market insights. These facilities are easily available with the cloud.    Scales with Your Business   Cloud-based ERP is the ideal choice for rapidly scaling businesses. It might take months to set your on-premise ERP for your growing business, also, it is a pretty costly affair. Many retailers will not prefer to shift from their on-premise system as long as it “works.” Little do they realize how it slows down your growth. If you want to expand your boundaries outside of your country, think about how much investment will it demand? The best way out is to upgrade your ERP to the cloud.   Time grows, and so does your business. It is time to embrace cloud-based ERP like Microsoft D365. If you are looking for an implementation partner, you can contact Trident Information Systems. We are one of the best ERP software provider in India.     

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Trends That are Most Likely to Dominate Manufacturing in 2022

Technology has already been introduced to the manufacturing industry i.e., industry 4.0. It has already revolutionized how manufacturing processes operate, enabling opportunities to tap into more innovative and flexible technical platforms impacting the overall product lifecycle.   Having a bright future ahead, the manufacturing industry in India added the Gross Value of $350.27 billion during the first half of 2021, as per the statistics released by IBEF. India is rapidly emerging as the preferred country for foreign manufacturers, and several research conducted claim that India is most likely to cross $ 1 trillion by 2025.   However, 2021 brought various challenges to the industry like the following:  Inefficient Labor Productivity   Improving efficiency in manufacturing plants  Unanticipated Domestic and Foreign Market  Poor Collaboration among distinct departments  Complying with government regulations on COVID-19   Travel Restrictions causing delivery failures   Such challenges triggered trends that are most likely to follow 2022 prominently.     IoT will Continue to Be the Big Thing   Despite the Internet of Things (IoT) getting more common in the manufacturing industry due to its flexibility, reliability, and scalability, it remains on the top of the list after so many years of its adaptability and innovation. Hence, the following year is no exception either.   IoT connects unique devices within an internet infrastructure while enabling manufacturers to be more strategic while making decisions, use real-time data and track the organizational situations, cut costs with its various innovative features. It also drives product innovation, improved safety, and enhanced efficiency. According to MPI Group, about one-third of production processes now incorporate embedded intelligence and intelligent devices.     A New Approach to ERP   Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) has become essential for manufacturers due to its reliability, Scalability, real-time information availability, and cost-efficiency. However, COVID-19 has changed how fundamentally manufacturers would implement their ERP: they would rather mount additional applications on their existing ERP than let it handle everything on its own.   A manufacturer-centered ERP like Microsoft Dynamics 365 scales with your business.  Depending upon the requirements, it can add more power apps to the ERP for everything, from employee’s safety apps to back-to-work systems. Such solutions help cope with the temporary issues without having to go through a multi-layer development project.  Manufacturers these days are even inclining towards data-driven approaches to ERP upgrades. It allows them to move data forward, consolidate around modern data platforms and construct tangent data around their existing data model. This trend is most likely to continue in 2022.    Production Balancing with Predictive analysis  Properly functioning equipment is one of the primary requirements while manufacturing. Shortage or disruption of such assets can be a costly affair in terms of repairs, productivity, and downtime. According to a report, 98$ organizations have reported that one hour of downtime costs them more than $100,000.   Therefore, it is necessary for manufacturers to ensure the good conditioning of all their equipment. Predictive maintenance can reduce downtime, sudden outage and even extend the machinery life cycle by years. The predictive analysis enables manufacturers to watch-over equipment performance and to automate the data accumulation with IoT. Such insights allow a better understanding of equipment functioning and where they are most likely to face damages. These insights are essential for better and more logical asset management.   Big Data Becomes More Eminent   Having IoT and predictive maintenance trends on the rise, big data becomes even a bigger deal for manufacturers than ever before. You can expect every surface to become a data extracting sensor to generate real-time insights. The art of pulling data from multiple sources, amalgamating with robust cloud computing capacities, and making it possible for manufacturers to dice and slice in a way to deliver a more extensive understanding of their business.    Platform-as-a-Service Trend Will Rise  Companies usually focus on the key areas driving revenue while outsourcing everything else. There is a fairly good reason companies avoid handling payrolls exclusively in-house. There are a lot of factors contributing to it such as constantly changing law requirements and the business owner might have to pay a heavy price in case, he fails to comply with it. There could be legal actions taken against the owner, financial penalties charged, or some other reputational punishments. To avoid such consequences, businesses are implementing platform-as-a-service. Companies can tap into a comprehensive development environment via the cloud and pay only for the services they consume. Their payment increases only if your business requirements increase, and your growing business requires more resources     It is time for manufacturing businesses to level up their technology and tap into some amazing trends making their place in the market. Microsoft Dynamics 365 provides a unified software service every business needs to thrive in 2022. Trident Information Systems has been a Gold Microsoft Partner since 2004 and provides the latest adaptable and scalable technology services complementing the business environment. Contact us for further information.  

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How does an Intelligent Machine Vision System Help Combat Quality Loss While Manufacturing?

Every aspect of manufacturing centers producing the best quality products. The production process comprises multiple steps and each step needs to be monitored carefully. Traditionally, manufacturers needed to assign quality inspections to multiple people hence, making it a labor-intensive task. However, manufacturers are now switching to technology for quality inspection. There are certain machine vision systems available like Trident’s Vision Intelligence System that offer automatic quality inspection during production while enabling manufacturers to discard defective pieces right away.  Switching to automation is the first step towards revolution; traditional quality inspection would come up with various drawbacks such as:   Some defects might slip from the human eye if production is massive.   Sometimes it gets tough to differentiate between slightly assorted color spectrums.   Separate locations need different employees to inspect quality, hence making it a labor-intensive task.   Traditional labor is prone to errors, subjectivity, and burnouts.   It is a bit harder to scale up manual quality inspections than automatic ones.   Conventional machines might not detect unanticipated errors.   In contrast to the traditional quality inspection, where the machine works according to the programming embedded within, an AI-based inspection is different. It follows a self-learning algorithm that can distinguish anomalies from defects. They can easily modify themselves to inspect productions with added complexities or changed floor plans. AI is basically a technology that can be as flexible as a human inspection followed by extra speed and reliability.   Analysis Data from Distinct Sources  Artificial Intelligence-based technology can be trained with multiple touchpoints so it could acknowledge deviations between defects and accepted variations. It can also capture new data points in order to gain high identification rates. You can eat in defect detection as-well-as parts positioning. It is capable of self-learning and classification of data for providing more accurate inspection results.  Automates Data Capturing and Reporting   AI-based machine vision systems can extract relevant information from massive datasets and minimal initial parameters for data processing. It can modify data to improve maintenance and inspection algorithmic rules. They can accumulate massive structure and unstructured data, then classify and tag it then. The metadata received provides essential insights into the manufacturing equipment enabling companies to for repair, maintenance, and replacement decisions. They can generate comprehensive defect reports and graphs on pixel-level nuances.  Why does Your Manufacturing Business Need This Technology?  Where human inspection is best for qualitative interpretation of complicated and distorted scenes, machine vision systems are best for quantitative measures of structured scenes. Credited to its speed, accuracy, and reliability, it can inspect thousands of parts in a minute. This system comes with various other benefits to your business such as:   Combats Labor Shortage   During the current times: where labor shortage is among the topmost crises, a machine vision system can help combat this issue. The machine is more reliable, accurate, quick, needs no human labor, and can deal perfectly with a labor shortage. The manufacturer can optimally utilize its workforce into different sections where human efforts can do a better job.   Cuts Cost  Assigning one vision system is more cost-effective than multiple people to the same work. Machines alone can detect defects in minutes more effectively. As soon as a defect is caught, an alert flash on the system screen monitored by the inspector. If human inspection is in place, the time consumed to report the relevant person can cost the manufacturer production quality.   Higher Accuracy  This AI-based system promises greater accuracy and reliability as it can detect defects more accurately. Having high-quality cameras in place can easily capture minute scratches on the automobile parts that human eyes might pass. It can even defect small insects or even dust particles while FMCG products are produced.   Boosted Quality   Having a system that can accurately detect even the minute defects, guarantees a lesser scope of defective pieces to pass through the conveyor belt. Programmed to follow a specific quality standard and variation acceptability, the system can even identify the variation in the spectrum of the product. If the cement color is much darker than grey, it can recognize the issue right away and notify the concerned person.   Flexibility and Scalability  AI-based systems are designed to be flexible enough to identify the variation even on different floor spaces. It can accumulate data from distinct datasets while turning it into a comprehensive report. These reports are necessary to make small and huge decisions on manufacturing. Businesses can scale with the right judgments.   Reduced Floor Space   One machine vision system against multiple labors reduces floor space and complies with social distancing. Having floor space freed causes less or no fuss around. Employees can be assigned different tasks while optimizing their potential. Employees can roam in the area more freely without bumping into one another.   Trident offers an AI-based Vision Intelligence System, that has a record of accomplishment of benefitting various manufacturing businesses. The manufacturer can implement this innovation for FMCG, automotive, glass, laminates, pharmaceuticals, and PPE detection. Being handled by a team of experts, the inspection process is continuous and can be modified as per the client’s requirements. Contact us for further information.  

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Your Retail System Might Ruin Your Holiday Season

Festive season all over the world brings excitement as it marks family gatherings, vacations, home-cooked food, and lots of shopping! Despite distinct geographies, customer preferences, and socioeconomic factors, India stands united in its cohesive obsession with binge shopping. First is Diwali sales, and then comes the Christmas offers. Customers shop like crazy during this time. Credits to Amazon Great Indian Festival sales, Myntra’s end of the reason sales, and Flipkart’s festive dhamaka days sales that give enough and even more reasons for shoppers to splurge.   For retailers, this period brings both excitement and anxiety together. On one side, this is a golden time to fetch the biggest catch, and on the other side, it puts their retail system, strategies, customer services, supply chain, technology platforms to a test. They must use a ERP Software for Retail to ease the situation.  This time becomes the most difficult for the retailers still working in silos. Since several retailers in India are not used to a mindset of investing in a unified platform to ease their burden but spend more on the on-premise infrastructure till it wears out, retailers have to go through tremendous pain during this time. Often it has been observed in shops without an integrated platform that fails to accurately forecast demands, they end up suffering losses they could have prevented.  Given below are some of the most common issues with soloed systems followed by their way-outs.   #1 Inability of Your Current Technology to Handle High Transactional Values  This is a nightmare-ish issue a company could face. However, retailers are not unfamiliar with it. Some research has shown that 96% of retailers have faced this disruption over ten times across the previous three years. Reasons may include network disruptions, third-party outrages, human errors, etc. However, the most common reason is disconnected legacy software systems. The patchwork of different technologies and functions added over time causes downtime of the system.   The Solution: As a solution, retailers should look forward to replacing their complex and hard-to-maintain siloed system with a unified software solution such as LS Retail. A unified system covers the entire business under a single platform leaving no space for communication-based disruptions caused by a lack of communication among different systems. To add up, a single provider is delivering this technology while ensuring complete support, quicker and simpler management.   #2 Inability to Figure Out the Exact Part of Your System that Goes Down  This issue can again arise due to aging and disconnected systems failing to communicate with one another. These systems are often so old they refuse to coordinate with any new system but with the now broken / unsupported hardware, such technologies are most likely to put a strain on your current system while hampering your day-to-day operations. On top of that, a system fails, it becomes extremely hard to identify which IT stack it was. How are you supposed to identify which part needs repairing?   Solution: Retailers do not have to invest in unreliable distinct system integration that hampers their smooth business functioning. Instead, it is time to spend on future technology that will not fail them. Sticking and repairing their old system and hoping for it to not fail them when they need it the most is irrelevant.   Retailers have spent years not investing in the modern technology but fixing the old one until it “works.” However, the good news for retailers is that the modern, unified commerce technology platforms are not as costly as they might guess, and they deliver a faster ROI. There are businesses like Gallo Clothing that use LS Retail and have not faced issues since.  #3 Inability to React Quickly to Customer Demands  One of the major causes of this issue might include the unavailability of stock. They are hugely damaging their bottom line. A study by IHL Group – global research and the advisory firm found that retailers miss out on about USD 1 trillion in sales only because of unavailable items. While almost one-third of shoppers turn to Amazon and other eCommerce platforms. Many retailers admitted that the reason behind these out-of-stock scenarios is their outdated technology and the reasons majorly contributing are:   Limited view on their inventory  Unreliable data  Shortage of data analysis tools and accurate forecasts.   Solution: Weekly or daily reports are not relevant in today’s scenario, especially during the festive season. You need a real-time view of your data so you can track your stock, sales, and customers throughout your retail chain.   You can get real-time data availability with a single software environment consisting of your financials, warehouse, admin, inventory, CRM (Customer Relationship Manager), POS (point of sale) system, and so on. You can track sales, productivity, and stock in real-time and bring those hour-consuming replenishments to a few minutes.   Keeping the above-mentioned points in mind we can conclude that working in silos is not the best idea. It might not handle the festive pressure well. System disruptions hamper business operations and might even cause losses. The situation gets even trickier when you cannot even figure out where the issue lies. Additionally, the system is most likely to bun inefficient for handling rapid customer transactions. The best possible way out is to get a unified software solution like LS Retail a Retail management software India. It offers a set of tools required to manage a retail business. Trident Information Systems is a Gold LS Retail Implementation Partner. Contact us for a demo. 

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5 Retail Strategies to Gratify Customers in 2022

After such a crazy year where new challenges sprung and never spared a single industry, we are finally on the verge of 2021. With a new year comes new challenges, and businesses need to adapt to stay prepared already. With a unified technology like LS Central Software Solution, retailers can get a smooth pass-through challenging time.   In today’s scenarios where you can expect anything uncertain happening suddenly, retailers may bump into various Obstacles in 2022, such as:   Keeping up with rising customers, where customers expect smoother and customized services.   Difficulty in finding the right technology for your business.   Losing loyal customers to the competition.   Keeping up with labor shortage and optimizing existing staff’s efficiency.   Difficult internal communication among different departments for e.g., difficulty in communicating the inventory requirement to the warehouse management.   Poor decision-making due to lack of demand forecasting which later leads to overstocking and understocking.   There is a motto in any business “Customer is the king” while keeping them on a pedestal. The customer must be satisfied with a service, or else they may jump to the other brand in a heartbeat. With customers being so moody and becoming high maintenance, retailers need similar technology to keep up with the same.   Keep Customers Satisfied in 2022   The year 2022 brings new challenges as well as new opportunities: a fresh chance to satisfy customers. We have compiled five strategies to keep your customers intact with contentment.   Contactless Payment   Omnichannel experience  Personalized promotions, deals, and offers.   Self-Checkouts  Staff Efficiency Optimization   Allow Contactless Payments  These days, hygiene has become an even bigger requirement. Contactless payment options not only deliver more convenience but also help comply with the social distancing norms. Contactless payment includes anything other than cash, be it debit, credit, UPI, etc. Allowing mobile payments and Wireless payment options adds to customer ease.   Deliver an Omnichannel Experience   Customers these days have become highly unpredictable and moody, demanding smoother ordering and payment options. They incline more towards the brands that can offer enough flexibility to place orders and make payments anytime, anywhere. Let the customer connect your business through various touchpoints like apps, websites, third-party applications, and so on. This way, you can reach more customers who have limited access to either of those platforms. Additionally, unifying all channels also cuts complexities and streamlines the entire journey for the retailer as well.   Offer Personalized Promotions, Deals, and Offers   Different customers feel differently about a product. You have to understand this algorithm and offer personalized promotions, deals, and offers. Seek a powerful AI-based technology for this i.e., a technology that keeps tabs on every customer transaction and understands their habits, spending patterns, likes, dislikes, and other relevant data to make customized deals and offers.   Everyone loves surprises: you can also offer a surprise basket consisting of your new launches or a basket full of a combination of products at an attractive price. This strategy is helpful in reaching your customer’s heart since you make them feel special and belonged, they connect emotionally to your brand, and may even refer your store to others.   Bust Long Queues and Allow Self-Checkouts   With technology advancing rapidly, customers’ patience is dropping at a significant rate. Making them stand in long queues can be a risky affair. Thus, retailers have no choice but to deal with it smartly. Allowing self-check-out options ensures speedy transactions and free floor space. This feature is especially important during the festive season, where retailers are packed with a massive crowd. Some customers would rather drop everything as it is at the store, and leave as soon as their patience runs out. It is a risky situation where the only person benefiting is your competitor.   Optimize your Staff Efficiency  Reinforcing your staff with the efficiency of optimizing equipment like a Cloud POS solution can help provide greater customer satisfaction. If a customer has a tough time finding a product, one of your staff members can quickly locate it via his mobile device. With a POS, your staff can communicate with different departments more efficiently while cutting the computing time. Inventory can be stocked at the store already before running out. Moreover, maximizing your staff efficiency can bridge the gap between labor shortage and your business.   A unified software solution like LS Retail Software Solutions can work like magic. Being backed with an AI-Based technology, you can track customer behavior, create personalized deals, and offers, forecast demand, and manage inventory better. A cloud-based POS enables a 360-degree inventory view. If you are looking for LS Retail implementation, contact Trident Information Systems, we are a LS Retail Gold Partner, backed up with more than 150 technical resources. 

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How to Cut Costs Using Unified Restaurant Management Software?

In an industry that is dynamic as well as low margin, it is important to track your food costs. Various restaurants suffer food wastage because of a lack of proper technology and proper cost-cutting techniques.   As the restaurants get struck by the massive competition, limited seating, and rising price of the ingredients, they need to optimize ingredient usage, buying, and cutting wastage.   An ideal Restaurant Management Software helps manage raw ingredients, spillage, menu prices, and food wastage while assisting the ways to minimize wastage. LS Retail is one such software that delivers a comprehensive set of tools and functionalities to help entrepreneurs run their business optimally while minimizing waste.   In the food and beverages industry, food costs are a major expense. An excellent restaurant management software like LS Retail helps you connect sales, inventory, and kitchen within the same platform while delivering everything you need in a unified manner.   Such a platform delivers complete transparency over your inventory and synchronizes inventory to recipe management. You will automatically receive notifications when you need to add a new inventory while subtracting the items already exhausted. Some software offers enough flexibility to adjust inventory on phones to remove some items that fall from the jar, spoiled meat, rotten vegetables, and so on.   Manage warehouse inventory like a piece of cake with automatic inventory tracking. Track where your inventory is headed. Check if the space is properly optimized so you can adjust more of it in there. Keep the environment favorable to increase the durability of your items. Apart from this, other ways help you cut food costs.   Manage Your Yield   An ideal yield management software enables you to know the actual yield of an ingredient; how much of the total ingredient is being used. For Instance, if you need 5 kg of meat to cook a dish, not the whole 5 kg is going to be used, the bones might get discarded in the process. Yield management computes the exact quantity of the stock that will be used and based on the same, it updates the inventory. It further eliminates the risk of over-ordering or under-ordering while reducing restaurant costs.   Keep Tabs on the Variations  Variance is another essential aspect that plays a massive role in cost-cutting. An ideal restaurant management system can make it easier for you. The variance is the difference between the actual ingredients consumers versus the ideal food costs. A variation of 3-5% is acceptable. However, any variation above that is a matter of concern. To cut food costs, regular variance monitoring is necessary. You can identify the source of high food costs while bringing down the overall restaurant costs.   Standardize Recipe and Cut Waste    Having a restaurant management system that standardizes your recipes can help you manage costs. How? The recipe management system records every ingredient and the right amount to prepare a dish. While preparing a meal, the chef already has the recipe available with the right amount of each ingredient. Hence, it reduces the chances of errors.   It is one of the most key features because several times your chef might mix up a few wrong ingredients, now the dish cannot be served, resulting in discarding the whole dish and adding to the restaurant costs.   Reduce Pressure While Cutting Labor Cost  Labor costs are one of the major costs in a restaurant. Therefore, it is crucial to monitor them. Of Course, hiring them is a time-consuming process. However, retaining them is not something restaurants have mastered so far. Managing labor is a costly and time-consuming affair. The enormous industrial pressure drives them to switch jobs. One of the easiest methods to retain your staff is to adopt robust restaurant management software that automates manual tasks and reduces pressure while letting your staff work with greater efficiency.   Hand-over Monotonous to Automation  Billing has always been a labor-intensive and monotonous task. However, now the time has changed since a restaurant management system can automate the billing process. Not just this, it also integrates the back office to the front under the same platform while streamlining complex tasks. You no longer must look for someone who is trained to manage these tasks.   Apart from billing, a KDS reduces your dependency on manual labor. It ensures that when a server receives an order, it is displayed on the right kitchen screen. Apart from this, when there are changes in the order, it also flashes on the screen right away. Therefore, ensuring low dependency on manual labor.   LS Retail is a unified Restaurant Management Software that delivers a comprehensive set of restaurant management tools under one umbrella. Trident Information Systems is a Gold LS Retail and Microsoft Partner and has served various business ventures of distinct levels. For further information, contact us.  

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How Does the Right POS Design Boost Your Restaurant’s Productivity?

Did you know you can even engineer your POS so it replicates your menu? This is the commencement of your restaurant’s advancements. Numerous restaurants are deprived of this facility.   If your restaurant management system allows you to modify your POS, there are high chances that efficiency will increase by at least 20%. Having tasks automated that were done manually earlier, boosts your staff efficiency, allowing them to serve your guests better.   A traditional POS is nothing more than a billing software that can accept payments online and offline separately. However, an advanced and integrated POS is more than that; it can record customer transactions, streamline order taking, integrate back office to the front, and much more. A restaurant can reap tremendous benefits by optimizing this system alone.   Engineer Your POS to Imitate Your Menu   A POS should enable you to organize and display each food item from your inventory the way it is on your menu. It should be able to handle the conventional ordering. For instance, if a customer wants extra ketchup with fries and extra cheese on the burger, your employee can instantly record it and transfer the details to the accurate food counter. Order recording becomes a very convenient task for the employees without having to ask the customer twice.   You can also set different menus according to a specific shift. For example, in the morning you can display breakfast options so that the customers arriving at your restaurant at that time only get to see the breakfast items first. This way, you can easily increase upselling while increasing the efficiency of your staff. Thus, your staff can serve the guests with more enthusiasm since the POS is now handling extras on their behalf.   Break Down Menu Items  A typical breakfast menu can add up to dozens of dishes such as boiled eggs, omelet and toast, baked beans, and so on. If you list every menu item separately on the POS, it will end up building an extensive list while making everything a lot more complicated than it already is. For example, if a customer and his friend order the same dish but the friend orders extra cheese, there will be transactions twice. This makes the entire process a lot longer, and there are always chances of filling the order. This sort of POS has serious drawbacks:   Slower ordering: your front office staff has to go through a thorough list of items while ensuring they tap on the correct ones. It is a lot more time-consuming and fuels the risk of errors.   Difficult reconciliation: when you have to record multiple dishes separately, their reconciliation becomes tedious. It may even end up taking hours just to get this job done.   Complicated menu: you cannot optimize the menu if you do not know the best dish and the right mix-match distinct items to create an alluring menu.   With LS Retail, you can set a few dishes in your menu and optimize the modifiers to add or remove ingredients. In addition, you can catch more accurate food costs, streamline inventory management while aligning replenishment to the actual use.   Use Colors to Differentiate Different Items  As soon as you successfully set your POS replicating your menu, this is where the fun part begins. Play with assorted colors to differentiate dishes. For instance, you can set starters as blue, the main course as purple, and desserts as pink. Pick colors for different food sections like green for salad, yellow for chicken, white for fish, and so on. With this sort of color setting, your staff can easily differentiate between dishes and make the order-taking process quicker.   Allow Self Service and Contactless Ordering  You can increase both staff efficiency and customer satisfaction simultaneously, as self-service is becoming increasingly popular among guests especially in quick and fast restaurants. Customers love the convenience of the technology. Many restaurants have noticed a hike of 15%-20% of checkouts after allowing self-service and self-ordering facilities.   According to some research, customers order more add-ons and are willing to pay more when they have the facility to add whatever they want on their own, instead of asking someone to do it for them. Self-service devices also speed up the table and ordering turnover as the guests are free to order whenever they are ready.   LS Retail is one of the unified software service providers that delivers a set of tools and features required to run a restaurant business. Integrated POS is one of its services. Trident Information Systems is a Gold Microsoft Partner. Since 1999, they have served various business ventures and failed none. Contact us for further information.  

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Why Does Your Restaurant Business Need Intelligent Analytics?

Have you ever imagined the number of opportunities you are probably losing to your resistance to change? The past few months have proven that no business can stand longer in the competition while sticking to the old conventional ways. Especially during this time where changes, speed and agility became a survival need.   It did not take too long for restaurants to figure out the need to adopt new models of quick and efficient food delivery. The need for staffing changes, last-minute customizations, ingredient substitution, etc. needs quick processing. Traditional technology cannot support this agility. Therefore, restaurants need to start investing in the right technology that guarantees a greater level of agility.   According to the studies by IDC, companies who focus on building business intelligence improve their productivity, drive cost efficiency, and have 8 times the revenue and twice the profitability as non-digitally transformed enterprises.   How Analytics Benefits Your Restaurant Business   With the new Artificial Intelligence technology, businesses no longer rely on their data scientists to dig out insights and wade through data. There is cloud-based business-powered analytics available to most restaurants while providing tangible benefits.  Effective AI-powered analytics can provide tremendous benefits to a business such as:   Finds the meaningful patterns: Such analytics extracts even the trickiest data that a business person might not catch at first. For instance, you might note that your restaurant gets more customers as it rains. Or that your downtown location sells more wine glasses and fewer beers when you serve steak as the main.   Drives effective Ingredient Ordering: It tracks your historical consumption patterns and helps you forecast the probability of next week’s sales. The system also displays a report containing the necessary details you need to make in the next orders.   Minimizes waste: With the right information at hand, you can figure out why there is an extra can of sauce left, or how much content your freezer already has. Having accurate data on your current inventory helps you adjust just the right amount and while minimizing waste.   Optimize stock usage and distribution: You can also identify if the content in your freezer will be okay if shifted to a different location. You can relocate inventories accordingly and find the most appropriate alternatives that ensure maximum utilization of the spaces you have.   Creates a more logical menu: Intelligent Analytics can provide insights to design a perfect menu that compliments your guest’s taste while giving you more in return. Identify the dish that doesn’t return enough profit. Check if you can work with other dishes that can offer a better return. Check if your most popular dishes are even providing the revenue you expect.   Simplified Staffing: check if your restaurant is overstaffed or understaffed, how many workers are useful, and how many of them won’t make a difference if removed. Check if you have too many or too few staff working in a location at a specific time. Identify how you can make better use of their time and resources.   3 Tips for a Restaurant CIO  We have accumulated a few tips for CIOs to optimize intelligent business analytics for the maximum benefit of their restaurants.   Find the Subtle Drivers of Benefits  Optimize analytics to find the smaller driver of benefits. As it is important to concentrate on the KPIs like the number of laborers and the number of hours you are spending on your guests, you need to find the smaller sections that play a massive role in providing a good return. Figure out the factors that are driving your customers into your business. Identify why small changes are happening among your customers, the factors driving them, and how you can shift them.   Use Analytics to Predict   Many restaurants use historical analysis to understand what has happened. However, the real power of such analysis is to prepare you for the future, where the business is going, and how it can do better. It is essential to involve external data to determine external behavior. For instance, if you notice that the miles your customers travel have dropped, what could be the reasons behind it, and how you can mitigate against it.   Adjust Your Matrix   Take your previous table turns, for instance, how fast you can turn the tables only matters if you have enough guests to fill those tables. As the matrix changes, businesses must focus on serving more to the customers who already exist. Always pay attention to what is happening to your business before choosing the matrix you want to focus on.   To take full advantage of intelligent analytics, the first step is to discard the old disjointed applications and upgrade to a unified software solution like LS Retail. Trident Information Systems is one of the Gold Partners of LS Retail and Microsoft. Backed up with more than 150 technical resources, we have served several businesses. Contact us for further information. 

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