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Retail ERP Software

Tips For Rapidly Expanding Brick and Mortar Retail Businesses

According to Grant Thorton, e-commerce in India is expected to be worth US$ 188 billion by 2025. Despite having e-commerce contributing to a large part of our economy, there are still masses who prefer to purchase products offline in India. Many seek assistance of ERP Software for Retail from suitable Retail ERP Partner. According to the Economic Times, Nykaa has decided to triple store count in retail expansion. It operates as an e-commerce platform selling everything from global cosmetic brands to jewelry. However, Indian consumers still want to purchase products offline.  Certain issues come along with offline stores.   Customers might visit the shop and find the item they want missing.   Managing an offline establishment requires more labor.   Standing in long queues can infuriate customers.   Digital disruptions might hamper operations.   Inability to meet evolving customer expectations.   Poor internal communication.   Brick and Mortar stores need a lot more labor than e-commerce. Therefore, rapidly expanding businesses need to seek technological assistance. It is recommended to implement a ERP Software for Retail Like LS Retail. It offers a suite of all the tools required to run a retail business. Integrating everything under the same platform boosts synchronicities and a smoother business flow. For instance, integrating your website with CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) can help you understand trends better.   Allow Customers to Check Product Availability Online   Consumers are drawn where convenience is more prominent. Just imagine how frustrated a consumer can get if he drives all the way to a shop and finds the essentials he wants missing? It is important to enabling product information and availability online, so your customers save themselves time and labor. Additionally, retailers may integrate all touchpoints and allow customers to place orders online while collecting the item right on their way.   Enable Contactless Payments   Allow your consumers various payment options like debit, credit, mobile payments, and so on. Enable quicker and easy payment options to shorten queues while making cash handling the lead of their concern while checking out. And such transactions are even safer. Retailers may also enable self-check-out services at the counter and help themselves while freeing store staff. This way customers unburden the staff allowing them to focus on other activities like helping other consumers find a product or guiding them through product instructions or simply greeting them at the entrance.   Personalized Services for Customers   Track each transaction with customers, understand their spending pattern, and create customized services for them. You will need AI-based technology like the one LS Retail ERP Software for Retail offers to extract data from different touchpoints and generate comprehensive and actionable reports. This data is essential for creating personalized offers, deals, and promotions while making it one of the best ways to penetrate customers’ emotions. Delighted customers refer businesses or products to their friends, families, and acquaintances thus driving a robust referral promotion. Word of mouth is the most effective and cost-efficient promotion method; studies have shown that a person is most likely to purchase a product referred to by someone known rather than following an advertisement.   Enable product Information on handhelds  Enabling product information on handheld devices empowers store staff and extracts all their efficiency. They can locate each item anywhere in the store without having to hunt for it. They can organize item placements according to demand, size, and other features. Targeting and discarding expired products becomes a piece of cake. Since the staff is less burdened, they can shift their focus on other prominent tasks such as helping customers out, organizing inventory, and other manual tasks.    Avoid Overstocking / Understocking   Having an integrated system that offers a 360-degree view on inventory in the shape of insightful reports. With ERP Software for Retailers, you can track each item, its durability and easily discard the expired products. Additionally, they may also predict demands and make purchases accordingly. These insights can work wonders for inventory planning.   Adopt a Unified Communication Platform   One thing that bothers them most in multi-chain businesses is communication. LS Retail, ERP Software for Retailers ensures a unified platform that connects all the departments in an organization, such as sales, marketing, and IT, etc. Allowing your employees free flow of communication is not only time-consuming and labor efficient but also saves a lot of confusion in an organization.   Since the competition in the retail industry is cutthroat, retailers have to find a solution that covers all their business needs while optimizing their resources. LS Retail is one of the most prominent B2B ERP Software for Retail having eligible implementation partners such as Trident Information Systems, the Gold Retail ERP Partner of LS Retail. Contact us for further information.  

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Cope with Post-Festive Sales Decline Successfully

Festive seasons bring great sales opportunities: every industry is packed with customers. Nevertheless, one industry that collects the most candies from the basket is retail. With ERP Software for the Retail industry, businesses are thriving in the market, if they are supported by the right Retail ERP Partner. Consumers shop extra, get drawn towards exciting deals, offers and promos. Businesses feel abundant and exploit as much profit as possible.   However, the issue starts the post-festive season, when the surge in festive shopping ends, best-selling smartphone models go out of stock, and lower-than-expected wedding-related purchases off-take. According to Bizcom, a sales automation firm that transacts with 7.5 million retail stores, revealed that sales fell 14% in November 2021 for fast-moving consumer products. Industry executives quoted “sales of smartphones, television, refrigerators and washing machines fell 15-20% sequentially in November.”   This crisis comes up every year. However, pandemics, travel restrictions, and other prohibitions made it even harder. Even though everything seems to be coming on track, retailers have to exploit the latent opportunities to stay ahead in the competition. They may implement a ERP Software for the Retail industry specifically designed to handle retail businesses while making their operations even more seamless and staying ahead of competitors.   Forecast Demand and Stock-Up   The first step is to forecast demands and order inventory accordingly: carefully research different items in demand and purchase inventory accordingly. On the other way around, you can also get an AI-based system extracting inputs and generating insightful and actionable reports. Organize inventory in-store according to the demand. Place the most demanded items in the most visible and accessible area. Having demand forecasted you may ditch items unworthy of investment.   Figure Out the Right Offer for the Target Audience   One of the most efficient ways to boost demand is to offer the right offer to the right audience segment. But how would you section your customers? First, divide your frequent and infrequent customers, then deliver exclusive deals and attractive offers designed especially for your loyal customers. You may create deals according to their shopping frequency and preferences. Integrate all the channels and extract customer data to get insights. A Unified AI-based technology can do this job perfectly. It attracts customer-related transactions and turns them into insightful reports.   Make No Space for Long Queues  Make sure you do not let your customers stand in long queues at the check-out counter. Enable more secure cashless payments to make the transactions quicker and keep the traffic smooth. Additionally, you may as well allow self-check-out ports and empower customers to make quick checkouts and leave the store soon. This way you can also free up the floor space and save other customers from feeling all congested. Adopt Retail POS Software like the one LS Retail offers to bust long queues.   Quickly Give your Customers What they Want  Customers are impatient and making them wait for their desired product/ service is a risky affair. Make sure they get what they want right away, connect all the touchpoints, and let them place orders from whatever platform they want. If they want to place an order while sitting in a metro while listening to the latest songs, so be it. Deliver their orders quickly or let them collect them from the store, the choice is theirs. As soon as they enter the store, make sure they do not struggle to find their item. Reinforce your staff with handheld devices containing product information, so they can quickly find the item and guide customers to the same.    Encourage Referral Promotion    Delighted customers might refer your business to others. A WOM (word of mouth) promotion is the most effective promotion. Encourage customers to share referrals with their friends. Enable social share buttons on your website, promote post-purchase messaging, feature referral programs on your home page, promote referrals on high traffic pages, and so on. Additionally, customers might even post your brand’s products on their social media and allow free promotion. Otherwise, you may also contact different influencers and pay them to sponsor your product to their audience.   Businesses must combine innovation with technology and work with “Technovation” to thrive in this sales shortage. We recommend implementing ERP Software for the Retail industry. LS Retail is an ideal solution in this situation. If you are looking for an implementation partner, contact Trident, the Gold Partner of LS Retail. 

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Blend Digital with Physical and “Phygitalize” Business Operations

In the era of technology that amalgamates with the cut-throat competition among retailers, shoppers these days expect a blend of digital evolution with physical shops. This has impacted their mindsets as well. They have become even more impatient and expect stores to complement the same. ERP Software for Retailers like LS Retail can help shop owners comply with the dynamics. It is one of the best ERP Software for Retail.   Retailers these days are also burning their candles at both ends to not only meet their customers’ current expectations but to provide even better services and beat their competitors. Proving contactless payment options, self-check-out, and much more are some of the initiatives retail businesses take to boost the customer satisfaction level.  Retail Businesses prefer to integrate their front-office to the back while integrating every operation on a single platform. This helps them avoid multiple integration complexities as well as issues such as:   Information duplicity   Lack of coordination  Managers are unaware of immediate initiatives to be taken  Risk of losing important data  Wastage of resources  Over-stocking/ under-stocking   Blend Physical with Digital  This blend transforms how you see your business. You can explore aspects you never knew, ever existed. Operations become more streamlined and ensure maximum employee optimization. An ERP Software for Retailers like LS Retail can help you blend digital innovations into the physical store.   Integrate Back-Office and The Front Office   Even if your front-end and the back end in silos are the strongest, still finding ways to streamline these two cohesive units into the one is a whole new ball game. The data held by each section can be critical for the other. Just imagine how easy operations would become if you integrated your website data to your CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) and then to your billing or invoicing system. It will put an end to complications caused by data duplication. If integrated properly, it can create a bi-directional interface that supports your current customers as-well-as your future customers as well.   Avoid Overstocking / Understocking with a 360 Degree View on Inventory   With the right technology at service that can deliver a 360-degree view on inventory activities and forecast demands, the retailers are most likely to make smart inventory purchases. Insights on current trends and consumer buying patterns help businesses to stock up accordingly. For instance, during Durga Puja, some businesses in Kolkata could make a profit of 20-30% as they forecasted demands already, while other businesses that failed to forecast demands ran out of stock. Additionally, they can manage warehouses better with the data on most selling and underselling products. With these insights, retailers can negotiate with the vendors better.   Track Each Customer and Offer Unique Deals  Using AI-based technology can help you track every customer transaction and provide you with better insights into what customers are demanding individually or collectively. Retailers can create deals and offers accordingly. They can decide the best time to launch 50% off sales or customized coupons for individual customers. According to their habits and spending patterns, shoppers can be classified accordingly and offered exclusive deals on specific products they would prefer to buy the most.   Make Your Staff Quicker, More Enthusiastic, and Efficient    Having a staff that could work to their full efficiency without having to burden them is something several retail businesses are gradually adopting. Imagine how easy it would become for them if they could locate any product at the store in just one click, how much time they save while greeting customers with more enthusiasm. Apart from this, allowing the customers with self-checkout services again frees your staff from billing overloads. Having these technologies fills the efficiency gaps and boosts output.   Streamline Communication Among Different Departments   Since the time spent communicating through a chain of departments cuts down, businesses can save themselves plenty of time. With ERP Software for Retailers like the one LS Retail provides, retailers can get a single platform connecting different departments. A person for the sales department can contact the inventory manager to inform them about the current inventory requirements. It becomes easier to share ppts and feedback at the same time.   Integrate All the Channels Under the Same Platform  Shoppers demand more convenience in their shopping experience. In such a busy world, many customers are unable to make time to get into a store. Instead, they look for online alternatives for order placements, such as their website, applications, and third-party applications. They require the convenience of ordering their favorite shoes online while computing to their office or asking Alexa to order groceries while cleaning the living room. Integrating all the channels under the same platform allows enough space for sales to grow.   Data Security and Business Continuity   In any business, data plays a huge role in making critical decisions, let alone retail. Hence, data security is one of the major concerns for any organization, especially those working in silos, or on-premises. Losing and then the inability to lose financial or important customer data can ruin a business. Cloud-like Azure ensures data security, anti-theft features, and automatic and expandable backups. Azure backup services provide simple, cost-efficient, and security services to back up and recover data from the cloud.   It has become a necessity to combine physical stores to offer better customer services while streamlining business operations. LS Retail is an ERP Software for Retail offering a suite of tools and functionalities covering every business aspect. If you are looking for an implementation partner, contact Trident. We are a Microsoft D365 and LS Retail Gold Implementation Partner with a capacity of 150+ technical resources. Contact us for further information.  

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Give Holiday Shopper the Best eCommerce Experience Ever

As the festive season arrives, it brings boundless joy, parties, and massive opportunities for retailers to strengthen their bond with the existing and new customers. This is the time when retailers can reinforce their eCommerce availability most probably with an ERP software for Ecommerce, since shoppers are predicted to make 65% for their purchases from eCommerce platforms.   Indeed, they are going to purchase from the tangent store as well, as eCommerce cannot provide the striking display, employee suggestions, live inspection, etc. that physical stores have, still shoppers are most likely to purchase items online. Therefore, retailers need to use every facility at their disposal to ensure an excellent eCommerce shopping experience.   Retailers must use an AI-based Platform to optimize their resources. One of the most common questions during the festive season is going to be “where is my order” and agents need to be as quick as possible during the heavy customer traffic. 19% of their time is dedicated to looking across an enterprise’s content sprawl or asking other officials to help them with the data.   This situation must be avoided, or else the customer might cancel his order and look for the services elsewhere. We have accumulated a few tips to enhance the eCommerce shopping experience.    Reinforce Your Workforce with the Right Tools and Support   As more customer service agents are working from home, they need the right tools and support in order to maximize their efficiency. In fact, 42% of remote workers claim that their efficiency is directly proportional to the system they have been provided. As holiday shopping ramps up, they need to be quicker and more efficient with the growing customer traffic. Easy access to the relevant data will do the job.   Customize Data-Based Recommendation   Your eCommerce storefront might be more convenient than shopping in a tangent store, yet it cannot offer the aesthetics of a brick-and-mortar store such as employee assistance, real touch inspection, and signage. Therefore, you have to make sure they come across the products that are right for them. Use all the features at your disposal to provide a 360-degree view of your customer using a unified database. You can then use AI (Artificial Intelligence) platform like the one LS Central offers to create exceptional shopping experience, real-time inventory tracking, order tracking, deals and offers, etc.   With cloud-based technology, you can suggest relevant products not only based on the shopper’s history but also current trends among other shoppers. With the help of data mapping, the system algorithms “learn” and modify according to this data while ensuring more precise decisions.   Offer Multiple Platforms for Shopping  Customers these days are busier than ever, which drives the need for e-commerce convenience. Most of them do not have enough time to go to the store and purchase items every now and then. Hence, they look up to eCommerce platforms as an alternative: social media, websites, and third-party apps. Allow different shopping platforms, and do not forget to integrate them for smoother operations. Allowing multi-channel integration using cloud technology can access and read customer data more swiftly while generating insightful reports.   Leverage employees on placing orders wherever and whenever they want: be it while computing to the office, chilling out with friends, or even in the middle of a party. The options should be available.   Keep Mobile Shopping Experience a Priority  Having an eCommerce site is not enough to attract sales. Retailers must focus on the convenience of mobile phones. Mobile sure draws sales, but that does not mean people will stop coming to the physical store: they were shopping offline, and they still will. Many consumers choose e-commerce due to the risk of product unavailability at your store. You have to make sure your site can handle the waves of customers marching its way, especially during the festive period. It must work well on mobile, as well as let you track inventory and sales across all the channels. A unified system like LS Central optimizes the same database for all locations while ensuring transparent and real-time data of all the products you have.   Deliver Flexible Options   Last but not least, allowing shoppers delivery options play a huge role. In the case of online shopping, shoppers want their deliveries handled either quickly or cheaply, but most preferably both. However, according to some research, customers would rather prefer free over quick delivery. Most of them would even wait for 3-4 days in case the delivery is free. A unified ERP software for Ecommerce can take care of that.   During the festive season, home delivery is not the only thing that customers want. Ensuring flexible options on purchase and return of a product could make a massive difference.  To get an end-to-end vision of all sales, inventory, and business overall, businesses need a Unified Commerce System like LS Central that uses the same database for all the channels. If you are looking for an LS Retail Implementation Partner, contact Trident.  

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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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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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Drive Customers Back to Your Business in a Post-COVID Era

There has been a massive shift in the way customers approach brands. They have now become even more quality and cost-conscious. Businesses have also modified the way they operate; they have now understood their customer’s sentiments better while the world is fighting a battle against this never-ending virus.   In order to gain your customer’s trust, you have to be true to your brand and serve its purpose. Now how can you do it better? By understanding your customers, their needs, and sentiments. Keep your customers first. Ask for feedback, use appropriate technology to track their spending patterns and habits. What changed, and how can you keep up with it? It is all you need to understand. Given below are a few things that COVID-19 changed;   Brand Switching: As several brands dwindled and shuttered, consumers were forced to try new brands. With the limited opportunity to purchase products in person, they had to rely more on online mediums. As the pandemic started fading, more people began to realize that it was not a bad idea to give other brands a chance.   Expecting channels: As customers explored online shopping increasingly, they became further accustomed to Omnichannel research and transactions. Customers are now expecting physical stores to offer online transactions that complement their overall shopping experience even before entering the store.   Price and Value Consciousness: After job declines and shortage of income, people started becoming even more quality conscious and began to question further if their brand is equating the value or not. Also, they are concerned about environmental sustainability and what these brands are doing in the favor of the planet.   Loyalty V/s Retention: Many people confuse loyalty with retention. However, little do they acknowledge their difference. Customer loyalty is what fuels customer retention. Loyalty is a keen sense of support and obligation to choose a brand which later fuels retention.    Tips to Keep Customers Loyal to Your Band Post-COVID  There are a number of ways through which you can retain customers. If accompanied by suitable technology like LS Retail, even better. You have to make sure the quality of your product is up to the mark while keeping customers first at all times.   Keep Online Communication Consistent  Online communications involve updated social media posts and emails. However, at the onset of COVID, various small businesses paused their online communication. If you are one of them as well, this is the best time to begin again.   You do not have to aggressively promote your brand (which can later become annoying for the customer) and understand that the situation is now different from pre-COVID times. All you have to do is inform your customers about product availability. Since this is a tough time for everyone, sympathize with them, tell your stories, and let them know how much you care for them. This is the best time to connect emotionally with the consumer.   Omnichannel Customer Service  Imagine how frustrating it would be for a customer to fill in their name, contact, and other details again and again at every step, especially when his requirement is urgent.  For instance, a customer purchased a product last weekend from your store, who raised a fund request explaining his issues. After a while, a customer executive calls him asking for issues further, and other details again. After a few days, now the marketing manager wants to have a word with the buyer and asks for the same details again.   Businesses need to introduce a robust omnichannel mechanism that allows every member to stay on the same page while taking care of the customer’s concerns. It not only saves time but also lets the customer feel important.   To set up an effective omnichannel, you need to bring sales, marketing, and customer services together and connect them with all touchpoints via a common dashboard.   Offer Gift cards to Customers  Pandemic or not- everyone loves gifts. To increase customer engagement, offer them e-gift cards. This way, you are maintaining communication while avoiding human contact. Offer them interesting offers while keeping your business in mind and how it runs. For example, if you have a store at Amazon, you can offer X% cashback on your next purchase. Such offers thrill customers and boost sales while maintaining safety.   Resolve Queries of Unsatisfied Customers first  It is more important to train your customer service team to treat unsatisfied customers first than you think. It is a massive risk to let them remain dissatisfied. Everyone has access to social media platforms where they can freely share their opinions. There is always a risk of negative promotion if they are discontented. The best practice is to resolve their queries as soon as possible. Another factor that may come into influence is their negative remarks on social media impacting your website search engine.   Reward Loyal Customers   Using a unified software solution like LS Retail can help you identify your loyal customers. With a robust visionary dashboard, you can calculate each customer’s behavior and pick the loyal ones. Offer attractive deals and offers exclusively tailored for them. It makes the consumer feel important and belonged. You can classify different customers and segment them into diverse groups and prepare exclusive deals for each. Offer gifts that none of your competitors offer. There is no better time than their birthdays, anniversaries, festivals, and other notable events to offer your personalized gifts.   It is essential to think out-of-the-box to keep ahead of your competition in the post-COVID era. Letting the right technology assist you is a clever idea. LS Retail is a unified software solution specifically designed to take care of your every business need. Trident Information Systems is a Gold Partner of LS Retail. Armed with 150+ technical resources, we have served various business ventures. Contact us for further information.  

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How Can Unified Commerce Be a Game-Changer for Your Business?

We have witnessed a massive shift in the retail industry in the past few decades. We have seen retail stores evolving and expanding their reach via multiple channels. The only way to survive in this industry is to keep customers happy at all costs.   Retailers must provide an omnichannel service to the customers and deliver personalized services across all channels. A unified commerce solution implements advanced technologies like IoT or ML and software solutions such as CRM and POS. However, it is still difficult to make them collaborate.   Now, with changing times, businesses are making amends with their business processing. They are now inclining more towards using one platform for sales, systems, and applications while collecting data and extracting essential insights. This process is also known as unified commerce, and it is most likely to become the base for all businesses in the future.   What is Unified Commerce?  Earlier the commerce industry relied on the individual channels of sales. However, now most of them optimize an omnichannel commerce model. Despite having multiple benefits, this model is insufficient to cover every issue that retailers might encounter. Therefore, there is an emerging demand for unified commerce.   Unified commerce is a full-fledged software system that enables retailers to:   Monitor each function of their business.   View product and customer data via all touchpoints in real-time.   Analyze data and turn them into actionable insights.   Make data-driven and logical decisions.   Proffer a personalized customer experience.   In simple words, you can get product data, customer insights, back-office management within the same platform.   The Major Aspects of a Unified Commerce  Given below are the main pillars of unified commerce: Sales, customer, software, and product.   Sales Channel  Different customers might prefer different channels to reach out to your product. Some might pick your website, third-party applications, or any other medium depending upon their choice. It makes the retailer even more accountable for providing an equally seamless experience across all the touchpoints. Whether browsing or purchasing products online or in-store, buyers must access the same chances: the view, the feel, promotions, and exceptional deals, and everything else must be the same. This is what we call consistency across all the channels.   Customer Interactions   The users who interact with your business using different channels via different devices must get a seamless shopping experience even from a different channel from the point they paused. For instance, if a buyer puts a product in the cart on your website, the next time they open the app, the cart items must be visible to them. This way they can continue shopping even after shifting to another channel.   When you keep tabs on your customer moves via all the channels, you can create personalized recommendations and make customers happy. As a result, your sales go up.   Software Systems   This concept even implies the integration of different systems on the same platform, such as ERP, CRM, SCM, CSM, POS, mobile apps, and other systems. Unified commerce ensures these systems are fully integrated and deliver impeccable services.   Product Information  The data addressing your services or products must be accurate and relevant across all the sales channels. Your customers and employees need to access the identical data of your services and products to avoid misunderstanding. Make sure the data is identical at all levels.   How Does It Provide a Seamless Shopping Experience?   Unified commerce opens doors to several benefits, and seamless customer interactions are one of them. But how does it do it? Given below are the factors that are responsible for providing seamless customer services:   Flexibility: It enables more flexibility for the customer. They can start, continue, finish, and cancel a product using their mobile phones or any other device they prefer. The buying journey has never been more flexible.   Interaction Recording: The system tracks every customer’s action; what they purchased, what they canceled, and what product they returned. The system tracks every interaction they have with your brand while allowing you to predict their next decisions.    Real-time Updates: Completely integrated channels make it possible for a real-time product or service updates while keeping your staff and customers aware of the availability.   Personalized Recommendations: Customer monitoring allows you to tailor recommendations for the customer.   How does Unified Commerce Benefit Your Business?   Apart from providing a seamless experience to the shoppers, this concept benefits your overall business with:   Automation: A centralized platform allows automation of most of the time-consuming manual tasks, which results in increased productivity of employees.   Effective Management: Unified commerce prevents almost all business barriers while ensuring 100% transparency of processes at all levels. Your staff is aware of all the updates in real-time hence allowing them to make the right decisions centering on delivery, marketing, inventory, and other business processes. You can also get rid of some general retail issues such as overstocking and understocking.   Lower Scope of Errors: Automation ensures accuracy of data drives the lower scope of errors as compared to those of manual management of different solutions. In addition, AI and ML-based predictive analysis help you predict and prevent issues.   Boost of Sales: All the above benefits mentioned above sum up to the boost of sales. With delighted customers, efficient management, accurate data, logical decisions, and fewer errors you can boost sales.    LS Retail is a unified commerce service provider. It delivers a set of tools ensuring impeccable business operations and incredible customer services. Trident Information Systems is a Gold Partner of LS Retail and Microsoft who has served numerous business ventures so far. For further information contact us.  

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