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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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Understand Your Customers’ Purchasing Behavior

As soon as a business cracks a customer’s buying algorithm, it secures more profit. The online and offline actions that a customer takes before buying a product are referred to as customer buying behavior. It may include search engine consultation, social media engagement, and various other actions. This process is an essential marketing measure to tailor a business’s current products or services and match their customer’s demands.  The ultimate tool that helps understand a buyer’s pattern is AI. It tracks customer behavior through their browsing history, email interactions, click-through rates, and other mediums. Without AI companies have to guess the market trend and pick a marketing strategy randomly. However, with AI-enabled methods, they can classify customers into different groups according to their preferences and pick the most relevant strategy. It becomes easier to understand their needs through technology tracking their behavior.  Apart from AI, there are certain ERP services such as LS Retail, that track prospects and existing customers’ interest and purchasing patterns from their engagement on their websites and other platforms. The analytics team can identify which customer browsed through what product. Also, they can check up on the number of customers retained on the website for a long. But the question remains: how can you understand your customer’s buying behavior?   The first step is to identify your prospective customers. Identify who will be interested in buying your item. Otherwise, it is just a waste of time to engage with customers who probably will never purchase your product.   Then study the inclinations of your valuable customers- the ones who fall for fewer service issues and contribute more to your profit. Understand their psychology while asking yourself the following questions:   Do they make purchases after careful consideration or on impulse?  Do they consider price over quality or vice versa?  Are they your loyal customers who make frequent purchases or are they one-time buyers?  Do they exclusively purchase from you or patronize your competitors as well?  Do they contact you through a precise channel like- your website or an app?  Once you answer these questions, it’s time to dive deeper into the research.   Recognize The Buyer’s Need/ Desire: A person will not purchase a product or service until he needs it. The factors driving him to make purchases can be internal (Hunger or thirst) or external (from a promotion or word of mouth). As soon as you recognize their needs, you can segregate them into distinct groups.   Information Research: As you recognize a customer’s needs/ desires, the next step a customer would take is to carry out internal/external research of your business to figure out the best possible service or product for them. This can involve browsing through the graphics, print, and other media revolving around their central buying decision.   Evaluating Alternatives: At this stage, the customer scans through different products that are potential enough to fulfill their requirements based on alternative product attributes. The customer’s next step greatly relies on their attitude and involvement. For instance, if the customer has a positive attitude with high involvement, they are most likely to consider different brands and companies. However, in the opposite situation, the customer might go through one or two brands.    The Purchasing Stage: this is the second last stage of understanding customer behavior. The final purchase can be disrupted because of two factors 1) negative feedback from other customers and 2) the receptivity towards the negative feedback. A customer might drop the idea of making the final purchase under the influence of other customer feedback.   Post-Purchase Behavior: this is the last and the most crucial stage that defines if the buyer will purchase from the same brand in the future or not. They compare their current purchase with their previous purchase and identify if it meets their expected standards. If the product passes, it generates brand loyalty and more future purchases.   Final Words   With the help of AI or some ERP services like the one LS Retail offers, businesses can accumulate enough customer data to identify their buying behavior, catch current trends and make specific strategies for customers. Trident Information Systems is the Gold LS Retail Implementation partner and has serviced various businesses with the same. For further information or a demonstration, contact us.  

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The Importance of Omni Channel Management in Restaurant and Foodservice.

Ensure a seamless journey to your customers and let them place orders from the channel of their choice. Integrate every channel and manage them centrally with an ERP for Hospitality, such as LS Retail: one of the best Hospitality ERP Software. Omnichannel was once believed to be used by only retailers focusing on consistent customer experience throughout various channels: Brick and mortar, direct and wholesale. However, many people overlook its importance in the restaurant industry since it operates quite differently than retail. Nevertheless, restaurants and other foodservice providers operate on different channels and can tremendously benefit from it.   Why an Omni Channel Restaurant Strategy?  The Restaurant industry is transforming, and so are their needs, a good Restaurant Management Software can help keeping-up with the transformation. Today’s consumers want to order their fast food from anywhere and at any time. It is imperative, and not optional that the customer experience is seamless and connected. Those consumer needs are driving the omnichannel trend. For restaurants, that means providing their customers with multiple ways to order, pay, and receive their meals.  Restaurant operators are now recognizing its importance in their industry. They are acknowledging the importance of being visible to new customers while embracing multiple channels and hence adopt a wise multi-channel management system i.e., Omni Channel. This is the same reason an eCommerce retailer decides to have a concrete shop to reach more customers. Be it via enhanced delivery options, a non-traditional and pop-up unit, food trucks, or any other medium, restaurants are reaching more customers through different channels.   How does Omni Channel Management Help the Restaurant and Foodservice Business?  Customers demand more convenience as soon as they get in touch with your restaurant. It is up to you to offer a continuous brand image and customer experience both online and offline for pick-ups, dine-in, takeout throughout devices. With such efforts, the customer feels looked after and gets a consistent experience. Given below are the few benefits of proper Omni-channel management for your restaurant business:  Central Control for Multiple Locations  With LS Retail Hospitality’s Omni Channel Management, control all your food channels centrally from the head office. Set up menu items, recipes, meal deals, and modifiers. The system replicates data and transmits it throughout the Restaurants, automatically allowing you to manage POS (point of sale) terminals and staff from headquarters. Being one of the Best Software for Restaurant, it offers multiple tools within the same platform which many of the other Restaurant Management Software fail to offer.   A Greater Reach   The more channels your restaurant has, the bigger the audience you can reach. Consider how many additional consumers you could reach if you started offering delivery, takeout, or a drive through.   In the delivery space, you can choose to collaborate with a third-party service provider, already having a large customer base such as Uber Eats, Takeaway.com, Deliveroo, etc. Restaurant Management Software such as LS Retail itself can manage your delivery and online ordering operation more efficiently.  Free Flow of Information   Integrate omnichannel the correct way among all the tech platforms you have: POS or food delivery apps. As soon as you are onboard new customers on your POS, you can simply collect their data and optimize it to generate loyalty programs.   As you integrate more channels you start collecting new data from new sources. If used correctly, you can understand your customers’ behavior and identify new methods to serve them better.   Improving data flow also enhances your efficiency from the front office to the back office. When you have efficient technology and clean data, you might as well take care of your staff better. Hence, encouraging them to become more efficient.   Improved Customer Experience   Providing a consistent Brand Image and streamlining customer experience is what Omnichannel experience is all about. The main objective of this approach is to create a seamless customer experience throughout all the channels and touchpoints, treating them the same irrespective of the location they placed an order. This fosters brand loyalty and repeated business.   Aligning all your channels not only streamlines the user experience but is also an asset to customer service and support. Your support team can extract your customer’s records on interactions, issues, and orders in real-time. Hence, turning the buyer’s journey a lot easier and satisfactory.   CRM Data Optimization   You can use CRM to gather direct feedback from your customers. Similarly, you may respond swiftly to all reviews and build a personal connection with them. The best way to get repeat business is to nurture your customers. You can optimize omnichannel strategies such as email and SMS campaigns to maintain and strengthen customer relationships.   Through the right targeting and segmentation, you can access the right set of customers. Adding personalized messages such as greeting cards on their birthday, offering exclusive rewards for being a valued customer, or offering their preferred dish as an incentive. Use automated workflows to ensure you deliver these campaigns at a precise time.   Greater Flexibility   Omnichannel management helps maintain and keep track of everything throughout multiple platforms. A customer should be able to order food from any chain available near him as well as return it if not satisfied. These flexible options boost customer satisfaction and sales.   Studies show a customer is most likely to purchase from a business if their omnichannel works seamlessly and empowers them to make flexible choices.   With LS Retail – the Best ERP for Restaurant, you can simplify your omnichannel management and provide better flexibility to your customers.   Why Trident?  After winning multiple awards, Trident Information Systems has been recognized as a Gold Microsoft Dynamics 365 and LS retail partner since 2004 and services many restaurants and foodservice businesses so far. With our ERP for Hospitality services, 150+ resources, and technical tools, many successful restaurants have been our clients. For further queries contact us.  

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Why Do You Need a Unified Commerce Solution to Boost Sales and Customer Services?

Boost sales and customer services with the help of Unified Retail Management Software. With LS retail you can understand your customer psychology and make sales strategies accordingly. Get greater visibility and make more effective marketing campaigns to attract more customers.  A modern Retail ERP Software is a unified software solution, that helps avoiding  patchwork hardships. This solution integrate multiple departments within the same environment and help businesses build on solid foundations.  Optimizing multiple software solutions can be a pain, while building IT complexities. It can hamper your management and drain resources. Therefore, your finances are engaged in doing the technical patchwork and keeping your staff tied up.   As for data management, it gets quite hard to take care of data across multiple storage systems. It is pretty complicated to manage your data as the system allows it, different software follows different patterns. Hence, you are all entangled with multiple software management formats.  While using multiple software systems, financial reporting becomes a real pain. Data extraction followed by data standardization of calculation and formulae into a single accounting template from different applications, sub-ledgers, and transactions is not ideally recommended.   It is complicated to extract data from a soiled database and when these databases do not coordinate, it hampers your efficiency to improve and enhance. Failing to share the required document throughout the departments can become a potential threat to the overall productivity of your organization.   Boost Sales and Customer Services with a Unified Commerce Solution: LS Central.   You need the right Retail ERP Software, effective customer service, and excellent quality products. LS Central being a unified commerce solution built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central ERP. It is easier for the retailers to meet exceeding customer demands for exceptional services.  This is how LS Central helps to boost profit and customer services:   Centralized Control   As a Unified Software, LS Central incorporates your overall business from back to front, POS, ERP, inventory, sales, promotions, and offers. The data drawn from the key areas are combined on the same platform while ensuring centralized control of the retailer. You no longer have to move your data from ERP to eCommerce/ in-store or you need to import files: the system automatically takes care of it.   Effective Customer Service   With LS central, draw customers back and get repeated business, allowing secure and contrasting payments. Compare replenishments with the real market demands, allowing customers to check real-time stock availability. Integrate customer shopping data and use their preferences to personalize interactions. Allows self-service shopping and checkouts. Give the first hand to customers to return your products online or in-store as per their preferences. Allowing one on one appointments, consultations, and personalized services.   Loyalty Programs   Loyalty programs can boost your sales like magic. Having an insight into your customer preferences and their spending pattern, you can utilize that data to generate exclusive offers, discounts, and other schemes to lure customers in. As the name suggests, these programs ensure customer loyalty and contentment with your services.   Omni-Channel   Deliver an out-of-the-world shopping experience, also encourage your customers to invest their loyalty and engagement both in-store and online. Allow them to create and maintain shopping lists, address personalized offers straight on their phones. Boost brand awareness and customer retention hand in hand via the omnichannel. Compute customer data, profiles, and spending patterns to create business strategies.  M-POS  With M-POS, retailers and merchants can accept various payment methods on their phones. Additionally, you get value-added services that help with your business productivity. You can make card payments, online payments, and cash withdrawals and wallets, etc. It is another method to track customer data and use it for your benefit. Only a few companies offer a comprehensive solution to accept payment with the M-POS.   Unified Data   To get a holistic view of the customer experience, you need to adopt a centralized data platform in Retail CRM Software, containing everything from the contact center, website data, sales information, and marketing information and analysis on everything touched by your customers. With LS Central get an overview of your business via a centralized platform bringing all the necessary data within the same environment. Make better decisions with the bigger picture now available.   Final Words   A unified software solution like LS Retail can help you boost sales and get delighted customers. We recommend researching through retail ERP Companies and finding a suitable LS Retail Implementation Partner. Trident Information Systems is a Gold LS Retail partner and earned experience of over 22+ years. Armed with 150+ technical resources, we have successfully served multiple businesses. 

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Why Hospitality Industry Needs a Future Ready Technology

This Pandemic has brought a massive shift in the Hospitality industry. The tough working parameters have made it quite difficult for restaurants to sustain their services. The juggle between survival and keeping up with government regulations demand a future-ready Restaurant Management Software to be a must-have for all the restaurants.   Such software embraces sophisticated technology which are pushing their limits to evolve into their best vision. One such software includes LS Central for Restaurants; it broadens up to ERP for Restaurant management, and facilities complete business management in the same platform. It is an excellent Restaurant management software, especially when today’s scenarios have shaken the industry from within.   Current Challenges Faced by Restaurants Covid-19 pandemic has constrained this industry to operate differently and adopt suitable solutions in order to survive. Certainly, there are a few things that no one saw coming: Meeting the Break-Even Point: your break-even point can be defined as the sales covering your operating costs. Like all the businesses, where the CEOs wish for huge profits, restaurants are struggling to meet their break-even point. Keeping up with the sanitation and health regulations: covid 19 pandemic has made customers and staff even more aware of their sanitation and health Off-Premise Dining: the enforced lockdown has labored the dine-in restaurants to swear by delivery sales and take always to meet the necessary returns. Good Restaurant management software can be a huge help. A recent techno mic conducted study has revealed, over 80% of restaurants were prevented from shutting down because of take always and food deliveries. This is believed to be the forthcoming scenario for the next few years. Limited offers and innovative menus: to last throughout the forthcoming years, there is an incredible need to adopt more creativity. Offering certain menus, new offers, and out-of-the-world experiences can draw a great deal of draw diners, especially those cutting on their dining out budget. Advance online ordering system: Restaurants are subjected to strict sanitary guidelines and lockdowns and are expected to remain the same way for quite a while. There is a growing need for contactless home deliveries and online food orders. Overcoming the slow pace in 2021 will have restaurants to have examined all business prospects and aspects again. Restaurants need suitable Restaurant Management Software such as LS Retail for food services to cope with the upcoming challenges. How Can LS Central For Restaurants Help You Combat The Challenges In Hospitality?  There are many technological and non-technological challenges in the hospitality industry, such as the need of using multiple restaurant management software to get different features, back office and front office integration issues, lack of real time data tracking, difficulty in retaining customers and so on. LS Central for Restaurant can help you get rid of them. It is an all-in-one Restaurant Management Software that generates a real-time data report and exhibits the bigger picture of cafes, restaurants, and other food services, integrating activities from the back office to the final customer serving, therefore, leading to excellent coordination. Additionally, you can get the following benefits:   Gives The Ultimate Control Over Your Restaurant Since you can monitor each business activity and access real-time data within the same environment, You can eliminate the excessive expenses on multiple software. It carries out the following tasks: This Restaurant Management Software supervises and administers your franchise and location from the headquarters. Controls recipes, prices, offers, menus, and campaigns centrally. Navigate the performances of your staff and carry out effective communication. Computes real-time costs and revenues, and picks up the latest trends and opportunities. Check up on the real-time reports. Uses Artificial Intelligence to read and predict your customer’s or prospects’ behavior. Scales up your business and helps it grow. Centrally Manage Your Restaurant   Since you can monitor each business activity and access real-time data within the same environment, you can eliminate the excessive expenses on multiple software. It carries out the following tasks:    This Restaurant Management Software supervises and administers your franchise and location from the headquarters.   Navigate the performances of your staff and carry out effective communication.   Computes real-time costs and revenues, and picks up the latest trends and opportunities.  Check up on the real-time reports.   Uses Artificial Intelligence to read and predict your customer’s or prospects’ behavior.   Scales up your business and helps it grow.   Cut Costs and Boost Revenue   With proper assist management measures, you can minimize waste and use your resources optimally with this Restaurant Management Software. LS Central does the following jobs for you:      Accurately price your menu and ensure good returns.  Orders and distributes the appropriate quantity of ingredients. .   Plan out your meals and streamline your ingredient orders.   Automates everything and eliminates mistakes.   Allow Customers to Serve Themselves   Get ready to deliver excellent customer services and draw a broad set of customers repeatedly. This is how it helps your business get a customer boost:      Uses mobile POS on the table and takes contactless orders and payments.   Gives your customers a free hand to customize their meal by removing or adding ingredients of their choice.   Exhibits the exact ingredients and information on allergens at the POS on online platforms and also on self-ordering devices.   Adjusts the price and the menu as per the demand.   This Restaurant Management Software allows your customers to order food online or as per their preferred services.    Loyalty Programs     A loyalty program is a great measure to retain your current customers and also to increase the customer base. A customer loyalty program includes the following:      Prepares a personalized promotion and each guest can get an attractive meal deal  Smartly generates loyalty programs to benefit you and your guests in the shape of returns.   Creates happy hours strategy to attract maximum customers.   Launches various deals and offers according to customer preferences and spending behavior data.    Our Final Words LS Central is one of the best Restaurant Management Software which integrates services like Point Of Sale, Supply Chain Management, Operations, Online Channels, Inventory, and customer loyalty within the same environment. Trident is one of the most renowned LS Central Information Partner. For the best support, feel free to contact us. We will be more than happy to serve.

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Bring predictability to your revenue pipeline with Dynamics 365 Sales

Most companies use sales pipeline data to gauge a very generalized picture of future sales. But imagine if your company’s data was accurate enough to predict next month’s revenue within a few cents? If an organization can standardize on top-performing sales processes and establish an accurate, targeted picture of the customer, pipeline data becomes far more reliable—and future sales become far more predictable. Insurance brokerage and advisory company Willis Towers Watson (WTW) collected extensive sales data across systems within the organization, but they lacked a centralized system to view the collected data. The company adopted Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales to capture data in a single system where they could extract insights to optimize sales practices and prioritize high-converting customers. By using insights to drive success into sales practices, WTW has increased the reliability of their sales pipeline, making future revenue far more predictable. “In January, we ran our numbers based on prior performance and predicted almost to the penny what the number would be for new business going forward. Probably very few companies have been able to do something like that.”—Luis Maurette, CRB Global Head of Sales and Client Management, WTW Sales predictability can be increased when sales leaders have two key things: An accurate picture of high-conversion customers: Seller conversion rate will increase and sales cycles will close faster if you can provide your sellers a picture of your highest-converting customers. With the right tools, customer profiles can easily be developed from the characteristics of existing customers—sales intelligence you already have. According to LinkedIn, 74 percent of sales intelligence users said the tools are extremely critical or critical in closing deals. Better, faster sales processes: According to McKinsey, sales performance management can drive up to a 10 to 20 percent increase in revenue per salesperson. That means if you leverage tools that help you identify sales best practices and standardize them across your company, your sales cadence becomes predictable. Fast access to data, fewer systems to pull data from, and easy collaboration with teammates and stakeholders optimize processes, and in turn makes sales cycles faster. Identify customers more accurately, win more customers A better understanding of the customers leads to higher conversion rates. Marcelo Fama, Head of Latin America CRB Ops at WTW says that with the new capabilities offered by Dynamics 365 Sales and Microsoft Relationship Sales (which includes LinkedIn Sales Navigator), “We identify more opportunities sooner with the highly effective, automated triggers in the sales process that come with the platform.” At WTW, they are now able to target unique audiences because of data in Dynamics 365, and have accelerated the sales process because clients recognize right out of the gate that they understand their clients’ needs. Increase speed and collaboration with Teams When sellers can quickly access account managers and subject matter experts for quick information within the context of a deal, sales cycles close faster. WTW plans to leverage the integration of the One Microsoft platform to optimize their sales processes. With Microsoft Teams embedded in Dynamics 365 Sales, sellers can share and edit CRM records within the context of chats and channels, providing the seamless collaboration between segments and regions critical to closing deals. “We have aspirations to become even more connected as a company and to accelerate growth through standardized processes,” says Maurette. Success depends on making it stick Historically, the failure rate for large-scale change efforts like new customer relationship management (CRM) programs has been as high as 70 percent. WTW reversed this trend and within six months of rapid deployment, 90 percent of WTW sellers were up to speed and using the new tools to work faster and more efficiently. “In my 18 years at WTW, I don’t think we ever expected staff to adopt anything at above 80 percent, let alone a sales platform. It’s just outstanding.”—Jim Blaney, Head of Sales and Client Management, Corporate Risk and Broking, North America, WTW By tapping into the true value of Dynamics 365 Sales, WTW makes more data-driven decisions with consistency across the company rather than decisions based on guesswork. And the company has a deeper understanding of its clients and can better create targeted campaigns and deliver relevant, personalized services. Learn more about Dynamics 365 Sales Want to learn more about Dynamics 365 Sales? contact us today at info@tridentinfo.com

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Why it makes sense to move your retail management software to the cloud

As a successful retailer, chances are you are already running some of your IT functions in the cloud. That’s smart. The next logical step is to move your entire retail management system to the cloud, and go from the on-premises version to its software as a service (SaaS) one. But even if you know that the cloud is experiencing exponential growth, and that you will, one day, take the leap, you may be hesitant to do it now. Perhaps you are afraid you’re not ready for the change. Perhaps you have security concerns. Maybe you can’t clearly identify which practical, day-to-day benefits you’d get from moving to the cloud. Whichever your reasons, you want the best for your business, and you care about staying competitive. You want to make the right decision, and employ technology that will propel you forward today and tomorrow. While you are debating whether the cloud is for you, here are 8 good reasons why you should consider migrating your system. 1. Stay up to date, automatically With traditional on-premises software, businesses are responsible of keeping their hardware and software up to date. In order to stay current (and safe), they’d need to purchase new hardware every few years, and to update their software every few months. But in reality, retailers usually have more pressing concerns than keeping track of the latest software patch or upgrade. And if the company is using multiple software solutions and there are integrations in place, a system upgrade can become a costly and lengthy project. As a result, many companies end up with outdated IT environments that work, but don’t really support the business, and may even hinder it. In the worst cases, this old tech might reduce the company’s ability to grow and take on new projects, or stay on top of consumer demands. When you are using SaaS in the cloud, all these concerns belong to the past. You don’t need to worry about periodic maintenance, or to budget for expensive and complicated software upgrades. Instead, your supplier takes care of updating your software regularly. And if you have configured your add-ons correctly, you can maintain all your extensions, and even your configurations. SaaS software guarantees that you are always, automatically, on the latest version, and can use all the new functionality that comes with it. 2. Enhance productivity with intelligence One of the biggest advantages of the cloud is the advanced computational power it offers. Tasks that until yesterday were too complex for even the most powerful computer, for example predicting future sales patterns, are now within reach of any retailer. Businesses can run their data into Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) powered tools available in the cloud, and without having to pay for extra servers or data scientists, they can get the answers they need, with minimal effort, very rapidly, and at a fraction of the cost than comparable on-prem technology. There is a wide variety of AI tools available in the cloud, giving businesses infinite possibilities to improve their effectiveness and productivity. AI can also help make smarter decisions, and deliver more personalized, to the point customer service. Would you like to send personalized promotions and special deals to your customers based on their shopping history and specific tastes? Are you thinking about adding a chatbot or virtual agent as a first-line customer support? Or perhaps you’d like to offer intelligent search on your e-commerce site? When you run your software in the cloud, all these initiatives are accessible to you, and can be started within a very short timeframe. But AI can do much more than help deliver bespoke customer experiences. You can use optimize your inventory with advanced forecasting that can factor seasonality, promotions, trends, and product substitutes and complements into your forecasts. You can refine your hiring practices with intelligent talent acquisition solutions. You can simplify searches across your catalog for both staff and customers using AI-powered accurate product tagging applied to images. When you infuse your business with intelligence, you also make it more proactive, agile, and profitable. 3. Guarantee business continuity with a reliable infrastructure With traditional in-house IT setups, businesses are at constant risk of downtimes and failures. On-site servers can’t usually guarantee a consistent performance, and if a key piece of your hardware breaks down, you may be left unable to serve customers or close sales – and could even risk losing your business data. As regards reliability, a traditional infrastructure usually necessitates a disaster recovery plan, requiring you to build redundancy, carefully monitor conditions, having dual firewalls and more – in short, you need to budget for time-consuming, expensive, complex monitoring. Switch to SaaS software, and you can step away from all of these problems. Even if you experience a hardware failure – say your computers or servers break down – you won’t lose your data, as it is safely stored in the cloud and can be accessed when and as you need to. The cloud also guarantees higher reliability. Large cloud services like Microsoft Azure, with expansive resources and entire dedicated teams, have already built in redundancy, from failover hardware to datacenters located across the world. As a result, Azure, the service where the cloud-based version of LS Central resides, can guarantee 99,995% uptime, and top security features.  4. Respond quickly to changing market conditions You know how important speed of action is in the retail industry. Yet, traditional IT environments are all but agile: even a project as simple as adding new servers or applications can be very time consuming. First, your IT staff needs time to procure the hardware or software that will fit within the current infrastructure. Then they have to set it up and test it, and finally, they’ll have to go through implementing it. In the past, this process was the only way to implement change. Today, this is an outdated and ineffective way of operating – especially when the businesses you are competing against are agile and unburdened by traditional infrastructure, such as e-commerce players. To stay

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3 ways to lower food costs using your restaurant management system

In the low-margin restaurant industry, it is essential to consistently monitor food costs. As restaurants struggle with rising price of ingredients, bottlenecks in the food supply, and limited seating availability, it’s more important than ever for businesses to optimize ingredient buying and usage, and minimize waste. A good restaurant management system will help you keep track of raw ingredients, menu prices, and spillage and food waste, enabling you to determine where you can make improvements without decreasing quality. Here are three steps you can take. 1. Automate inventory monitoring In the food and beverage industry, food costs represent on average almost one third of total business expenses. A unified restaurant management system that connects sales, kitchen and inventory in real time within a single  platform will give you total visibility over usage of ingredients. And if it’s a truly unified platform like LS Central for restaurants, it will also enable you to link your purchasing to recipe management and to actual sales. Stock can then be automatically added to as new inventory is received from distributors, while preset amounts for each ingredient are automatically subtracted from the inventory count when dishes are prepared. Some software systems also enable you to adjust inventory on the fly, using mobile devices to remove from stock the jars that fell on the floor and broke, or the spoiled meat. All this data can then be organized and analyzed in your back office tools, giving you valuable insight into what might be affecting your bottom line and allowing you to take action. 2. Identify waste patterns and adjust The US restaurant industry alone wastes over $25 billion worth of food annually, according to a report by waste reduction group ReFED. This is a staggering amount of money being thrown into the garbage. The first step to managing food waste is to keep track of what you’re throwing away, in what quantities, and why. Use your restaurant management system to keep a regularly updated food waste log. Locate problem dishes, and establish achievable wastage goals for your staff. Your employees deal with food waste in both the dining room and the kitchen, so it is important that both kitchen and front-of-house staff are trained to minimize common mistakes and correctly report wastage. Implementing a culture of waste monitoring with your employees will encourage staff members to report more detailed waste data. It will also discourage employee theft by clarifying that all inventory, both raw and prepared, is regularly being accounted for. Once you track your food waste, it’s time to start looking for trends. Perhaps you’ve noticed a dish that consistently returns to the kitchen partially uneaten. Whether it’s the half-eaten pancake or the piles of untouched fries which you end up throwing out, your customers are telling you something about portion size. With a good restaurant management solution, you can easily adjust your recipes and optimize ingredients and quantities. If your dessert portions are too generous, you could consider getting twelve slices instead of ten from each cake, reducing the amount of whipped cream, or making your cupcakes slightly smaller. The difference might seem tiny at first, but by the end of the month those ounces will add up to savings. By keeping an eye on your waste and adjusting portions accordingly, you’ll produce profit-making dishes, and will have satisfied customers cleaning their plates.   3. Engineer your menu to perfection Menu engineering is the process of finding the perfect balance of popular low- and high-cost food items. It’s an ongoing practice that uses key performance indicators (KPIs) to help you make data-driven decisions that ensure meals are popular and profit-making. If you are using a restaurant management system that gives you real-time business information, you can keep track of your KPIs and see how well your business is performing relative to established targets at all times. Use the system to break down the data and see how many times a dish has been ordered, what it costs to produce, and what kind of profit it brings in. By tracking KPIs such as average contribution margins and food cost percentages, you can see how a dish compares to the average profit margin of similar menu items. Once you have this information, you need to decide which dishes should be kept in your menu, and which ones you should rather replace or discard. Do you have a menu item that is significantly below the average margin and sells poorly? That should probably go. Is there a popular dish that is slightly below the average margin? Check if it will stay popular even with slightly higher prices. Do you have a low-selling but high-profit dish? Promote it by giving it top center placement on the menu, and remind your servers to suggest it to guests when applicable. As you calibrate your menu for maximum profitability and customer satisfaction, you will also be adjusting your inventory. Why order bags of live clams when they require careful handling, have a short shelf life, and aren’t frequently ordered? Save yourself both time and money: remove them from your menu and your inventory.  Controlling food costs while providing consistently great meals is essential to your restaurant’s long-term profitability. While it used to require a time-consuming process of manual reporting and calculating, today technology can help you refine your processes and cut costs. Do you need more information on how a modern restaurant management solution can help you transform your business? Contact us

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Galvanize Audit Risk Analysis Tool

Computer Aided Audit, Risk & Governance ToolTrident’s Galvanize integrated software solution standardizes and streamlines key functions allowing you to increase team productivity and efficiency by as much as 50% – materially increasing the value you bring to your organization. Overview Galvanize Analytics Galvanize Essentials Galvanize Overview Galvanize – Transforming Audit & Risk Galvanize’s suite of products is used at all levels of the enterprise to help maximize growth opportunities for our customers by identifying and mitigating risk, protecting profits and accelerating performance. Galvanize  provides audit and compliance management when and where you need it. Galvanize Analytics and Essentials simplify and automate your data access, extraction, analysis, investigation, remediation and reporting. Galvanize focuses on; Data Analysis Audit & Compliance Management Continuous Transaction Monitoring Reporting & Data Visualization Exception Management Tracking Galvanize delivers technology solutions that are transforming audit and risk management. Through a combination of software and expert content, Galvanize enables powerful internal controls that identify and mitigate risk, protect profits, and accelerate performance. Audit Management Internal Audit Compliance Management Internal Audit, Compliance & Legal, Accounting & Finance, IT Operational Risk Management Risk Management, Accounting & Finance and Information Technology Fraud Management Compliance & Legal, Accounting & Finance, IT, Internal Audit Risk & Control Monitoring Internal Audit, Compliance & Legal, Accounting & Finance, IT, Business Operation Enterprise Risk Management Risk Management, Internal Audit Business Benefits Increase business assurance With so many disparate data sources in the enterprise, being able to capture relevant transactional data for a complete view of the business is no trivial task. Galvanize Analytics provides connectivity to a broad range of data sources. From transactional databases, spreadsheets, flat files, business applications (including SAP ERP and SAP CRM) and more, Galvanize Analytics’ depth and breadth of connectivity helps ensure complete data coverage for increased business assurance regardless of the disparateness and variety of information sources. The business can also be reassured of the integrity and validity of results as a detailed audit trail of all analysis activities is always being recorded Raise executive visibility Analysis results don’t resonate with upper management unless they’re presented in an executive context. Effectively get the attention of an executive audience by conveying the significance of analysis results through compelling, yet easy to create, data visualisations that provide additional business context, not just transactional data results. Save time and effort with automation Eliminate manual effort and quickly help achieve significant cost savings by automating data import, export and analysis tasks. Using the industry standard Galvanize designed by the company founder, scripts can easily and quickly be created to automate repetitive manual tasks. For example, instead of taking 1-4 days to manually reconcile multiple spreadsheets, Galvanize Analytics can import, combine and test the data using a script that only takes seconds to execute. Improve corporate culture for increased collaboration A siloed corporate culture limits the ability to leverage the collective expertise of the organisation. Spreadsheets, documents and e-mail are also not a viable or scalable means of easily sharing thoughts and keeping track of feedback. Break down communication barriers and help nurture a more synergistic culture by easily showcasing analysis results and encouraging collaboration across cross-functional teams with Galvanize for secure cloud-based sharing. Galvanize Analytics Audit Management & Analytics Are you trapped in a time suck between spreadsheets, manual processes, or difficult technology?   Galvanize Analytics Galvanize Analytics is a data analysis application that provides a powerful combination of data access, data analysis, and integrated reporting. Galvanize provides immediate visibility into transactional data critical to your organization. The application reads and compares data, but does not allow modification of source data to ensure that it remains intact for complete data quality and integrity. Galvanize allows you to work with data in the following ways: Analyze entire data populations, or samples of populations Identify trends and exceptions, and highlight potential areas of concern Identify control issues and ensure compliance with organizational standards Age and analyze financial or time-sensitive transactions Automate analytic testing and receive immediate notification of results Log the analysis performed, allowing you to preserve analysis steps, and review and compare results Application Use Cases Audit Control effectiveness Audit analytics Risk analytics Statistical sampling Compliance FCPA AML Sanction lists Contract compliance Information Technology Data migration, reconciliation COBIT, SOX Security testing Transnational SoD resting Log analysis Risk Management Monitoring KRI indicators Risk scoping Human survey testing Risk analytics Accounting & Finance PCard T&E P2P Fraud Tax compliance Procurement Vendor assurance Predictive analytics Public Sector Entitlement oversight Grants compliance Investigations Automate A123 control testing Aidit readiness Trident Data Visualisation  Audit Ready Solutions for Dynamics ERP: Navision & Axapta Audit Analytics is used for performing internal controls and identifying transaction errors and exceptions. Such reviews often take place long after the transactions have been done which seriously limits the ability of Management to take timely and corrective action. The value of audit analytics is maximized when the results of Continuous Monitoring transactions and controls are being provided directly to the business process owners for response. This allows for corrective action to be taken on a timely basis, directly improving the bottom line and business performance and reducing associated risks trough rapid response to fraud, errors and inefficiencies as well as strengthening financial and operational controls. Whether your business challenges lie in the areas of fraud detection, controls monitoring, or auditing for compliance – or within the specific regulatory and operating environments unique to Government, Banking & Finance or Healthcare – Trident can incorporate standard controls testing analytics into customized solutions uniquely suited to your organization’s needs through the Galvanize solution and our consulting offering within audit analytics. The Audit Analytics are a series of Audit related dashboards that are ready to deploy showing this knowledge to the business.  This can be deployed via a browser or mobile device.  The solution is powered by Galvanize, the leading data analytical engine, and Power BI Dashboards, the top data visualisation dashboard.   The Audit Analytics solution enables data to be extracted on a regular frequency (hourly, daily, weekly, as deemed necessary) to dynamically and automatically update the dashboards without IT involvement

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