In recent years, much has been developed to provide the typical retail user with POS solution hardware incorporating the latest technology and great aesthetic design. Unfortunately, the POS Solution software has not kept up with these innovations in hardware design.
Most POS software, by default, collects huge amounts of data during normal daily use. Unfortunately, this information is mostly not used, because most POS Solution software does not provide the proper data mining functionality and user screens to use this information to help run a business.
In the coming weeks we will explore the possibility of applying ‘Artificial Intelligence’, abbreviated ‘AI’, to this data, and reveal the benefits in various areas of a retail business. The areas that we are going to cover are:
1) Target Marketing of Retail Customers
2) Product price and margin control
3) Automation of product orders
4) Automation of stock valuation in real time
5) Use of key performance indicators
TARGET MARKETING OF RETAIL CUSTOMERS
There is no question that point of sale solutions that include integrated proactive retail marketing are becoming crucial to growing a successful retail business. It is widely accepted, customers are more expensive to acquire than to maintain.
POS solutions, using tools like ‘AI’, can train their systems to recognize customers based on products purchased, amount of spend, and frequency of spend.
An email marketing campaign, targeting these customers, could take the form of a newsletter, an offer for a specific product, related to your general area of interest, or a loyalty voucher combined with news on a new product. It is relatively easy to decide what to send, when the POS solution, using ‘AI’, has prepared a list of clients. With a couple of mouse clicks, this campaign can be sent.
Consider this possibility …
POS solutions, using ‘AI’ and expense analysis, can be trained to identify customers who are in the process of leaving support for a company. Research shows that offering these customers a special coupon or free product can help retain them. In the long run, this can make a huge difference to a company’s revenue.
Campaign monitoring and evaluation
An intelligent POS solution would allow a complete monitoring of the campaign to evaluate its effectiveness. You should answer questions like the following:
1) Did the sales volume increase during the campaign?
2) Did you increase sales revenue during the campaign?
3) Did you increase your sales margins during the campaign?
4) How many clients read the email?
SMS, or the short message service, can be used in exactly the same way as emails. Reminders of special sale days, new product offers, $ Vouchers and website links can be sent via SMS. And everything goes almost instantly to the customer. POS Solutions using ‘Artificial Intelligence’ allow all of this and more to happen automatically, with just a few clicks of the mouse.