Take Business Into Your Own Hands
Picture this: It’s 10 a.m. on Saturday before Mother’s Day, and your parking lot is overflowing, your store is buzzing and the lines at your registers are out the door. Sounds great, right? Well, yes and no. High customer traffic means increased sales, but only if you can process the sales quickly enough.
People today are in more of a hurry than ever and are not likely to have patience for waiting in line. Give these customers a quick and personal checkout experience, and they’re yours for life. Handheld wireless sales software can do just that.
A mobile point-of-sale software application optimizes sales throughput by decreasing the time per transaction. Customer service is also improved by enabling employees to work directly with customers to build sales live from their nursery yard. The ease and speed of this personalized checkout experience give independent garden centers a cutting edge in processing sales. As Troy Miller, owner of Troy’s Landscape Supply in Cohoes, N.Y., puts it: “I was missing out on a lot of business just because I could not process my customers fast enough. The SBI handhelds have helped me get my customers in and out 40 percent faster.”
In addition, a handheld inventory control application can increase accuracy while decreasing the time it takes to count inventory. Pairing wireless sales with handheld inventory management has the potential to revolutionize your garden center.
Sales on the Go
Customers get an opportunity to interact with employees, asking questions about products as they walk through your garden center, maybe gaining a little education on plant care, all while their sale is being created. Sales are built directly on the handheld by scanning items with the handheld or looking up items by name. Customers can sign for on-account sales or pay immediately by simply swiping their credit card and signing the handheld. Receipts can either be printed to a belt printer clipped to an employee’s belt or to a full-page printer in the back office.
All transactions and the handheld should be “live” so that they are updated in your database as they happen. Some systems may offer a “synched” capability, but for a wireless sales application, a live connection is the best option.
For additional service, handheld sales can be suspended and resumed inside at a point-of-sale station (this is where the live connection really comes in handy). Some may choose to use the handheld simply as a “line buster.” Employees can scan all of a customer’s merchandise onto a sale while they are in line, suspend the sale, resume it at the register to take payment and the customer is out the door. This process helps keep lines flowing and enhances the overall customer experience.
Customers are likely to tell their friends about the speed and ease of shopping at your garden center. A quick, friendly checkout process can definitely set you apart from your competitors. The handhelds can also add that “wow” factor to your garden center because people are generally impressed by innovative technology and even more impressed that you could get them in and out so fast!
Control Your Inventory
Losing customers because you don’t have what they want is a retailer’s worst nightmare. Inaccurate inventory can leave you with too much of a slow-moving item or not enough of your hottest merchandise. Eliminate this threat by keeping tight control over your inventory. An accurate, visible picture of inventory allows you to sell more of what you have available. Hand counting inventory leaves too much room for error. Using handhelds to do inventory cycle counts will decrease both your margin of error and counting time and give you the inventory visibility you need to control your business.
Keep this accurate picture of inventory by transferring and dumping product right from the handheld. A handheld inventory application should allow you to record when a product is damaged or no longer saleable on the handheld by using a dump feature. A transfer feature should also be available on the handheld so you can keep up-to-date information on a product’s location at any given time.
During the busy spring season, you undoubtedly have several daily shipments from vendors and getting those items into your inventory can be a long, painful process. Handhelds can alleviate this by speeding up the process and eliminating any re-entry from paper to your back office system. Receive inventory from a shipment against an existing purchase order, or create a new PO or voucher at the time of receipt. Inventory received on a handheld should be updated live in your system so that it is automatically available to sell.
Getting Connected
For the handhelds to update live, a wireless connection is required. There are two main options for this:
Local Network Wi-Fi. This connection requires setup of an access point antenna, or more than one depending on the size of your garden center, the strength of the antenna and the basic infrastructure of your garden center. The best antennas can cover 10 to 15 acres, but steel roofs or other blockage can decrease this. You will really need an expert to do a site survey to advise the best option for you.
Cell Phone Network. The more revolutionary of the two options, the handheld unit would actually have cell phone capabilities and run of a cell network. No elaborate network installation is needed here: Simply sign up for a data plan with a cell phone company that covers the area around your garden center. As long as good cell signal is available, you will be connected.
The most important thing to remember here is that each site is different, and there is no “one size fits all” wireless solution. Getting help from experts in the field to evaluate your options against what you are working with at your garden center is crucial.
Designed With You in Mind
There are countless different models of handheld computers, but only some are durable enough to withstand the unpredictable conditions of a garden center. Plants are being watered, the sun is shining outside and let’s face it things get dropped. The best units are those that are highly water resistant, with screens that are visible in full sun and that are hefty enough to survive being dropped on concrete.
Symbol (now owned by Motorola) produces two units, the MC70 and 8846, which meet these qualifications. Used by many garden centers and others in the green industry, these units are proven to work for your industry’s needs.
Beyond the sometimes harsh conditions of a garden center, there are other facets of our industry that are best addressed by software designed specifically for the green industry. An example of this is a plant library module that offers users access to a complete catalog of plants that you most likely sell in your garden center. A plant library eliminates the need for each independent garden center to build their own.
With all the plant properties loaded into your database, you can search by these properties for a customer. For example, if a customer is looking for a plant that works in full sun, grows to 4 feet tall and lives in Zone 4, you could print them a list of in-stock plants that match their criteria. An industry-specific software application can really give you a leg up on your competitors.
Software designed for your business also means it is supported by people that truly understand your process. When you call about the Alstroemeria you have in inventory, you won’t get silence on the other end because they think you are speaking a foreign language. You’ll also benefit from their experience with other garden centers and get advice on how others are using a handheld application to improve their business.
Return on Investment
No doubt the cost of a system like this seems like a sizeable investment and it is. However, consider the gains a system like this can give you, especially in your busy season. Handheld wireless software and inventory can help you process more customer transactions and keep a tighter control on inventory to ensure you have what your customers want, leading to a retailer’s end goal: increased sales.
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