Retail automation: what should I know to avoid paying twice?

Sooner or later every business owner comes to the point of putting their «costs and profits» under control with computer programs and specialised equipment, for one simple reason: transparency of cash flow and protection against theft and «shortfalls».

Let us go through three questions you should ask yourself before starting to automate your business. Whether it is a shop, a restaurant, a night club, a car service or a warehouse.

Which of your tasks should the trade accounting program solve?

There are many programs. If you run several businesses — say, a grocery shop and a pharmacy — you will say straight away that the way of keeping accounts in each case is unique in its own way.

So the first thing you should do is write a short list of tasks. What the program has to do: stocktaking, returns, work with counterparties, a room chart (if it is a hotel), work with scales (controlling the cost of cocktails at the bar) and so on. Then you can move on to choosing a program.

A free trade program, a cheap one, or one that works?

Free programs for shops

If you have been in business for more than a year, you know there is nothing free here.

At best you will get a free «demo» program that after a while will "want" a paid activation key. Or a program with very limited capability and no analytics.

And once you realise how conveniently and quickly some accounting problems can be solved with a trade program, you will want to solve all of them. And all of that comes at an extra charge…

At worst you will get something like an Excel spreadsheet with «bugs», «crashes» and errors in the database and the accounts, which will not help you but will harm your business. Or worse still: programs like these can, as a rule, collect information from your computer, carry viruses and send them out from your computer. Whoever wrote such a program will get their benefit anyway. Nothing in business is free. And you know it.

II) A cheap trade program (usually for a shop).

If cheap, inexpensive trade programs existed that fully satisfied a business, we would be selling them. It is better to sell 1000 programs at $25-50 than 10 programs at $100 and up, is it not? From a business point of view that is profitable. From the point of view of integrators — companies that install such programs professionally — it is a damaged reputation and a damaged relationship with the customer.

Cheap programs can solve up to half of your problems, but far from all of them. Their capabilities are very limited. Their reliability is doubtful. If cheap programs were really good, giants such as, let us say, «1C» would have gone bust long ago, right? Yet such corporations keep winning more of the market instead, and more and more business people turn to them after trying cheap programs. Ask yourself a simple question: why is that so?

III) Reliable trade programs.

The secret of a good trade accounting program is simple.

First, it has to be a program from a serious company that knows the specifics of your business. And they should confirm the quality of their product by a long time on the market and a good reputation.

Second, such a program has to work like a construction set: the integrator who installs it for you must be able to tune it to you and your equipment. Few people know this, but any program, even the very best, needs tuning to your specifics. Otherwise the result will not be quite what you hope for.

2. How do you choose equipment for trade? Is it worth licensing your software?

Quality equipment does not always mean expensive (here is an example). But cheap counterparts — receipt printers, say — always mean buying again, usually once a year. Cheap trade equipment is like sunflower seeds: you keep buying a new portion. And that too is somebody's business.

If you have had no experience with such equipment before and do not know what is better to buy, you need to ask an integrator for advice rather than buy in online shops. Why? Because an integrator has no interest in selling you something that will break in six months. Because an integrator usually signs a service agreement with you and provides support. And if something happens to the equipment, replacing or repairing it under warranty costs the integrator more than the profit from the sale.

Licensed software or «pirated» software for trade?

Of course free pirated software is «better» — any officer of the copyright protection department will tell you with a smile while writing out a fine from $500 for pirated software. You are welcome to argue with them. For the fun of it you can mention that the computer at the till has nothing to do with trade and that your neighbour brought it in together with the trade program itself…

3. Why training, technical support and a service agreement? Why backups? Can you really not do without all this?

You can do without. Just as you can do without trade automation altogether. Our time offers a rich choice.

Training.

Any trade accounting program, even the cheapest, has one particular feature: it was written by people. With their own ideas of how it should work. If you do not know how to work with the program, you will hardly be able to use all of its capabilities. If you have dealt with any accounting program before, you will understand what this is about.

Usually staff training is paid for. We personally give two weeks of free training on the program plus support, which is quite enough for cashiers, bartenders and so on.

Support.

But as the work goes on, extra questions may come up, or wishes to add something more to the program (if it was not stated within the free period of training and refinement). Various emergencies may arise with the till or the equipment for reasons beyond your control and beyond the equipment itself (power surges, mechanical damage). All of this is cheaper to finish, to learn and to repair when you have a service and technical support agreement.

Backups. Uninterruptible power supply systems.

We set up a «backup» system for your data. It is part of the agreement. Even the most reliable equipment can fail, rarely but it can. But in reality, in most cases, it is the human factor that puts you at risk of losing all your data. Backing up data is vital for a business.

To protect yourself from losing data because of power failures or equipment «burning out», we recommend installing uninterruptible power supply systems.

It is not expensive. Replacing all the equipment is expensive!