Many small retailers started their specialty retail business because that specialty was their passion. A golfer opened a golf shop; a skier opened a ski shop and so on. Those people are also probably early adaptors and would have bought almost anything if they thought it might enhance their performance. Unfortunately that might get in the way of understanding the assortment and amount of inventory to carry. They might not possess well-developed inventory management expertise. They invariably have a passionate commitment to the merchandise they are carrying, but a poor understanding of their customer's needs and expectations. This is where they need to develop a plan from previous sales records pulled from their Point of Sale software. Effective inventory management is having the right products in the right place at the right time in the right quantities. It combines merchandising, operations, logistics, vendor management, in-depth quantitative analysis and a commitment to detailed planning. This planning can be accomplished with hours of painstaking work with spreadsheets or using retail software that does it for them. You need to do what you do best, be on the floor and sell, not a captive to your computer.

Your budget is shrinking; You have fewer resources; You are working harder. Now, more than ever, retailers are under pressure to increase sells and maintain their customer base. To succeed, retailers have to not only gain new customers, but maintain the ones they have. While gaining new customers can help your business grow, a lot of times it is not enough. Imagine gaining 20 new customers each and every month, but losing 25 existing customers every month during the same time frame. The math doesn’t add up and just getting new customers would not be enough in this situation to keep your business going. You must find a way to gain more customers than you are losing. This is where your Point of Sale (POS) Software can be a valuable tool. ProphetLine has integrated customer marketing. With the availability of information on your customer purchases and user definable fields, you can easily give your customers that personal touch that will keep them as a valued customer even if you don’t have the best prices in town. High quality customer Service is something, we at ProphetLine know is valuable and is one of the reasons we make it easy for you to give higher customer service to your customers as well.

All improvement and innovation is brought about because of competition. Technical improvements, like cellular telephones, grew because competition forced the wireless phone manufacturers and carriers to improve or vanish. The same thing probably happens to you in your business. Something changes in your competitive landscape –the technology in your business is different, a new store opens, or the demographics in your community changes and this means you must change your business and fast.

Your competition causes you to take action. You have to study your completion and anything they do that is better than you, you must improve on. If you understand your competition and evaluate your business objectively, your business will improve and you will be a leader and not a follower. After the improving and redesigning, maintaining can be accomplished through quality Point of Sale (POS) software. Don’t complain about your competitor, but do something about it and kick their rear.

Choosing the right point of sale product is only one step in achieving retail success. Learning to properly implement procedures and then learning to manage and react to the information provided is every bit as important as finding the right features in your system.

Without exception, studies show that customer satisfaction with a computer system is directly related to the quality and quantity of education. One study a few years ago determined that upon completion of training, a customer retained at most 80% of the training. In many cases, it was closer to 50%. If that trained person leaves the organization and trains a replacement, the new employee has only 25%-64% true knowledge of the system. A new employee who has to learn the system by guessing may have less than 30% knowledge of the capabilities of the system! Because training is so important, ProphetLine offers training for now and for later.

Therefore, selecting the proper method and amount of training is one of the most important parts of your decision. The training services we provide with ProphetLine POS Software will provide your company with the tools and knowledge needed to understand and utilize your new point-of-sale system to its full potential. ProphetLine offers three methods of training to suit our customers’ needs.

Controlling inventory investment is a primary reason retailers purchase systems. Properly "timing" inventory means gaining control over cash flow. A well-planned Open-to-Buy lets sales revenue pay for incoming merchandise rather than having to borrow money.

An Open-to-Buy serves as the "budget" for inventory, sales and purchases. The Open-to-Buy report is the "financial statement" for your inventory.

Open-To-Buy has helped many retailers gain financial control of their businesses. With ProphetLine’s Open-To-Buy Module added to your system, you will be able to develop and execute your buying plan easily and accurately. With a properly managed buying plan, you can improve your stock turn rates, cash flow, gross profits and return on inventory investment. At the end of each month, you can identify and respond to trends as they develop. You can achieve optimum stock turn rates, while keeping inventories at the proper level to support expected sales. Isn't that better than kicking yourself at the end of the year?

The ProphetLine Inventory Matrix module offers a key feature for retailers who need to keep track of styles of items that are ordered and sold by color and size such as men’s shirts, ladies’ dresses, golf gloves or shoes. It allows you to easily build a two- or three-dimensional inventory record to track the individual items. It is a true inventory matrix in that you can vary costs and retail within it.

For example, you can order casual shirts by color and style in a small, medium, large and X-large size matrix or order dress shirts with neck size and sleeve length in a two-dimensional grid.

The Inventory Matrix makes it easy to track reorder points by each style, color and size, inventory on-hand, and performance for each item in a matrix group. You may add as much or as little detail to the matrix as you need. For many systems, creating six styles in six colors with thirty-six possible size combinations can take hours. In ProphetLine, it only takes a few minutes.

With the Inventory Matrix Module added, your ProphetLine POS software will automatically print thermal pricing tags and labels each time items are received. You can now verify that you received all the items ordered, in the mix ordered, and ensure that each item has a bar code pricing tag or label on it before it goes on the shelf.