What do you know about your garden centre?

How modern EPoS is becoming the nerve-centre of the business

Published: 01 May, 2008

Running a garden centre is tremendous, for lots of reasons: the mix of outdoors and indoors, the wide variety of customers, the different kinds of business all wrapped up in one - plants, garden materials, furniture, cafes and restaurants, services - it's exciting to have so much going on, but difficult to manage.

The one system which tells you where you are and how each part of the business is performing is the point of sale. Because that's what it's all about, fundamentally, isn't it? The amount of sales through each area and the margin you're making tell you how successful each business area is, and - finally - whether it's worth continuing with each one.

So that till on the counter is vital. That's where every sale is made, every return recorded, every action of your staff shows up. But do you consider it the cornerstone of your business?

Technology is making it easier to deploy smart PoS systems. Many small garden centres survive on cash registers, and these are becoming quite sophisticated, but the cost of using a networked group of PoS terminals capable of being managed centrally and providing real-time data on the sales performance of each area of the business is dropping dramatically. Touchscreen-based tills are dropping in price in line with the cost of LCD devices such as TVs generally, and the systems which support them are gaining facilities which once were affordable only by the big chains.

Coming this year are systems which will support all the areas in a large garden centre - from café to nursery to landscape products - with multiple interfaces on the touchscreen tills and wirelessly linked to a central store server accessible by management from anywhere on the internet. And linked of course to the website which is selling the centre's products to customers who are anywhere you can ship to. As the cost of broadband internet drops so these systems become truly affordable.

So too is the option to do without the till and the traditional checkout; new handheld systems integrated with Chip & PIN card readers from the likes of BOM and Fujitsu make it possible to handle credit and debit card purchases anywhere on the grounds. And they link wirelessly to the main store server so that information about stock and account customers is readily available to the handheld.

The point about these new systems - besides their growing affordability - is that they give you instant information on sales anywhere on the site - café, nursery, shop - and across many sites. And you don't have to be onsite to get it. Because these systems can be hosted on a secure server anywhere on the internet, you can be anywhere you can find an internet connection - you can even use a smartphone running the Opera browser.

Every garden centre has to compete on price, and on the range and value of the products it stocks. A good PoS system will support you in creating and trying promotions and deals; will help you identify the best performing products and in getting those products into stock fast; won't require you to be an IT professor just to keep it running; and will be utterly reliable. After all, without reliable information on what is selling, where the margins are best, and where the stock is, you're flying blind. The best of the new ePoS products builds on these attributes, putting the PoS where you need it and information where you want it.

It may be time to look again at the system which tells you most about whether you're going to stay in business!

For further information telephone 01733 396710.