With 2020 bringing many changes to the way retail shopping now looks to business owners and their customers, Brad Golchin, Founder and Managing Director of
Wise Advice, shares how technology can assist in maintaining a successful business.
There is no longer the discussion about whether you need technology but rather around what are the technology options and which of those is the best option for your clients and your business. Here are a three of those ‘best options’ – Shopify.com, CIN7.com and Aider.ai – and how they can work for you.
Keeping your online and offline synchronised
You want to make it as easy as possible for your clients to shop, interact and pay for your product and for this you need a platform that can handle both offline and online sales and keep your stock/prices and availability in sync.
Shopify.com is one of the best online shopping platforms out there with a support office in New Zealand. The most important part of online shopping is customer experience, as you want them to keep coming and you need to make it easy for them to buy and at the same time have tools to upsell, cross sell and monitor the behaviour of your buyers.
In the liquor industry, the ability to promote new trends and upsell to your clients is paramount and Shopify.com gives you the monitoring ability to work out what your clients prefer to drink enabling you to target your products.
Shopify is great in all of the above and has a long list of third-party apps that work to make it even more efficient. They also have retail/POS facility which means you can use the same system for offline sales.
Shopify has a connection with the Xero accounting system as well, which will give you a better idea of your overall financial performance. It’s easy to use and you can almost set it up yourself if you have time.
Balancing your inventory
The balance of your inventory can make a huge difference to your business. The worst scenario is if you do not have enough stock for one of your popular products and have a lot of unpopular stock sitting on shelves, creating cashflow problems for your business.
With so many different stock keeping units (SKUs) in the liquor sector, stock levels can suck the life out of your cashflow! We see many businesses that are profitable and have high taxes to pay, but there is not enough cash in their business to pay the routine, every-day bills.
One of the main causes of this imbalance is high stock value but CIN7.com is a software product designed by a New Zealand company that helps you to manage your inventory and cost of sales. They also have a function for online shopping, a wholesales portal and POS.
A good overview of your business and cashflow is crucial.
Any business needs to know what is going on in the business at any time. The Aider.ai app uses artificial intelligence to analyse and combine data from different sources to give you that overview. It links to your social channels, your google account, your accounting software and even a weather channel! In a business selling liquor, this could mean better decisions about staff rostering, or what is selling well and what you need to order more of… or less of.
You can install the app on your mobile and start asking questions – e.g. How many sales did we have today? How does this compare with my last period? How many website visits did we have today?
The sky is your limit and as you use the system more it gets cleverer and learns more about you and what you need. This is another genius Kiwi invention, so be sure to give it a try.
Originally published in the Nov/Dec issue of The Shout NZ. Read the full issue below.
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