Chances are, you’re very excited about the benefits your retail or restaurant operation will reap as a result of migrating from a cash register to a computerized point of sale system. However, the same may not go for at least some of your employees.

In order for a customer loyalty program to be truly effective, it must be targeted to your best customers. Contrary to what you may assume, these shoppers aren’t necessarily the ones who frequent your store or restaurant most often. For example, in many instances the most regular visitors to retail stores come primarily or almost entirely in search of “bargains”, seldom pay full price and often return their purchases.

Tick tock…is it time to upgrade your retail or restaurant point of sale system? While the answer is not always cut-and-dried, here are a few indicators that this is indeed the case.

Just as all retailers aren’t created equal, neither are point of sale vendors and the products they offer. Asking a few key questions when selecting a point of sale system is essential to making the right choice and maximizing your return on investment. These questions should include the following:

As if that weren’t enough, you can utilize historical point of sale information to set minimum and maximum “stock-on-hand” levels. This will prevent overstocks and, in turn, minimize the need to ever tell a customer that you are “out” of a product or menu item.

Nominated for consideration by Mercury Payment Systems, pcAmerica won the award for their installation with low calorie frozen dessert chain Tasti D-Lite. For this installation, pcAmerica and Tasti D-Lite collaborated to utilize Restaurant Pro Express POS software to integrate social marketing with their customer loyalty program.