Kick out the cash register and take control

Run­ning a small busi­ness has many rewards, but man­ag­ing the day-to-day details can be time con­sum­ing. Whether it’s track­ing sales and cash flow, bal­anc­ing the books, organ­is­ing staff timeta­bles, tak­ing a stock check or intro­duc­ing offers and dis­counts, the to-do list is nev­er-end­ing.

Indeed many small-busi­ness own­ers are often forced to adopt dis­joint­ed meth­ods for man­ag­ing their busi­ness, per­haps using a tra­di­tion­al till to track sales, sep­a­rate soft­ware to help with account­ing and bal­anc­ing the books, a man­u­al spread sheet for the staff timetable or a trust­ed pen and paper for stock checks.

While these dis­tinct meth­ods serve a pur­pose and ulti­mate­ly get the job done, they are often cum­ber­some, time con­sum­ing and siloed, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for a small-busi­ness own­er to estab­lish a stream­lined view of their busi­ness.

Cou­pled with out­dat­ed tech­nol­o­gy, this means many entre­pre­neurs are strug­gling to keep up with evolv­ing cus­tomer pref­er­ences and the lat­est data secu­ri­ty meth­ods.

While new tech­nol­o­gy is essen­tial for mer­chants to move into the future and com­pete with larg­er busi­ness­es and even their savvy peers, invest­ment in tech­nol­o­gy can often be a chal­lenge in itself. Entre­pre­neurs may shy away from upgrad­ing their tech­nol­o­gy due to a raft of con­cerns, includ­ing cost, the time it takes to edu­cate employ­ees on new sys­tems, and unease about the size or look of new equip­ment to name just a few.

Clover is an all-in-one plat­form that doesn’t just replace a tra­di­tion­al cash reg­is­ter, but empow­ers mer­chants with total access and con­trol so they can see their busi­ness from every angle

First Data con­sid­ered these chal­lenges and in response is launch­ing Clover™ Sta­tion, a sim­ple but com­pre­hen­sive point-of-sale (POS) and busi­ness man­age­ment solu­tion pow­ered by cloud-host­ed soft­ware for small to medi­um-sized mer­chants.

Clover is an all-in-one plat­form that doesn’t just replace a tra­di­tion­al cash reg­is­ter, ter­mi­nal and POS sys­tem, but empow­ers mer­chants with total access and con­trol so they can see their busi­ness from every angle.

Not only can busi­ness own­ers ring up sales, but they can view inven­to­ry, track rev­enues, man­age employ­ees, view busi­ness ana­lyt­ics and take advan­tage of cus­tomised appli­ca­tions from the Clover App Mar­ket, which offers the lat­est in busi­ness man­age­ment solu­tions from top devel­op­ers.

For exam­ple, the intro­duc­tion of real-time ana­lyt­ics empow­ers mer­chants to not only effi­cient­ly man­age their oper­a­tions, but also ulti­mate­ly max­imise prof­its. A cof­fee shop in cen­tral Lon­don, which is tak­ing part in the Clover Sta­tion pilot, found that a lot of time is being saved check­ing ship­ments and tal­ly­ing inven­to­ry to ensure a well-stocked store­room.

Hours spent pre­vi­ous­ly in the store­room detract­ed from serv­ing cus­tomers and grow­ing the busi­ness, espe­cial­ly when IT knowl­edge was required to under­stand the sep­a­rate sys­tems in place. This same busi­ness ana­lyt­ics soft­ware also allows mer­chants to intro­duce and man­age mar­ket­ing cam­paigns and loy­al­ty pro­grammes from one cen­tral sys­tem effec­tive­ly and eas­i­ly.

While ana­lyt­ics or inte­grat­ed mar­ket­ing may be com­mon­place for larg­er retail­ers, small­er mer­chants no longer need IT depart­ments to be able to sup­port these fea­tures. The Clover plat­form was designed to be used by peo­ple with­out any tech­ni­cal exper­tise. The Clover Sta­tion is shipped to mer­chants with their inven­to­ry or menu pre-loaded and ready to go, out of the box, and the soft­ware is as intu­itive as a typ­i­cal smart­phone or tablet.

Indeed, just like a smart­phone or tablet, the cus­tomis­able nature of the Clover solu­tion fun­da­men­tal­ly affords busi­ness own­ers free­dom. Mer­chants can cus­tomise their soft­ware to suit their cur­rent busi­ness needs, with the abil­i­ty to adapt and change as their busi­ness grows and evolves, essen­tial­ly putting the pow­er of large cus­tom pay­ments ter­mi­nals in the hands of small to medi­um-sized mer­chants which have his­tor­i­cal­ly been under­served.

Like­wise busi­ness own­ers need no longer be tied to their shop. Cloud-based tech­nol­o­gy not only brings togeth­er online and offline chan­nels, stream­lin­ing process­es, such as stock man­age­ment and inven­to­ry con­trol, but also enables mer­chants access to their busi­ness data any­time, any­where, mean­ing they don’t have to be sit­ting at their POS or in the back room to be at the epi­cen­tre of their busi­ness.

With the secu­ri­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty of a ter­mi­nal cou­pled with the flex­i­bil­i­ty of a cloud-based POS, Clover Sta­tion is a pow­er­ful exam­ple of how next-gen­er­a­tion solu­tions are being designed to meet the com­plete spec­trum of small to medi­um-sized-busi­ness own­ers’ needs – cre­at­ing effi­cien­cy, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and ulti­mate­ly oppor­tu­ni­ty.

For more infor­ma­tion, please e‑mail FDMSMarketing@firstdatacorp.co.uk