RapidPOS Webinar: Advancing Your Touchscreen Configuration
Rapid POS Webinar: Advancing Your Touchscreen Configuration During this webinar, you’ll learn how to leverage advanced capabilities to enhance your touchscreen and create efficient processes for management and cashiers. We’ll take a deep dive into run pages, advanced button configurations, send keys, custom button actions and more!
IGCs Providing Landscape Services – A Brave New World
From our unique vantage point as a system provider supporting independent garden centers (IGCs), we have noticed trends over the past few years. More than ever, IGCs are offering landscape services including design, installation, and maintenance, as part of their diversified offerings. Many landscape service companies are either building or acquiring commercial garden centers. This […]
Navigating the POS World – A Technology Guide for Regular Folks
Independent garden centers are successful for lots of reasons, including product selection, service excellence, effective marketing, beautiful facilities, and compelling events. Having a technology infrastructure to support your operations is, more and more, a critical element of a store’s success. Most IGCs were challenged on many levels last year by the COVID pandemic. Garden Centers […]
Data: the Past, Present and Future of Your Business’ Success
How top garden centers use technology to increase sales, improve communication and deliver a great customer experience. Deloitte’s 2019 Retail Industry Outlook focuses on navigating disruption in retail. One of the six strategies Deloitte identifies deals with emerging technologies. Their report states: Ultimately, retailers should figure out how to scale these solutions and embed them […]
How to define technology goals that increase your bottom line.
There are many independent garden centers that currently do not use technology tools to manage inventory, transactions, and customers for their businesses—I know this because I have probably spoken with 10 green retailers in the past six months that are not even using cash registers to ring up their transactions. While I have a personal […]
Ease into Spring: Six ideas to maximize sales during the busiest season
1. Use an integrated email marketing tool to improve customer communication. Many people think of products like MailChimp and Constant Contact as marketing tools. They are ideal for that, but they can do a whole lot more. Consider using these products for automated messaging that is not marketing related. For example, you can welcome customers to your loyalty […]
Are mobile payment systems right for you?
One of the pain points for customers at any retail establishment is waiting in line. It’s also their final impression of your store, so considerations for improving the checkout process are important, and should be factored in as part of the overall experience. For the past several years, mobile point-of-sale systems have been used primarily […]
Landscaping Series: From Quote to Completion – Part 5
Part 5: Managing Billing and Payments In the final post of this blog series, we will discuss billing and payment management for landscape transactions. First, it is a good idea to identify some different ways that a landscape project can be structured: Fixed price amounts can be invoiced and paid on a recurring basis (monthly, […]
Landscaping Series: From Quote to Completion – Part 4
Part 4: Landscape Project Reconciliation In the first three parts of this series, we talked about generating effective quotes, managing your inventory, and scheduling and managing delivery and landscaping services. This post is all about accountability and focuses attention on an aspect of landscaping projects that is often overlooked—reconciliation. Reconciliation of a landscape job or […]
Landscaping Series: From Quote to Completion – Part 3
Part 3: Scheduling and Managing Delivery and Landscaping Services In parts 1 and 2 we discussed generating effective quotes with your POS system and managing your inventory. Now, let’s focus on using your POS system for scheduling and managing delivery of materials, equipment, and services. Delivery scheduling functions are typically completely absent from most POS […]
Landscaping Series: From Quote to Completion – Part 2
Part 2: Unique Inventory Management Challenges for Your Landscape Operations In part 1 we discussed generating effective quotes with your POS system. Now, let’s explore inventory management tactics that will support your landscaping business. Once a Quote, or Proposal, is accepted by a customer, it converts to an Order. At this point, the customer is […]
Landscaping Series: From Quote to Completion – Part 1
Using your POS system to support your landscaping business, starting with quotes and proposals. Independent garden centers come in all shapes and sizes, and many IGCs are expanding into a broad array of products and services to meet their customers’ demands. For many IGCs, landscape design, installation and maintenance are natural areas of expansion. However, […]
Is Your POS System a Help or Hinderance to Profitability?
Managing a profitable garden center is anything but simple. Successful IGCs master figuring out what you can manage and control and what you cannot. There are factors and conditions that most would agree cannot be controlled — the weather, the economy, customer fads and trends. However, there are other things that can be organized, tracked, […]
Increasing Profits Feature – Garden Center Magazine
POS Systems: Adapting to the Technology Needs of Garden Centers (as seen in Garden Center Magazine – June 2017, Increasing Profits) No two garden centers are the same. A successful strategy used at one independent retailer could fail at the next. Ron Vanderhoff, vice president and general manager at Roger’s Gardens in Corona del Mar, […]