Choosing a POS System for Your Garden Center

If you are trying to grow your garden center’s business, improve customer reach, control you inventory and streamline your processes, the best first step is choosing a robust POS for your garden center.  For many business owners, this can be a daunting task.  You can easily get lost in a sea of technical jargon, software features, hardware specifications and network requirements.  Add to that price points that seem to fit every budget from the low cost systems servicing food trucks to the sophisticated systems capable of handling thousands of simultaneous transactions.   This series of articles will try to sift through the noise and present a framework for approaching your POS decision-making.

What size POS System do I need?

First, let’s be clear that selecting, purchasing and implementing a POS system is a big decision.  It is a major investment in your business.  And like any investment, you expect a positive return.  I like to think of POS systems coming in three categories:  (a) entry-level cloud based systems that are inexpensive but not very adaptable (b) mid-level systems that can support single or multi-store operations; and (c) large systems designed for Fortune 500 retailers.

Based on our experience over the years, we have found that the following guidelines can be helpful when navigating through these categories:

• If you annual sales are below $400,000, you will likely be best served by an entry-level POS system.  There are some reasons that you might consider buying up (e.g., you anticipate growth over the next two years that will push your revenues over this threshold).  However, generally the cost of a mid-range system would outweigh the benefits you will realize in the near-term.
• If you are processing more than 60,000 tickets per day, you are a candidate for the large systems that are designed to support these workloads.
• For everyone else, a mid-level point of sale system should offer you benefits that will readily justify your costs.

I think that many garden centers (other than the big box chains) find that a mid-sized system will be the right choice.

What features are important when choosing a Garden Center POS?

A great POS system like the one offered by Rapid Garden POS, can offer many benefits to a garden center or nursery.  It is really more of an enterprise management system with features and functionality supporting:

• Green Stock Inventory Management
• Plant Product Procurement & Sourcing
• Live Product Labeling — Tree Tags, Plant Spikes, Bar Codes . . .
• Ability to handle botanical and common names (and even Spanish names)
• Garden Center Transaction Management
• Garden Center Customers by Category (Consumer/wholesale/landscaper)
• Targeted Marketing to Your Diverse Customer Base
• Garden Center Loyalty Programs
• Employee time tracking
• Custom Orders
• Special Garden Center Promotions and Discounts
• Customer Accounts Receivable

Many of these features are especially important to garden center businesses.  For example, nursery inventory management presents unique challenges for green stock businesses.  You may grow your own inventory, you may need to track where your product is across multiple stores, yards, greenhouses and grow sites.  Your back office needs to know how much a particular plant you have on-hand and easily initiate replenishment orders.  You also need to track and manage dead stock.

Product information and product tracking can also be critical to a successful garden center operation.  There are few business where inventory can be identified by multiple common names, botanical names and even Spanish names.  It is crucial that your POS system can recognize all of these different names to help customers find what they are looking for.

From Data, to Understanding, to Action

A garden center receives massive amounts of data every day and your POS system becomes the collection point for that data.  With a robust system, you can capture and digest that data and transform it into things that are meaningful to your business success.  Whether you are capturing customer data to improve customer touchpoints (enabling customers to be greeted by name), reviewing purchasing patterns to more effectively target email marketing to your customer base, or deciding on loyalty program benefits that drive traffic into your stores, the POS system will be the tool you most rely on every day.  Reports and dashboards can be tailored for your unique needs.  When you have easy access to good data, strategic and tactical decisions can be made with confidence.

The Garden Center Customer Comes First

Garden Centers have a very seasonal business and you need a system that can handle the surges of business during your busiest times.  Your business is often rooted in the communities where your stores are located.  A bad customer experience can have dramatic and long-term negative impacts on your success.

Your POS system offers you many ways to improve your customer’s purchase experience.  Quicker checkout times with barcode scanning and touch screen simplicity, lightning quick credit card processing, flexibility to use mobile terminals to shorten lines and customer identification and tracking all add up to happier loyal customers that recommend you to others.

A Garden Center POS Provider Focuses on Service, Service, Service!

For customers looking at a mid-sized POS solution, you likely have limited technical resources in-house.  Your success with choosing a new POS system will likely involve working with a company, like Rapid Garden POS, who has the experience and expertise to keep your operations running smoothly.  When choosing your POS system, recognize that you are also choosing a team that will become your trusted information technology partner for the foreseeable future.  Look for companies that understand your business and who can help you get the most out of your POS investment.

Choosing, purchasing and implementing a POS system is a big decision for most garden centers.  It can be stressful and challenging — even overwhelming.  But finding the right system backed by a support team you have confidence in makes the stress and challenge bearable.  Like many of our other customers, in a very short time after going live you will wonder how you ever survived without it!  Rapid Garden POS retail consultants are available to speak with you about your garden center POS needs.

Talk to One of Our Garden Center Consultants