February 18, 2021 by Team Zadinga
Retail shops have always been around but the way they do business has changed over a period of time.
With eCommerce giants such as Amazon and Flipkart selling all types of products online, retailers have to adapt to the online business model.
Apart from going online, some challenges that retailers face today is optimising shop management, stock management, providing various payment methods and offering delivery services to the customers.
Here are a few of the key challenges that you might face and the approach you can take to resolve them.
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1. Lack of technical knowledge and expertise
In today’s digital world, it’s important for shop owners to connect with customers online. But taking your business online requires some technical skills that might be a challenge for many retail shop owners.
There is a lot of software available today to simplify digitising the business to help save cost and time. You can use them to improve your stock management, customer service and even get efficient at selling online to local customers.
2. Inconvenient payment processes
Supporting all types of payments for retail shops is essential since it helps provide your customers with a convenient way to pay for products.
Many retail shop owners struggle with the latest payment modes that include credit/debit cards, UPI, wallets, etc. They prefer the customer to pay cash, which might not be a convenient option for the customer. As a result, many customers might not be able to make the purchase and may not return in the future.
This is why you need to integrate online and offline purchases into your retail shop to create a customer-friendly payment system and ensure they revisit your shop.
3. Competing with eCommerce companies
In the age of Amazon and Flipkart, it has become harder for retailers to compete on price. Although most people enjoy online shopping experiences, they are still fond of retail stores.
Even if it is to check a product physically before they buy it online, there’s a lot of foot traffic to regular retail stores. Rather than focusing on price points and margins, create an amazing in-store shopping experience.
4. Managing inventory offline and online
Typically, physical stores and digital stores will share inventory. And while you may keep them in separate storage areas, if you sell out of an item online faster than in-store, you’ll have to fulfil some of your online orders from your store inventory.
This may cause unnecessary delays and poor customer experience. To avoid this, you can invest in a POS system that keeps track of stock levels offline and online, so you can easily reorder stock when it’s running low.
5. Order fulfilment
One of the key challenges that small to medium-sized retail shop owners face is order fulfilment. Having your own store and additional warehouse space to store the inventory is not something that every retailer can afford.
Renting or buying a warehouse has its own challenges such as storing the inventory, hiring staff to manage it, getting a warehouse management license, etc.
To resolve these issues, you can take the help of applications that help in keeping a check on your stock and notify you of the need to refill it in real-time. This way you can avoid having additional storage space and at the same time ensure your customers don’t return empty-handed.
6. A better delivery system
If you are combining both, online and offline sales for your retail shop, the final delivery matters a lot to provide the best customer service and satisfaction. Depending on the in-house staff or local courier services can offer little to no flexibility or visibility.
Hyperlocal delivery services such as Dunzo can help you provide customers with timely delivery with features such as real-time tracking, updates and non-delivery reasons. This also helps in capturing customers who are not in your neighbourhood.
Conclusion
The best way to deal with these challenges is to get a POS system that performs multiple tasks for you. And when it comes to choosing the right POS system with the best inventory management, Zadinga has you covered.
Our app has powerful features and capabilities that cover every aspect of your store — from sales and inventory to billing and customer service.
