C R S   M o n t h l y  H e a d l i n e s

October 2024

What’s New With Us?

Congratulations Alex on 3 Years of Service

This month, we’re thrilled to celebrate a fantastic milestone – Alex’s 3-year anniversary with us! As our Sales & Marketing superstar, Alex is the driving force behind sharing relevant industry updates, product and software innovations, exciting promotions, and expert tips that help our customers and retailers grow and simplify their businesses, week in and week out! But Alex’s contributions go far beyond marketing – she also plays a very crucial role in sales, administration, and so much more! Both our team and our retailers greatly admire Alex’s constant willingness to go the extra mile, delivering outstanding service and care. Her adaptability and dedication have been instrumental to our team’s success over the past 3 years.

Thank you, Alex! We’re excited for many more years together!

Get Prepped for the Upcoming Holiday Shopping Season

Retailers – as you all are well aware, we’re about to enter the most important (and busiest) shopping season of the year with Black Friday and Cyber Monday just around the corner, followed by the lead up to Christmas! It’s both an exciting and stressful time for retailers across the nation, and we’re right there with you! Our biggest tip that we can offer you before we kick-off this critical shopping season is to make sure you are prepared! 

Being prepared can mean a lot of different things – ensuring you have healthy inventory levels, planning out your seasonal sales and promotions ahead of time, hiring additional seasonal staff to help with the extended hours and potentially larger crowds of shoppers….

There are some things, however, that retailers often overlook while preparing for the season and it may not even cross their mind until they are faced with the issue dead on in the middle of a busy shopping day! (oof – we’ve all been there once or twice!)

Events and Pop-Up Shops

In a lot of cases, retailers like yourself may want to get involved in a Christmas market event or a pop-up shop opportunity to capture more sales during the holiday season. If this sounds like something you’ll be doing, make sure you have the right POS license count to accommodate an additional selling station, even if it’s just temporary! You’ll likely want to add on an additional license (or seat, depending on the POS system you’re on) so that you don’t take away from any POS access in your store! Your Retail Operations Partner should be able to help you facilitate this!

Replacement Peripheral Hardware On-Hand

When you think about a crazy busy sales day in your store, what is something that could happen that could derail your ability to provide the best possible customer experience? There’s a number of things that COULD happen, but the most common things we see as a Retail Operations Partner is the sudden inability to scan in items or print out receipts due to a hardware malfunction in the scanner or receipt printer.

Think about it – you use these peripherals every single day and they aren’t built to last an eternity! It’s always a good idea to have some back up hardware on-hand in case of an emergency, especially during the busy holiday season! 

Of course, you could wait until you actually need the hardware to get it but then you could be facing delays in shipping due to the time of year or possible backorder issues for sold out hardware. 

In our experience, it’s always better to be PROACTIVE instead of REACTIVE and this is no exception! We can help you source some of the back up hardware you might need – just reach out to our team!

Consumable Stock-Up

You’re going to be printing A LOT of receipts throughout the season, especially with the addition of gift receipts, so having a healthy supply of receipt paper ready to go is a good idea! You’re also going to want to ensure you have enough label rolls on-hand for all the inventory you’re going to be going through over the next few months! In our experience, last minute orders of this stuff isn’t always readily available at this time of year so you could end up waiting a little longer than normal to receive a shipment if you run out! Just like with hardware, our team can help get you stocked up on the consumables you need!

POS Optimization

Are you utilizing your point of sale software to it’s fullest potential, getting the most out of the features it offers to better align your sales goals and business decisions? You might be overlooking some critical business functions within your POS and we want to help make sure you are fully aware of them before the holiday season! This is also an opportunity for you to gain some additional training on processes you already know but need to refine, or get some questions answered about the functionality of your POS. 

If you’re an existing Retail Pro or Heartland POS user, book your FREE POS Optimization appointment with our CEO and director of planning – Dan Holman – BEFORE the shopping season begins to see if you’re taking advantage of everything your software has to offer!

Happy Small Business Month, Canada!

Small Business Month in Canada, celebrated every October, is a nationwide initiative recognizing the significant contributions of small businesses to the country’s economy. Small businesses represent the backbone of local communities, driving innovation, creating jobs, and fostering economic growth. Throughout the month, various events, workshops, and networking opportunities are organized to support entrepreneurs, provide valuable resources, and highlight success stories. It also serves as a platform for small business owners to connect with industry leaders, learn best practices, and address challenges. The celebration underscores the importance of entrepreneurship and the ongoing efforts to nurture a thriving business ecosystem in Canada.

As a proud supporter of independent businesses (and an independent business ourselves), we want to wish all of our indie retailers and partners a very happy small business month!