TALKING POINTS
You can do IT
By Jake Voelcker, owner, Bicycleworks D
o you spend hours reordering stock? Do you find that competitors are overtaking you thanks to online sales? Do you wish there was an easier way to make bookings and manage your workshop? There are IT solutions to all these problems, but knowing which ones to choose can be a minefield. Here is a breakdown of all the things you might need:
Point Of Sale (POS) The POS is basically a computerised cash register, but it should also include stock control, and card payment integration. In addition, a good POS will handle your order history, customer details, gift vouchers, discounts and offers, and more.
Website
The simple option is a marketing website, which advertises your business online and lets customers know about your location, services, and products. Another option is an e-commerce website, which also allows online sales for delivery or click-and-collect.
Workshop diary Any shop which offers servicing and repairs will need some form of calendar. But good workshop software will do more: store past service history, handle customer details so you can send texts and emails, and allow you to easily generate job sheets and receipts.
Newsletter This is possibly the single most effective marketing tool
www.bikebiz.com
a small shop can use. Targeted emails, tailored to your customers’ needs, are very good at generating sales. A service reminder for the workshop? A ‘happy birthday’ email with a discount? A regular newsletter about your offers, upcoming events, and any news? Newsletter software makes all this easy.
Financial accounts All modern accounting packages are on the cloud, which allows them to integrate not only with all your other software, but also with your bank feed for automatic reconciliation of your accounts.
Where to start? It makes sense to think about the biggest issue in your business, and aim to solve that first. If your biggest headache is the time spent on managing and ordering stock, then some kind of software that can handle inventory is the obvious solution. If your biggest problem is marketing and sales, then a website or e-commerce solution may be the first place to invest. If your business is focused on servicing and repairs, a workshop diary is the obvious choice.
Future expansion Whatever you choose, plan with expansion in mind. As the business grows, how will you add functionality, and how will you link the systems together? The options are:
n An integrated solution, where most of the components above are included in one piece of software. For example,
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