From product management to sales to inventory, there are plenty of opportunities for human error and inefficient processes that spike your operating costs and hurt your profit. For a business to achieve its full potential, it’s important to look at and optimize every process, flow, and procedure. And there’s no better partner in this process than business management software that uses the latest technologies like telemetry. In this article, we’ll explain what business management software and telemetry are, as well as how they can help with both unattended and attended retail businesses.
What is Business Management Software?
Business management software is software used to help streamline and optimize multiple aspects of business operations. Most business management software will help with tasks such as:
- Inventory management
- Customer relationship management
- eCommerce
- Accounting
- Sales and service
- Machine management
- Route management
- Product management
One of the best parts of business management software is that it can help one, multiple, or all of these things. Business management software is designed to handle most if not all of a business’s needs, simplifying operations significantly and ensuring fewer errors and more accurate data.
Each business management software suite has its own features, costs, and functionality, with their full packages being more or less suited to businesses based on their size, budget, and requirements. With each business having unique needs, it’s important to choose a business management software that addresses the specific issues a company needs to handle.
A wide range of technologies can be used in business management software. One of the most advanced is telemetry.
What Is Telemetry?
Telemetry collects information, measurements, and data and forwards it to an IT system in a different location to be measured and analyzed.
There are many ways telemetry data can be transmitted including radio, infrared, ultrasonic, satellite, and cable technology. In addition, there are just as many applications for telemetry technology from software development to medicine to agriculture to even space travel. And, along with all of these, telemetry can also be used for your business to increase efficiency and lower operational expenses. All of this is done by collecting various types of data.
What Is Telemetry Data?
Telemetry technology can be used to gather a variety of data depending on the application and intended purpose of the tech. When it comes to business management, telemetry data can include the following:
- Vending machine names and ID numbers
- Product stock levels
- Machine statuses such as connection to power and temperature
While the advantages of telemetry data may seem clear, many businesses wonder if it is actually worthwhile to invest in such technology. After all, if a business has worked well manually without it, what is the advantage of bringing on such advanced business management software?
Business Management and Reduced OPEX
One of the most important ways that business management software and telemetry tools can make a difference for a business is by reducing operational expenses.
Business management software’s main function is to help you operate more efficiently. For example, depending on which you choose, your business management software might be able to help you automate financial processes such as accounting, payroll, invoice tracking, and so on. In doing so, it helps eliminate errors that can lead to overspending.
This same software can also be used to identify potential blockages and faults in your processes that consume financial resources, pointing you to where you can make improvements that will cut costs. For example, you may discover that you have a critical issue in customer service, causing certain staff to be underutilized, while others are overworked. Additionally, business management software can help you complete the same tasks, such as project management and scheduling, faster than you did before. And that saved time is, of course, saved money.
What about telemetry? Well, in the same way, that time is money, knowledge is power – and telemetry software is an incredibly powerful tool for helping you collect data that can give you the ability to reduce operational costs. Telemetry tools will continuously update you with the most recent and relevant information about inventory, cash monitoring, route planning, and more. All of this information can help you manage your business more efficiently, helping optimize both day-to-day decisions and long-term plans.
When it comes to unattended business, management software run by telemetry can reinvent the way that you work and make money.
Business Management for Your Unattended Business
Business management software can help with businesses of all types, including unattended businesses such as vending machines, kiosks, car washes, cashier-less supermarkets, and laundromats. And this software is especially effective when powered by telemetry. Below we mention some of the aspects of unattended business that business management software featuring telemetry tech can help with.
Inventory and Merchandise Management
With unattended business, keeping track of inventory in order to maintain proper stock requires different processes than traditional retail businesses. Nayax Core, formerly NayaxVend uses a vending telemetry solution to help you make sure everything is running smoothly from off-site.
The MoMa Vending Machine App is a mobile vending management software that allows for convenient tracking and monitoring of inventory. It lets you monitor your inventory levels, create picklists for one or all of your machines, and know which items are and aren’t working across your locations in order to optimize stocking and reduce spoilage. It also helps with product management, allowing you to update product maps and add or edit new products straight from your phone.
Machine Management
NayaxVend’s machine management software allows you to see all of your products and their placements with a product map, helping you track the exact layout of each of your machines. You can also download picklists and spreadsheets that show all of the products that need more stock. Your picklists can be easily printed or accessed via MoMa. User-friendly and compatible with all smartphones and tablets, MoMa helps you achieve fast and simple machine management and reduce operational costs.
On-the-Go Management
The best part of MoMa is its ability to come with you wherever you go. Employees can use MoMa’s vending management systems to access important inventory and product information while they’re in the field, with operators given the ability to define what information staff has access to in order to maintain security.
MoMa’s on-the-go features include:
- A global map view of all of your machines
- Smart business analytics dashboards to help you make data-driven decisions
- Advanced monitoring tools that will alert you about inventory, overheating, and power outages so you can reduce machine downtime, address issues quickly and provide a superior experience for your customer
- Real-time product and inventory management
Route Management
Its mobile nature allows MoMa’s vending management system to connect you with your NayaxVend system from the road, with employees being able to stay up-to-date with the latest, most relevant information from their route, receiving updates and alerts as they come in. If a nearby machine that isn’t on a driver’s route is experiencing a low stock level, you’ll receive alerts that will allow you to address it before the product runs out.
Nayax’s telemetry technology, makes this all possible using a variety of channels to enable secure communication. It also makes it possible to monitor and update in real-time, keeping your routes totally up to date based on the most recent data.
As discussed, unattended businesses aren’t the only use case for telemetry. The technology can be integrated in retail businesses as well with great success.
Business Management for Your Retail Business
Using business management software, traditional retail businesses will see just as many benefits with improved efficiency and decreased operational costs. And a retail management cloud can be a big help, too – after all, no business can have staff on-site 24 hours a day. In this way, remote tools are just as critical for the attended retail business.
How can business management help retail businesses? We’ve laid out a few of the top uses for retail stores below.
Sales Management
Sales management is one aspect of business management software, helping sales teams to fulfill their goals.
With so much sales information available to a store, retail management software can help accurately track and report sales data including organizing and tracking customer data for quick and easy access. This gives stores the opportunity to analyze who is purchasing, find out information about return customers, and more. In addition, data is stored in a central location (and not scattered around stores or regional offices for example), and data entry and follow-up emails become automatic, reducing repetitive workflows that waste time.
One of the top advantages of integrating telemetry in retail is the ability to access real-time data easily. This allows store managers, eCommerce sellers, and others, to fully understand what’s going on in the business at any time.
All of these allow sales teams to work more quickly and effectively, making them more cost-efficient and ultimately helping them to make more sales.
Inventory Management
Errors in inventory management can add up to serious losses, making inventory one of the most important things to optimize with business management software. Inventory management features enable you to manage, track, and control your stock.
Even better, inventory management integrated with your point of sale system can seamlessly integrate the sales process with inventory management. Your system’s backend will automatically sync sales data with your inventory management software to keep stock levels updated. This automation allows you to sidestep human errors so you can make sure your inventory data is always accurate and up-to-date so you never run out of products or order too much.
Team Management
Perhaps one of the most important elements contributing to a retail business’s success, employee management can also benefit from business management software. Nayax’s comprehensive Retail Management Cloud, a retail software that facilitates an omnichannel approach to products, customers, loyalty, and memberships by syncing data from your enterprise software to point-of-sale using a retail ERP connector, includes team management features such as:
- Managing roles, permissions, and access levels for individual employees
- Defining individual sales targets
- Initiating sales competitions to boost motivation
- Receiving mobile alerts on employee theft
Managing teams efficiently gives retailers the chance to optimize their staff and their distribution, get access to who is meeting goals, who needs some help, and much more.
Consumer Loyalty Management
One final feature worth knowing about offered by retail store management software is consumer loyalty management, which offers capabilities aimed at motivating customers to continue coming back and buying more. The Retail Management Cloud allows for:
- Managing multiple loyalty programs in parallel
- Using numerous price rules, points, wallets, cards, and more
- Quickly setting up loyalty campaigns and promotions based on built-in templates
All of this allows brands to establish attractive loyalty programs, encouraging customers to come back time and time again.
All-in-One, On-the-Go: Gotta-Have-It
Managing a business, whether it be unattended or retail, involves countless processes from inventory management to team management to sales management. Small inefficiencies that result from managing these manually can add up to significantly higher operating expenses than necessary or desired. But using integrated business management software, vending software, and retail services systems powered by technologies like telemetry can help you improve your business’s efficiency across the board, reducing your operating costs while improving the customer experience and helping you make more sales.