They know that using a modern POS can save hours of manual work on accounting and inventory management. Plus, it can eliminate costly mistakes and provide lots of helpful reports and insights in the process.

But these days, cloud systems can handle much more than the nuts and bolts of checkouts and transactions. They also can help retailers craft a pleasant customer experience and put all the pieces in place to maximize their sales.

Here are a few of the tools that come in most of today’s POS cloud systems that can help retailers boost their sales.

Discounts and Promotions

Most retailers occasionally discount their slow-moving stock, or host special sale events to increase foot traffic or awareness.

Your POS system should make running a promotion easy by automatically calculating any combination of the discounts you’ve specified at checkout.

Of course, there are the classic promotions run by most retailers, such as buy-one-get-one-free, buy-one-get-one half off, standard percentage discounts, dollar discounts, or even percentage discounts that are contingent that increase with the number of products purchased. Retail cloud systems should also be able to limit the promotions by the date, the type of customer, the customer’s purchasing behavior, and more.

From a transactional perspective, these systems can eliminate mistakes and provide for a smoother checkout (which can keep customers happy). But POS systems go beyond that to integrate with email marketing software, pushing out promotions to your customers at the right times and tailoring your offers to their needs.

POS software also makes it much easier to track which types of promotions performed the best, controlling for factors like the time of week or year.

Loyalty Programs

When customers know they’ll earn loyalty points with each purchase they make at your store, they’ll feel more comfortable shopping with you — and spending more with each purchase.

Retailers can reap big benefits from loyalty programs. Loyalty program members have been shown to spend up to 18% more than non-members, for example. And keeping your customers engaged and happy with rewards can keep customers coming back and telling their friends about your store.

There are many ways to structure a loyalty program, and there are many types of rewards to consider, from points to bonus gifts to birthday coupons.

However, the best programs make it simple for customers to enroll in the program, whether they’re live in the store, on your website or checking out online. Good loyalty programs also make it easy for customers to see how many points they’ve earned (ideally, along with their other purchase and account info), and make it easy to contact rewards members about special opportunities.

Learn how to leverage loyalty using Vend in this recorded Cloudscape masterclass.

Custom Offers and Messages

It’s easy enough to blast your entire audience or subscriber base with announcements or general promotions that anyone can take advantage of. But the real value comes with more targeted offers and personalized messages.

When you can tailor discounts and perks for specific customer groups, you can really boost your value to customers and deepen your relationship with them.

The best cloud systems for retailers allow store owners and managers to analyze customer data and behavior so that they can tailor their content and offers to their needs.

Other examples of personalized offers and messages that can boost sales include abandoned cart reminders or notifications when “favorited” items go on sale.

Product Suggestions

Hopefully, your sales staff has been trained to understand your products and your customers’ needs enough that they feel comfortable making product suggestions to customers who come into the store.

They might suggest a pair of earrings to complement the dress that a customer has tried on, for example, or remind a customer to buy some batteries to go along with a new electronic device.

Your retail cloud system should be able to play a similar role automatically, both with online transactions (showing related items or items that other customers bought with a certain product) and with in-store transactions (reminding sales associates to suggest other products upon checkout).

Product suggestions can also be great when combined with carefully timed email marketing. For example, if you sell goods and services that naturally run out after a certain amount of time (such as cleaning products or personal care products), your cloud system can reach out to customers automatically asking if they’d like to re-order (and showing them a few other items that are relevant to their interests based on what they’ve purchased already).

Selling in More Places

The more places you can make your products available for sale, the more potential money your store can make.

For some stores, selling in more places will mean finally getting a robust online store up and running in addition to their brick and mortar location. For others, it means being able to sell your products on sites like Amazon or Etsy in addition to your own website, or even directly through social media sites like Facebook.

These sales channels don’t have to bring in a lot of revenue for it to be worth listing products. In fact, having your stores and products listen in more places online can boost your visibility and improve brand awareness, which can go on to boost sales from all channels over time.

Plus, with the right cloud system for retailers, you can track your inventory and sales across all of these channels at once, and streamline your messages and customer experience, as well.

Mobility for a better customer experience

While this isn’t a tool as such, I feel that this is the one point that gets missed by most business owners when they compare cloud-based systems to on-premise and traditional systems. On-premise systems require expensive infrastructure like servers, PCs and databases which not only have an upfront capital expenditure but also long-term and ongoing maintenance and generally lack mobility. These days, modern systems can offer tablet and phone-based hardware that makes it a breeze for the staff as well as create a better customer checkout experience.

Choosing a Retail Cloud System

As we’ve discussed, cloud systems for retailers can be powerful tools for saving time and boosting sales. They can also integrate with other specialized software, such as POS, CRM, HR, and accounting programs to create comprehensive solutions for your business.

However, it takes many hours of research to vet program options, get them set up, and train staff on how to use them.

Retail cloud systems are super valuable, but it can take many hours to get them up and running.

If you’re currently trying to decide which eCommerce software fits your needs or how to prioritize your eCommerce budget, we hope you consider teaming up with our cloud-based software specialists.

At Cloudscape Technologies, we work with retailers to streamline the job of finding and implementing the best software on the market. We enable owners and managers to continue the hard work of running their business without any disruption from the software search. We’re certified in the best retail software on the market, and we cater to the needs of small and medium-sized retail businesses.

To learn more, click here to request a free, no-obligation consultation.

But now, with the threat of the novel coronavirus keeping people at home and out of restaurants, meal delivery is playing an especially important role.

At this point, no one is sure how long this pandemic will affect people’s ability and willingness to sit down in restaurants to eat. So even if your restaurant has been doing OK with offering curbside pickup alone — or if your area hasn’t been as restricted by the pandemic — now is still a good time to explore (or re-evaluate) meal delivery options.

There are a growing number of technology tools and cloud integrators that restaurateurs can choose from to manage their delivery orders, but you shouldn’t rush into adopting one app or another. If your delivery services aren’t executed properly, delivery could end up losing your restaurant money or damaging your brand.

Here’s what to consider when it comes to choosing a restaurant cloud integrator for delivery.

The Growing Demand for Meal Delivery

Plenty of people have theorized about why the demand for meal delivery continues to grow, but regardless of the reasons, it’s worth paying attention to the trend.

QSR magazine summed up a few helpful statistics on the growth of meal delivery in this article analyzing the market share of delivery apps:

• Statista pegged revenue in the online food delivery segment to $94.385 billion in 2019. It estimated revenue to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2019–2023) of 9.3 percent, resulting in a market volume of $134.49 billion by 2023.
• Per a report by wealth management and equity research firm UBS, it’s estimated that global online food ordering will expand to $365 billion by 2030. That represents 20 percent growth each year from the current $35 billion reality.

In the past, you may have hesitated to offer delivery due to legitimate worries like these:

• Offering delivery options would affect the quality of the food (for example, your restaurant’s specialty food simply might not travel well)
• Offering delivery might corrupt your brand (for example, plastic utensils and styrofoam might not fit with the upscale vibe of your dining experience)
• Offering delivery might distract from your primary value proposition (expanding into delivery does require a significant investment of time, money, and staff that can distract from your other operations)
• Offering delivery might not be worth it financially due to the fees and other expenses required

However, the growth statistics we just cited suggest that it might be worth reconsidering those hesitations or finding ways to work around them. Delivery just might be essential to keeping your restaurant relevant in light of new marketplace dynamics.

In-House Delivery vs. Third-Party-App Delivery

The biggest decision that restaurateurs have to make when it comes to choosing a cloud integrator for delivery is whether or not they’ll handle the delivery themselves or use a third-party service to deliver meals.

With an in-house delivery system, restaurant managers hire and equip their own drivers and handle orders internally, usually through an existing POS system or specialized cloud-based delivery app.

If you choose to use a third-party service such as DoorDash or UberEats, though, you’ll access delivery data through that service’s app, and completely outsource the delivery logistics to that service’s fleet of contracted drivers.

Some restaurants’ point of sale systems integrates with third-party meal delivery apps so that restaurant managers can see the data and orders directly in their own system.

For example, Lightspeed Restaurant and TouchBistro both integrate with the program Deliverect for this service, which allows managers to centralize delivery data and update their online menus and from one centralized location.

Meal Delivery Software Features

Regardless of whether you choose to use your own app or a third-party app for delivery, you’ll want to use a cloud integrator to manage the process. Using a spreadsheet or other kinds of manual tracking is time-consuming, leaves too much room for error, and doesn’t provide as much help for data analysis later.

A good cloud integrator makes the meal delivery process easier for customers, drivers, and restaurant employees.

Here are a few of the features your cloud integrator might offer.

• An online menu – Integrators allow managers to choose which meals and prices to feature for customers who are ordering for delivery or pickup. The best ones make it easy to modify the menu with specials and discounts and customize it to look the way you want.
• Online ordering and payment – With the best cloud delivery apps, customers can easily submit their orders and payment online.
• Kitchen management features – If the system is integrated with the restaurant’s POS system, the online orders may be automatically sent to the kitchen for preparation along with the restaurant’s other, in-store orders. Some systems have inventory and tracking features that help staff keep track of supplies and orders.
• Delivery management features – Restaurant managers can see where drivers are and where meals have been ordered in real-time. They can also see and adjust the areas where delivery is permitted, and adjust the fees for different delivery zones.
• Driver routing features – Some apps can direct delivery drivers to customers’ locations. They can even use existing map systems to account for things like traffic and suggest optimal routes.

Reports and Success Metrics

As we mentioned earlier, offering meal delivery can be unprofitable and even hurt your restaurant’s brand if you aren’t careful.

Make sure you have the tools to measure your success and expense so that you can recognize problems early and make the appropriate changes. Your delivery dashboard should shed light on things like profit margin, user engagement, customer loyalty, and customer satisfaction.

If the service starts to seem unprofitable, you can consider pivoting to a new cloud integrator, changing up your menu, adjusting your pricing, or otherwise making changes to your process to boost profitability.

Offering meal delivery can be unprofitable and even hurt your restaurant’s brand if you aren’t careful.

All of this can be a lot for restaurant owners to take on, to say the least.

Deciding to launch a delivery program is a lot of work, especially if you’re also going to finally adopt a cloud-based POS system to run the rest of your restaurant.

If you want to make sure that this work doesn’t distract from the job of running a restaurant — and that the software selection and implementation process goes as smoothly as possible — it’s a good idea to work with professionals.

At Cloudscape Technologies, we work with restaurant owners throughout the Middle East to identify the best cloud integrators for their unique needs. We then work on-site in person at their restaurant until the software is completely ready to use and the staff is fully trained.

To learn more, visit our web site or reach out and contact us.

Modern software saves hours of time and prevents errors when it comes to tracking cash and products.

However, many small business owners are still missing out on the power of cloud-based software for other super-helpful options, including managing their employees.

Managing human resources can be a time-consuming, detail-oriented job, from keeping track of employment records or making schedules. HR cloud systems can handle much of this kind of work easily.

Even better, the best HR programs can integrate with your POS and accounting software to make business ownership even easier — and provide more helpful insights.

Here are seven HR cloud system features that can save your business time and money.

Employee Records Management

Let’s start with perhaps the most obvious benefit of HR software: It allows you to keep all of your employee information and records, including emergency contact info, payment info, and other related documents in a secure, easily searchable, central place.

Most modern HR cloud systems also have self-service portals that allow employees to log in and make updates themselves, which can help improve the accuracy of your records and the efficiency of your system.

For example, if your employee changes their email address, phone number, or mailing address, they can simply log in and make the change on their own with no additional work needed on the administrative end.

Staff Scheduling

Scheduling retail employees and then managing those schedules has traditionally been one of the more difficult and tedious tasks that store managers have to contend with.

Manually making a schedule that takes everyone’s needs and preferences into account and makes sure that the right employees with the right skills are filling out each shift can easily take hours. Plus, schedules can shift and change at a moment’s notice when employees get sick or fail to come in.

With staff scheduling tools, employees always know their schedule because they can check it online at any time — plus, they can get automated reminders of shifts and alerts for changes.

They can also use the tools to request time off (which keeps automatic records). If they have to call off for a shift, scheduling programs can suggest and contact potential replacements and begin contacting them right away. Employees can even swap shifts on their own through the software with no need for management to get involved.

Some tools have an auto-schedule feature that factors in sales forecasts, bookings, expected foot traffic, and more.

These programs may also take fair employment laws into account to make sure that your business stays in compliance with them.

Time Clock / Punch Clock / Timesheet Management

Tracking employee check-ins and check-outs and tallying up total hours is the perfect job for software. There are plenty of simple programs that specialize in timesheets alone, but the most powerful programs come baked into more robust HR cloud systems with the features we just mentioned.

With many of these programs, employees can check in and out online with a convenient app. They also make it really simple for managers to review and approve timesheets, and can alert managers to potential overtime issues

Time clock software should also integrate with the program that handles your payroll so that issuing checks based on hours worked is simpler than ever. These programs can even account for regular hours, overtime hours, and double overtime hours and change the pay rate accordingly.

Hiring and Onboarding

If you run a small business with multiple locations or are experiencing a burst of growth, hiring can start to become a very distracting and time-consuming job.

In this case, you might really benefit from an applicant tracking feature in your HR software.

Some HR Cloud Systems, including Bamboo HR, make it easy for hiring managers to post jobs, track applicants, communicate with applicants throughout the hiring process, and send official job offers.

After the employee is hired, these programs may automatically take them through onboarding too. With these features, employees can electronically sign legal agreements, submit their banking and payroll information, and enroll in benefits.

Some HR cloud systems can also integrate with payroll or accounting software so that new employees are automatically added.

If you’re interested in the onboarding features without the hiring and applicant tracking features, onboarding features may be available soon in your scheduling program: Deputy, which is an industry leader in scheduling, is working on releasing onboarding features.

And, of course, all hiring and onboarding records and legal documents are stored securely online.

Employee Training

These HR cloud systems certainly don’t stop being useful once an employee is hired. Some of them actually make it easier for new employees to learn the ropes.

For example, the HR cloud system Planday integrates with an app called Flow, which offers training modules for common services industry roles such as bartender and server. New hires can use these modules to learn about cocktails and wine, for example. New servers can learn the basics about how to set a table, plate a dish, take orders from customers, and more.

However, in other cases, training new employees simply becomes easier with the help of a cloud-based POS system, whose electronic interface can take employees through new processes step by step and guide them along the way.

Task Management and Performance Management

Many HR systems have features that allow managers to track what employees have accomplished during each shift.

For example, Deputy has a task management feature that assigns tasks per shift and monitors which employees complete them.

If you connect your HR software to your POS system, you can see reports that combine sales and personnel data. This can lend additional insights into how many products employees sell per shift, for example, or how much revenue in sales each employee brings in over time.

Related post: How to Integrate Deputy HR Software With Vend

Finally, HR programs like BambooHR even incorporate automated performance management tools, which can make the review process much less painless.

Offboarding

Letting an employee go might be a relatively simple (yet never easy) task for most small businesses.

However, those with a growing number of employers will certainly appreciate the ability to offboard employees in a streamlined, compliant way in their HR Cloud System.

Certain tasks have been checked off the list when employees leave. For example, their keys may need to be collected, and they may need to have access to software disabled. There are also documentation requirements for departing employees that you might want to keep a record of in your system along with the employee’s other data.

Do You Have Questions?

A small retail or restaurant operation with just a few employees might not have a pressing need for all of these HR features.

But if your goal is to scale up, add locations, or hire more people in the future, at some point the cost of handling your HR work manually will become so great that investing in an HR cloud system will be a no-brainer.

HR cloud systems can be well worth the investment for rapidly growing businesses.

If you have more questions about how HR cloud systems integrate with point of sale systems, marketing software, inventory management software, and more, please reach out to us at Cloudscape Technologies. We specialize in helping restaurateurs and retailers choose and implement the best software systems on the market today and would be happy to discuss your business software needs.

The popularity and cost of each item on the menu has a direct impact on how much revenue your restaurant can bring in, and on whether your patrons will enjoy their dining experiences and keep coming back.

Thankfully, modern cloud point of sale systems and cloud software have made it easier than ever to analyze which parts of your menu are profitable and which parts need work, then test how improvements affect that profitability over time.

Here’s how restaurateurs can use modern restaurant software — which often incorporates POS, inventory management, accounting, and more — to optimize menu profitability.

Analyze Food and Ingredient Costs

The first step in analyzing menu profitability is to get a firm understanding of what your restaurant is spending on food. That requires calculating your Cost of Goods Sold.

As we wrote in our post Bookkeeping 101 for Restaurateurs, CoGS refers to the costs of producing the food and drink served to your customers in a given time period.

You can calculate it by totaling the cost of your existing food inventory and the cost of any inventory purchases during the specified time period, then subtracting the cost of the inventory you have left at the end of the period.

The good news is that if you’re using a cloud-based POS for system restaurants like Touchbistro or Lightspeed Restaurant, these calculations happen automatically. Assessing them is as simple as checking your software reports.

The analytics section of your software will show how much you’ve spent on each type of food, drink, and ingredient for any given time period.

However, you should keep in mind that these costs need to be revisited regularly to account for how food products change in price throughout the year. (A highly profitable menu item in the summer might not also be profitable in the winter, for example.)

In general, at a profitable restaurant, the food costs won’t be too much more than 30% of the restaurant’s total sales. But if you want to improve that ratio, you’ll have to drill down further to analyze the profitability of each dish on the menu.

Calculate Menu Item Profitability

As we’ve mentioned, your software’s inventory features should automatically calculate how much money your restaurant spends on food inventory.

But all of the best POS programs for restaurants can also calculate the food cost for each item on your menu.

Software users can group ingredients together to create menu items, and the software program will calculate the “plate cost” or “recipe cost.”

In fact, this need is so common that some software programs exist that are dedicated specifically to recipe costing.

Calculating the full cost of a menu item may also include calculating the labor cost for that dish or drink, or adding in other ancillary costs, such as a napkin for a cocktail or the dishes for the meal. Some meals are certainly more labor-intensive than others, or demand more specialized cutlery or serving ware, and that might factor into the profitability of each dish. Many POS systems can also track these costs.

Once you have the total plate cost for each menu item, it becomes much clearer which plates are profitable and which are losing money for the restaurant.

Some POS systems, including MarketMan, will actually alert users to unprofitable menu items (instead of waiting for users to find that information themselves).

Of course, losing a little money on some of the menu items might still be a good strategic move if it brings more customers into the restaurant or paves the way for diners to spend more during their visit. For that reason, this article on the Lightspeed Restaurant blog suggests analyzing the popularity of your menu dishes, as well, and grouping dishes in the following way:

Image Source: Lightspeed Restaurant

Troubleshoot Menu Profitability

As the infographic above begins to explain, you have plenty of options when it comes to optimizing the profitability of individual menu items. Here are a few of them:

• Try adjusting the price. Slight tweaks to an item’s price, either up or down, can have a big effect on its profitability and popularity.
• Decrease food costs as much as reasonably possible without sacrificing quality. You can change the menu throughout the year to take advantage of in-season produce, for example, or make sure you’re getting the best deals from your distributors by shopping around and buying in bulk when possible.
  Reduce the portion sizes. Ask servers whether any dishes are being returned to the kitchen with food left behind. Making the meal smaller may boost profitability.
• Try grouping different products together into meals or make them part of special dining experiences. Adding a drink or a side item to the total cost of an entree or reserving certain meals for a specialty menu just might change your customers’ perceived value of what they order.
• Remove the item from the menu. If a certain dish isn’t working despite multiple tweaks, it’s time to remove the item from the menu completely.
  

As you make changes to each menu item’s price and ingredients, you can keep using your cloud POS system’s analytics tools to see whether or not the changes paid off or affected its popularity. If your restaurant has multiple locations, you can even compare menu success from one location to the next within your POS reports to see how regional differences affect the success of various types of dishes.

Once you’ve figured out which menu items are the most profitable, it’s time to promote them as much as you can on your physical menu – or digital menu or website if you’re focused on online ordering. Modern POS systems make it easy to present your dishes in a beautiful way online and just as easy for customers to check out.

Ready to Leverage the Power of a Modern POS?

Menu optimization is just one of many jobs that modern restaurant software can handle quickly and accurately.

Today’s cloud-based software is powerful, but getting it all up and running can be a very distracting task for restaurant owners. In most cases, restaurants benefit from using several types of programs (POS, accounting, marketing, HR scheduling, etc.) and integrating them together to build a comprehensive system. Getting these systems online takes careful research and onboarding time.

Today’s cloud-based software is powerful, but getting it all up and running can be a very distracting task for restaurant owners.

At Cloudscape Technologies, our Dubai-based expert staff is certified in all of the best cloud-based software on the market. By working closely with restaurant owners to understand their unique needs, we can help recommend the best comprehensive software solutions. We even help set up your accounts and offer a Care Package complete with training for new staffers and responsive support for your implementation.

To learn more, contact us at Cloudscape Technologies today.

After all, checking out is the last thing customers do before they leave. If the checkout experience isn’t designed well, it can ruin an otherwise good impression.

Plus, checkout often presents the most opportunities for frustration during a store visit. Common stumbling blocks during checkout include long lines, awkward workflows, confused employees, and hardware malfunctions.

However, if you can execute an expert checkout process for your store, it will stand apart from competitors and keep customers coming back again and again.

For a good checkout experience, you’ll need well-trained, cheerful employees and a thoughtfully-designed checkout counter. But perhaps the biggest opportunity to improve the checkout process — the one that will make the biggest difference in checkout ease and speed — lies with your POS system. This is where the power of retail cloud integrators really comes into play.

Cloud-based point of sale systems can connect to staffing software and marketing software in unprecedented ways that make for the easiest and most pleasant checkout experiences possible.

Here are just a few of the ways that modern tools improve customers’ checkout experiences.

They help get staffing levels right

One of the most common causes of delays during checkout is understaffing. If there aren’t enough people on hand to process orders, a long line is inevitable.

State-of-the-art staff scheduling programs can integrate directly with POS software to estimate how many employees you should have on schedule at any given time of the day or week.

These integrators can use sales numbers from similar days in the past to gauge how many people will be necessary to keep checkout moving quickly. Some programs can even adjust the staffing estimates based on factors like the weather or special holidays.

HR programs also have features that make it less likely that an employee will cancel for their shift unexpectedly, leaving the store short-staffed. HR integrators like Deputy can start contacting qualified employees for a shift replacement as soon as an employee notifies that they won’t be able to make their scheduled shift.

Related post: 6 Reasons Your Small Business Should be Using Staff Scheduling Software

They make it easy to open extra registers

Most modern POS systems run on tablets.

That means that opening a new register is as simple as powering on an additional tablet and clicking a few buttons.

It also often means that employees don’t have to stay behind the checkout counter. If it’s more convenient for your sales team, they can take their POS-software-loaded tablet and check customers out from any point in the store. For example, if a long line begins to form, an employee might choose to grab an additional tablet and offer to check out people who are paying by credit card from right where they’re standing.

They allow more purchasing options

Customers might be able to skip the checkout line entirely if they order and pay online. Most modern retail cloud integrators are fully equipped for omnichannel retail, which includes the ability for customers to ship their orders to the store or order online and pick up in-store instead of opting for shipping.

This feature can be especially convenient for customers who don’t want to spend the time navigating aisles looking for their favorite products, or those who are pressed for time and like to get their order lined up outside of regular business hours.

They get rid of paper (and the related headaches)

Put simply, paper receipts complicate the checkout process.

First, there are the extra worries about the physical equipment — whether or not the receipt printer will run out of paper or ink, for example, or require other maintenance. Even simply waiting for the paper to print out and handing it to the customer adds a few seconds to each transaction, which can really add up over the course of weeks and months.

New cloud integrators allow stores to give customers the option of getting receipts by email instead of in paper form. Stores can even collect signatures for credit card payments digitally via tablet instead of handing customers a paper to sign — which is another significant time-saving opportunity.

In fact, while they’re signing for the transaction, the customer can decide whether or not they want to receive a receipt by paper or email, or skip the receipts all together — all via the checkout tablet.

They make it quick and easy for customers to join loyalty programs

Asking customers to join your email list or keep in touch with you via email as they check out is a very valuable marketing opportunity that you don’t want to miss.

However, asking each of your customers these kinds of opt-in questions at the point of checkout can seriously slow down the checkout process. Plus, it can be awkward to ask customers to spell their names and personal information in clear earshot of everyone waiting behind them.

With modern point-of-sale systems, customers can quickly and privately type their email addresses and update their personal information quickly as the sales associate is completing their order.

They make checkout easier for staff

Modern point of sale systems does much more than the simple cash registers that were designed to simply calculate transactions and keep financial records.

Today’s cloud integrators make the checkout process more pleasant not just for customers (who will appreciate features like self-checkout, online ordering, and digital receipts) but also for the staff using the system.

Cloud integrators make checkout easier for both customers and employees.

For example, the workflows loaded into the software can take employees through common checkout scenarios step by step, reducing the odds that they’ll need to stop and ask for help.  These workflows also make it difficult for employees to miss anything important during the checkout process.

When a POS system is easier for employees, the checkout will run more smoothly. Plus, when new staff members can learn the ropes quickly, the business saves valuable money and onboarding energy.

The Bottom Line

Small business owners are smart to keep many of their expenses low. And at first, opting for cash registers instead of modern retail cloud integrators can seem like a big savings opportunity.

But investments in modern software pay off over time in things like better check-out speeds and improved customer experience.

If you’re considering investing in modern software at your store, we hope you reach out to us at Cloudscape Technologies. We’ll recommend, procure and install all the tools your frontline and back-office employees need to make sales and delight customers. To learn more about what we offer retailers, start here.

But they’re not truly making the most of all of that time and energy unless they’re also working to maximize average transaction values.

Encouraging customers who are already making a purchase to buy more is one of the simplest and best ways to boost revenue. When done right, efforts to boost transaction values can actually improve customer satisfaction as well as profits.

Here are some of the best ways to increase purchase values in your store.

Leverage Upsell and Cross-Sell Tactics

Convincing customers to buy more doesn’t mean being disingenuous, and it doesn’t have to come across as sleazy.

The best upsells and cross-sells are all about anticipating what your customers actually need and getting to the bottom of why they came into your store. It’s about making customers’ lives easier and adding value to their experience.

As you probably already know, upselling is the act of recommending upgrades or higher-quality versions of a certain product, and cross-selling is the act of selling products that are related to the others in a purchase.

Here are a few ways that upsells and cross-sells could play out in your store:

• Comparing product quality or life expectancy – Perhaps a certain product is more expensive upfront than its alternatives, but it won’t wear out as quickly, which makes it less expensive in the long-run. Similarly, the purchase of a more expensive product whose brand offers warranties can provide a much bigger payoff if repairs or a replacement is required (and also offers more peace of mind for the buyer).
• Highlighting valuable or money-saving features of comparatively expensive products – For example, a more expensive light bulb or appliance might use less energy, which decreases a customer’s energy bills over time. Similarly, one product that’s less expensive upfront might require more expensive complementary products, such as refills or batteries, making it much more expensive over time.
• Focusing on customer end goals – If you see that a customer is purchasing something for a certain purpose, you can suggest other, complementary products to make sure that they have everything they need. For example, if they’re coming in to buy hiking boots for an upcoming trip, you might be able to suggest hiking socks or even other related items, such as camping supplies. If you run a boutique, you can suggest accessories such as jewelry or other clothes that will make their purchase a complete outfit. At a hardware store, asking the customer what project they’re working on can give your employees a chance to suggest the other tools they need to complete the job.

Offer Employees Tools and Training

Although clever displays and store design can help promote higher quality and complementary products, upsells and cross-sells are difficult to pull off without the help of knowledgeable employees.

Ideally, you’ll have hired people who have personal experience using the products you sell, or who have a personal interest in how the brands and products work. However, even if they don’t have personal experience with products, they can gain in-depth knowledge with enough training and education. That’s a responsibility that falls to a store owner or manager.

Keep all of your sales floor employees in the loop on any new products that you’re adding to the shelves, and make sure they understand how the new products work and compare to other products — both the ones in the store and others available elsewhere.

Modern POS systems for retailers can help in this regard. These programs can suggest related products as employees are helping customers on the sales floor. They can also remind employees to ask certain questions or make certain offers during the checkout process.

Display Products Thoughtfully

As you probably already know, the way you position and display products in your store can make a big difference in customers’ buying behavior.

First of all, your store’s products should be arranged and displayed in an appealing and clear way so that customers can easily see what you have to offer and find what they’re looking for quickly.

However, as we’ve mentioned, positioning complementary items next to each other in the store can also boost sales. For example, you could position party supplies, small gifts, or holiday-themed items near the greeting cards. Or, you could stock facial tissues next to the cold and flu remedies. This kind of positioning can encourage people to buy more, but it can also help customers find what they need and enjoy their shopping experience.

If you use a cloud-based POS system, you can use your reporting system to analyze which types of product tend to be purchased together.

Another simple and very effective sales-boosting tactic is to keep small, universally useful impulse buys near the checkout counter so that customers can grab one as they’re checking out.

Offer Well-Timed Promotions

You can also encourage customers to purchase more by occasionally offering classic promotions such as buy-one-get-one-free, or percentage discounts that increase with the number of products purchased.

These discounts may convince them that they can indeed afford to spend a little more or encourage your customers to stock up now and save themselves an extra trip later.

With the right POS software, you can experiment with different promotions and track which ones performed the best, controlling for factors like the time of the week or year.

Promote Your Loyalty Program

When customers know that they’ll earn loyalty points with each purchase they make at your store, they’ll feel more comfortable spending more each time they come in. After all, with a compelling rewards program, spending money means that they can expect to save money later.

This is especially true when you use a modern POS program that makes it easy for customers to see how many points they’ve earned and reach out to them with chances to earn more points that are customized to their interests.

Join this recorded masterclass where we talk about how to leverage loyalty with Vend.

Encourage In-Store Pickup

If you sell your products online in addition to your physical store, make sure you give customers the option to avoid shipping costs by picking up their purchases in the store for free.

Then, when your customers come into the store, they may pick up a few other products for the sake of convenience (and thanks to your keen merchandising skills), which results in a larger overall purchase.

Any modern POS system with omnichannel selling features should be able to handle this task easily.

The Importance of POS Software

It’s tough to know whether or not your in-store-transaction-value-boosting tactics are working if you aren’t using the right software.

Not only do modern, cloud-based POS tools make it easy to run promotions and loyalty programs and sell both in-store and online, they also give retailers unprecedented access to sales data.

Because cloud-based software runs via the internet, multiple registers from multiple store locations across the world can sync up in real-time. This data is displayed on user-friendly dashboards that show sales, profitability, and KPIs like average transaction value.

If you’re interested in switching to cloud-based software for your retail store, please reach out to us at Cloudscape Technologies. Cloudscape was built with love in Dubai by tech geeks and retail veterans on a mission: helping retail store and restaurant owners do more with modern technology.

We can help you find the right combination of cloud-based software programs for your store, and then we can help you implement those programs and train your staff on them.

Check out our site for more information or to book a call.

It can take hours to finally come up with a schedule that respects everyone’s preferences and skill levels — and even then, managers have to contend with last-minute changes and cancellations from staff that can require them to completely rework the schedule.

Even when managers finally come up with a schedule that seems to satisfy employees and keep up with customers’ needs, the timesheet-related headaches don’t end. Managers have to worry about whether they’ve made any mistakes that can get them in trouble with local regulations — such as letting employees skip breaks or work too many hours.

Thankfully, cloud-based software solutions have stepped in to make staff scheduling much easier than it used to be. If your small business isn’t using staff scheduling software yet, here are a few reasons to consider it.

Better Timesheet Management (and Compliance)

You probably already know that modern scheduling apps make it simple for employees to clock in and clock out via touchscreen.

But today’s apps are much “smarter” than the passive stamping mechanisms that used to be the norm for tracking employee time. Scheduling apps can also track an employee’s locations via GPS and use facial recognition to make sure check-ins are authentic. They can also prevent early or off-schedule check-ins, and they can automatically clock staff out after a shift if necessary.

As you can imagine, all of these can save employers plenty of confusion, work, and money.

Because scheduling software apps are run by entire teams specializing in scheduling, they’re well-informed on all the latest changes to employment law and how those changes may affect scheduling requirements. These apps can enforce staff breaks, prevent early returns from breaks, and monitor schedules for things like opens, split shifts, and spread of hours that violate local regulations (or just make life difficult for employees).

Plus, managers are always notified in real-time when employees check in and out, and they can approve or edit check-ins and check-outs easily from their own devices as they happen, which tends to make reports and payroll more accurate. In fact, managers can see at a glance who’s on shift, who’s running late, and who’s on break at any given moment, which gives them insights into operations that they can’t get with manual time clocks.

Better Staff Communication and Schedule Changes

When staff scheduling happens manually, with a spreadsheet or even with an old-fashioned paper calendar stuck to a bulletin board in the breakroom, there’s lots of room for confusion and error. Employees can misread the calendar, fail to notice updates, or simply forget which hours they are expected to work.

With modern scheduling software, those problems are all but obsolete. From any internet-connected device, staffers can check their schedules remotely, request time off, and easily send each other messages about their schedules. They are immediately notified of any schedule changes and reminded of upcoming shifts.

Gone are the days when employees and managers had to scramble to find updated contact information for people who can fill in for someone missing a shift. For example, Deputy can automatically suggest shift replacements AND start contacting those potential replacements as soon as someone notifies that they’ll be missing a scheduled shift.

In many cases, employees can swap shifts on their own through the software with no need for management to get involved. Imagine what else managers could be doing with all of that saved time!

Integrated Task Management

Modern scheduling software often comes with a task management app built-in (or available as a complimentary service).

Managers can create sets of tasks for each shift, and employees can check them off as they are completed.  With this kind of technology, there’s always a record of which employees did which work. The software can even remind employees to complete certain tasks throughout their shifts.

Managers can group tasks together, create new tasks from templates, and schedule tasks to repeat at certain intervals. They may also be able to add notes or checklists to tasks, which can be helpful for training.

Dynamic views make it easy for managers to see how many tasks still need to be completed for the shift. For example, Deputy users can view all shift tasks on a handy, traffic-light-color-coded dashboard.

Easier, Quicker Scheduling

As we mentioned before, coming up with an employee schedule manually is a difficult task that used to take hours.

That’s why auto-scheduling is one of the biggest selling points of today’s cloud-based scheduling software.

Auto-schedule can factor in sales forecasts, bookings, and expected foot traffic to anticipate staffing needs. (If you have the enterprise version of Deputy, it can even use third-party data to inform how the weather or other major events will affect your staffing needs.)

Because employees’ skills and hourly pay rates are tracked in the software, the software “knows” which employees can work each shift, and can make a schedule prioritizing the lowest cost. These apps can also manage employee time-off requests, so the automated schedules will take those leave requests into account when making schedules, too.

Yet another bonus with auto-scheduling is that there’s less room for accusations of bias or favoritism when a computer is doing the heavy lifting of scheduling.

Easier Payroll

The best scheduling software on the market often integrates directly with the most popular payroll software. That means that each employee’s hours worked, including their regular hours, overtime hours, and even double overtime hours will populate directly in payroll. This makes it easier than ever for managers to cut their employees’ checks — another task that used to take hours.

Better Data and Insights

Even on their own, scheduling software can yield plenty of insights. For example, managers can easily compare their planned schedule to what actually happened (the actual timesheet hours vs. the planned hours), and dive into how much each shift costs.

However, perhaps the most powerful asset of today’s cloud-based scheduling software is its ability to connect to other cloud-based software — and yield tons of helpful insights as a result.

The most powerful asset of today’s cloud-based scheduling software is its ability to connect to other cloud-based software.

Specifically, scheduling software can integrate with POS systems and accounting software, which enables managers to couple financial data and product sales data with employee activity. This means that managers can see how all of those things are related to employees’ skills and activities, and to the staffing budget.

For example, when sales data is overlaid with staff data, you can know if you’re over-scheduling or under-scheduling. You can dive into what specific employees are selling, and how that varies per shift.

And because these machines run on the cloud and are synced up constantly, managers can access this kind of data in real-time. Even if they’re managing multiple stores or restaurant locations, they can see comprehensive data or compare locations to each other.

Starting with Scheduling Software

So, are you ready to try scheduling software at your own restaurant or store? We can help.  In fact, we’ve personally worked with retailers who have saved 7 hours of work each week after implementing scheduling software.

Cloudscape Technologies specializes in empowering retailers and restaurateurs in the Middle East to build cloud-based software solutions. We recommend and implement best-in-market software that takes their businesses to the next level.

We can show you how scheduling software can work with POS, accounting, and payroll systems to make management easier than you had ever imagined. Contact us today to learn more about how we can equip your store or restaurant with the best cloud-based software tools on the market.

Opening a new restaurant location is a big undertaking and requires a lot of research and planning, as we wrote in our post Considering Opening a Second Restaurant Location? Here’s What You Should Know.

But even if you’re not ready to expand anytime soon, choosing software programs that are equipped to handle an eventual expansion is a smart move. Trying to switch your POS, accounting, and inventory software to accommodate your growth in the midst of an expansion is an unnecessary headache — especially because there are so many top-of-the-line, growth-friendly programs on the market today.

Cloud systems, in particular, have plenty of advantages over legacy software or ERP systems, which are usually too complex and expensive for the needs of the average restaurateur. By contrast, with cloud-based software, restaurateurs can get started without any significant upfront costs and can add more features over time.

So, if you’re searching for restaurant software that’s growth-friendly, here are five questions to ask as you evaluate your options:

How easy is it to add a new restaurant location?

This is perhaps the simplest step in evaluating a software program’s ability to handle your restaurant’s operations as you scale up. Even though you’ll only have to add each new location one time, it can be a big undertaking if the task isn’t automated. Some restaurateurs may even find themselves in a period of rapid growth, adding many locations at once. They’ll find the ability to quickly add new locations especially valuable.

In fact, one of our Cloudscape Technologies clients who started with a single location and has since grown to 16 locations in just a few years told us that setting up the tech for a new store used to take a full day — and now it just takes 20 minutes.

The restaurant POS programs on the market make it possible to duplicate everything (menus, hours, inventory, etc.) from your existing location to the new one, then make modifications for each new location as necessary.

Can managers access data from all locations in one place?

We’ve come a long way from the days when transaction records were stored on individual cash registers. With that kind of hardware, data and cash had to be reconciled with the other registers for managers to get a clear idea of how much money they were making.

These days, the best POS software on the market for restaurants makes it easy to not only see how each register and employee is doing in real-time, but how each restaurant location is doing.

Managers should be able to see financial and operational data from multiple restaurant locations in real-time easily, both combined and individually, and see how locations compare to one another for any given metric.

As you’re checking out software options, ask to see samples of dashboards for restaurants with multiple locations.

How are common management tasks handled across multiple locations?

Thanks to modern software, today’s restaurateurs are able to make changes to their restaurants across the board for every location they own.

And because modern software is hosted by professional hosting companies and accessible via the internet, owners and managers can make these changes from anywhere — whether they’re sitting on their couch at home or even across the ocean from their restaurants.

Managers should be able to make changes to menus, or to employee and vendor data, easily across the board. For example, when an employee account is added or removed, it should also be added or removed completely from all locations or just from single locations.

Related post: 5 Mistakes Restaurateurs Make When Choosing a POS System

Managers from any location should be able to access employee details such as contact information, training records, hourly pay rate, evaluation history, and special skills. Employees should indicate which locations they are available to work, and see one schedule for all locations (and not separate schedules for each one).

For their part, managers of any location should be able to access any employee details that could affect their scheduling, such as experience level or age.

How consistent is the customer experience across multiple locations?

Especially if your locations are located within a reasonable distance of each other, your customers may visit various locations throughout their relationship with your company.

If you have a marketing system in place for your customers, they should be able to earn loyalty points and rewards from any location. If you track their activity, they should also be able to view their purchases and dining histories for all locations in the same place. (This is also helpful for managers and marketers trying to get a clearer idea of each customer’s relationship with your restaurant).

A consistent customer experience is also important when it comes to gift cards. Your customers should be able to purchase a gift card online or at any individual restaurant location with confidence that they can use it at any location.

Don’t forget that with growth often comes new ideas about how to diversify your income. If you ever hope to sell a few retail retail products in your restaurants(such as branded apparel and merchandise or signature food and beverage products), your customers should also get a consistent experience for those purchases. That means being able to see retail purchases alongside dining purchases, and being able to use gift cards for retail purchases in addition to dining purchases.

Someday you might also want to be able to sell your signature products online, too — and modern software should be able to handle that easily when the time comes.

Choosing Software Can Be a Challenge

The bottom line is that scalability and growth are an inherent part of a restaurant business. Technology should facilitate that and not impede it.

Technology changes all the time and sifting through various options available to find the right system for your restaurant can be a huge distraction. That’s why more restaurant owners are choosing to leverage the expertise of cloud system experts like those at Cloudscape Technologies.

Scalability and growth are an inherent part of a restaurant business. Technology should facilitate that and not impede it.

Check out our full guide on modern technology systems for restaurants – part 1 and part 2

Cloudscape was built with love in Dubai by retail veterans on a mission: helping inventory-based business owners do more with modern technology. Our team is certified with industry-leading software vendors to make sure that your new cloud-based systems are fully up and running, and that your staff knows exactly how to use them.

We love to help restaurant owners see the enormous time savings that cloud-based software can provide. Click here to get in touch with us.

If so, congratulations are in order. A bustling restaurant with a full dining room and lines of people waiting for reservations can be exciting. You may have always dreamed of expanding your restaurant and watching it grow into even more communities, and your opportunity to do that might be at hand.

The knowledge and experience you gained from opening your restaurant’s first location will make opening another one a bit easier in some ways. But in other ways, each new restaurant is a very unique experience. Its different location and different staff can make it a completely different challenge than your first restaurant. Plus, owners and upper-level managers will have to deal with a new and expanded set of responsibilities.

It pays to be cautious. Too many missteps in opening a second restaurant location can start to affect the success of the original location, either in the form of wasted cash or damage to your restaurant’s brand.

Here’s what you need to know before you consider opening a second restaurant location.

You Need a Business Plan

You should approach your new location as an entirely new business, and plan for it with the same diligence you did with your first restaurant location. As we explained in our post on opening a new restaurant, that means taking the following steps.

• Clarify its place in the market – You can’t locate your new spot too close to the old one, or the locations might compete with one another. But if the new location is in a completely different neighborhood, your clients and culture might change. Will you give the new restaurant location a little bit of its own character, or do you want to replicate the original location exactly? These kinds of questions will affect how you plan your menu and build the rest of your marketing and business plan.
• Nail down the costs. Don’t make any assumptions about the new location when it comes to the costs of things like insurance, staffing, marketing, and construction. A new building can have a vastly different infrastructure with very different expenses. Marketing your new location could possibly be a little easier thanks to brand recognition from your past location — but it all depends on how far apart the locations are and how well-known your original location is. And there may be added complexities when it comes to procuring the food and materials you need to operate in the new location. Be thorough as you make your plan so you can make sure you have the capital required.
• Project revenue and profitability – A new location with a different seating capacity, different food costs, and a different staff will certainly have different revenue and profitability projections. You need to know exactly what your new restaurant needs to succeed financially, independent of your original location.

You Need the Right Team in Place

If your restaurant is doing so well right now that you’re considering expanding, the odds are good that you have a solid team in place at your original restaurant location.

However, you should prepare for the fact that adding a new location can change the dynamics of that team, and in some cases it can even be a blow to morale.

There will necessarily be changes in job responsibilities as your restaurant expands. Owners will be managing a larger staff and have a whole new set of logistical responsibilities to contend with, which means they won’t have the same amount of time and energy to deal with their responsibilities of day-to-day restaurant management.

They may decide to promote someone to handle those responsibilities and assist them, which can shake up existing management structures. Many restaurateurs also decide to move existing employees to the new location so that they can bring some of the original location’s experience and culture.

Depending on how this is handled, this can cause problems. Some staffers may feel neglected or left out if they aren’t asked to be a part of the new location, and others may resent things like a new commute, a new boss, or parking requirements at the new location.

To prevent these kinds of stumbling blocks and keep morale high, let your restaurant team know about plans well in advance and involve them in decisions if possible. Anticipate how moving some of the staff will make the rest of your team feel and try to address those feelings in advance.

You Need Scalable Software Tools

For modern restaurants, the backbone of all restaurant operations is a cloud-based point of sale system. The POS system connects with accounting, inventory, and marketing apps to create a comprehensive web-based system to run the entire restaurant.

The top POS systems on the market today allow restaurateurs to scale up quickly and handle multiple locations easily and centrally.

Your POS system should be able to handle the following when it comes to multiple locations:

• Reports – Managers should be able to see financial and operational data from multiple locations in real-time easily, both combined and individually.
• Staff – Employee accounts should be available in the systems for both restaurant locations. Their skills and personal details, once entered, should be accessible to managers at any location.
• Menus – It should be simple for restaurant owners to duplicate menus for each new restaurant location, but also make menu modifications for new locations as necessary.
• Customer accounts – If you have a marketing system in place for your customers, their loyalty points, rewards, purchases, and dining histories should be consistent for all-new locations.
• Gift cards – Restaurant patrons should be able to purchase a gift card online or at any individual restaurant location with confidence that they can use it at any location.
• Add-ons and integrations – Part of the beauty of modern, cloud-based software is its ability to connect with an ever-growing number of software tools. Restaurateurs are connecting their POS systems to everything from staff scheduling software to web stores to sell their gift cards and branded merchandise online. These apps might not scale as well as the bigger, more robust POS systems that they’re integrated with. That’s something you need to know before you get ready to add a new location.

This may sound a little complicated.

However, don’t be fooled into thinking that your restaurant requires an expensive, complicated ERP system to handle these software needs as you grow.

Every restaurant owner should be keeping a close eye on overhead costs, and ERP systems often require a large upfront investment. Plus, in many cases, ERP systems are bulky and unnecessary for your needs.

In comparison, modern POS software is nimble and scalable, and you can buy more as your business grows. Just because a software program is bigger or more expensive doesn’t mean it’s better.

If you’re concerned about the ability of your existing software to scale with your restaurant, we hope you contact us at Cloudscape Technologies.

We specialize in empowering restaurateurs to install and implement the best cloud-based solutions on the market today. We even install the software on-site and support you through onboarding. Our goal is to empower restaurant owners to continue focusing on the work of growing their restaurants while we handle the huge project of getting your software completely up and running.

Click here to learn more about our services for restaurants.

In older software programs, you can physically see exactly where your data is stored: on your local machine. In that model, it seemed that you just had to make sure that your physical computers stayed safe and you could be guaranteed that your data would stay right there.

In comparison, cloud-based software’s internet connections seem to make your data susceptible to every hacker in the world who can access your data from any remote location globally.

However, in most cases, data stored on cloud-based software is actually much safer than data stored in older software models.

Among other reasons, this is because the latest cloud-based programs are run by companies that have tons of resources to dedicate to security and because local networks are still vulnerable to the same kind of internet threats that cloud-based programs are.

Here’s everything you need to know when it comes to cloud-based software security.

Cloud Computing Security 101

Technically, “cloud computing” only requires two things: a data server (a computer) and an internet connection. You can create a private cloud in your home or office, for example, to store shared data for everyone who is connected to your wireless internet network to access.

However, when most people use the term “cloud-based software” these days, they’re referring to the services that are hosted completely off-site.

When you use cloud-based software, your data is sent from the device in front of you to the on-site router, usually wirelessly, and then the router sends the info via cable to your local internet service provider. The data then sends it along to the off-site destination server that’s hosted by the company that owns your software.

Your info is stored there until you want to retrieve it again, at which point it travels back to your local device via a similar route on the internet.

It’s easy to assume that sending your data across the country, region or world would put it at more risk, but that’s not actually true. Your data is still very much susceptible to hackers as long as your local computers are connected to the internet and your employees are using the internet regularly.

Most employers know that they need to secure their local network with an encrypted password. But as an increasing number of devices such as smart speakers, smart doorbells, and smart security systems connect to the internet via local wireless networks, hackers can find new ways to exploit your personal information. And if your employees click suspicious links or fall prey to phishing scams in their email, their computers could become infected with malware that can give hackers access to your network too.

Digital Security Needs for Small Businesses

It may seem like hackers mostly target big companies because they have so much more valuable personal data than small businesses. However, those cases just tend to make the headlines more often. In fact, small businesses may make even more appealing targets for hackers, because hackers know they don’t have the same level of resources to devote to security.

According to a 2015 statement by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, “for every high-profile breach, there are many more threats to confidential data held by local businesses.”

Unfortunately, as this Denver Post article explains, these kinds of hacks can be especially harmful to smaller businesses. In fact, 60% of businesses that suffer a cyber attack are out of business within six months.

Advantages of Modern Cloud-Based Software over Locally Installed Software

So, we’ve established that small businesses can be the targets of cybercriminals and that storing data on a local server isn’t risk-free. But there are other unique security advantages to using cloud software that you definitely need to consider.

Easier hardware maintenance. When you store software locally on-site at your business, you must have someone technical on hand to make sure hardware is updated and is working properly. You’ll also have to make sure that your machines can handle an increasing amount of data as your business grows over time. In comparison, cloud-based software takes all of the responsibility for maintaining hardware, increasing storage, and updating software completely off of your hands.

Redundancy. Most modern software programs are hosted with companies like Amazon Web Services, which store your data in multiple places instead of just one. Because their networks of servers are distributed strategically throughout the world, even major disasters or power outages won’t affect your ability to access data.

Digital security. Almost all modern cloud-based software encrypts data both “in motion” and “at rest.” They use an https connection to make sure that no one can access data while it’s traveling across the internet. Cloud-based software programs also use industry best practices for security and authentication protocols to make sure no one gets unauthorized access to your files. When you use cloud-based software, you’re taking advantage of professionals who are fully dedicated to the task of keeping data safe from the latest threats — and that’s a resource that small businesses simply don’t have.

Physical security. When most people think about protecting their data, they think of digital security. However, your data is also super vulnerable to physical theft and damage. In some cases, all it would take to compromise your company’s most valuable data is for one of your employee’s laptops or personal electronic devices to be stolen. And unless you have the resources to employ top-of-the-line security cameras and live security staff, your data is likely more vulnerable to physical threats when it’s stored on-site at your business than it is with a professional software company that’s completely dedicated to keeping your data safe and secure.

A Reality Check

This is your business. It’s your income — how you support yourself and your family. And for most people, it represents years of work and has even become part of your identity. It makes sense for business owners to be wary of sending their information around the world on the internet, especially when data breach news is broadcast every day.

However, the fact is that you’re probably already sending your most personal information over the internet regularly and with a very little security risk.

Do you use a banking app for your personal finances? Or, do you log on to your banking website, to pay bills or transfer money among your accounts? If so, some of your most sensitive data is already traveling over the internet regularly.

You’re probably already sending your most personal information over the internet regularly and with a very little security risk.

With this in mind, we invite you to consider using modern cloud-based software for your local business. Besides the enhanced security, cloud-based software has many other powerful features. For example, it can integrate with other specialized cloud-based programs that come together to create a comprehensive software solution for your small business. And as a business owner, you can get real-time data from all your locations and from each individual register.

Ready to learn more? Cloudscape Technologies specializes in helping retailers and restaurateurs select and implement the best cloud-based programs on the market. We have helped small businesses all over the Middle East to train employees on the new software — and we are available for support when you need it.

Click here to learn more about our solutions.