Most consumers today expect retailers to accept contactless payments. The benefits of having a contactless terminal can be an advantage not only to customers but to businesses as well.

What does it mean to go contactless?

To process contactless transactions, retailers must have an NFC card-friendly point of sale (POS) system. Most newer POS systems will have a built-in NFC reader that seamlessly handles Android Pay, Apple Pay, and other NFC payment platforms.

For customers, contactless payments provide a faster, more secure way to pay. For merchants, contactless payments deliver a dramatic reduction in staff intervention when using a pay terminal, as well as a decrease in cash and receipt handling.

What is in it for consumers?

Safer transactions

The pandemic has had a significant impact on the adoption of contactless-enabled cards and mobile wallets such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, etc. Many consumers prefer to use payment forms that allow them to avoid touching a keypad or handling money.

Convenience

Quicker transactions, shorter wait times at checkout, and the removal of handling cash or entering PIN numbers are certainly viewed as significant advantages to contactless payment.

Enhanced security

The reliability and security of “tap-and-go” technology offers customers peace-of-mind. The chip technology protects consumers against any fraudulent purchases through advanced encryption and dynamic data technologies. When consumers opt to use a mobile wallet option, they have another advantage. If the phone is lost, one command sent to the phone will reset the phone and destroy access to all payment methods. That is certainly easier than calling several credit card companies to notify them of lost cards.

What is in it for retailers?

Safer transactions

To help protect consumer and employee health, retailers are encouraging consumers to use low-touch or no-touch forms of payment whenever possible.

Better customer experience

Retailers offering contactless payment provide a smoother and quicker checkout experience to their customers. Loyalty programs can be in sync with mobile contactless payment functions on their devices so customers can automatically accumulate loyalty points while paying for purchases. What’s more, customers do not have to limit their purchases based on their cash-on-hand.

Increased operational efficiency

Adopting tap-and-go technology is faster. Contactless payments reduce the time that staff spend on operating card machines or managing cash transactions.

Fraud protection

The cryptograms validated on chip-enabled transactions are difficult to replicate, which increases transaction security and reduces fraud. With the introduction of the EMV chip, contactless payment technology is encrypted. When the customer taps, account information and a one-time-only code is transmitted from the card or device to the reader across a highly secure link in just a fraction of a second.

Let’s connect.

Mastercard announced a new mandate that required all contactless readers to support the Contactless Terminal Specification version 3.0 (MCL 3.0) by Dec. 31, 2021. Are you ready? ACCEO would like to assist you in meeting this deadline and allow you to take advantage of all the benefits that contactless payment can offer. To learn more, please contact your Account Executive.

Today, businesses can no longer afford to operate various channels in silos and need to make the right investments to thrive and survive. By integrating your online presence with your physical operations, you could give your business that competitive edge.

A unified commerce strategy will help support your success in empowering your employees, driving sales, and increasing store traffic throughout the year.

5 key benefits of a Web integration

Manage all your sales channels centrally

Inventory, orders, and customer data are managed globally and in real-time.

Customer interaction is seamless across all your sales channels. An integrated solution provides a complete view of all previous retail and web purchases and tracks loyalty (points, dollars, etc.).

Tailor your offering

A Web integration seamlessly allows you to manage inventory, assortment, and allocation across channels. Gain control over pricing and manage omnichannel sales with ease.

By implementing endless aisles, you can also give customers access to a wider selection of products online without constraints such as floor space.

Create a cohesive experience

A Web integration provides the opportunity to create a cohesive customer experience in-store and online.

Timely customer notifications, such as order confirmation, order being processed, order ready for pickup, indicates that your business is engaged in and focused on streamlining the purchase experience for its customers.

Drive up sales with curbside and store pickup

A unique and memorable buy online and pick up in-store experience could turn out to be the biggest driver to get online customers into your physical store.

Focus on removing or at least minimizing trouble spots (both outside and inside the store) that can be perceived as inconvenient or time-consuming by customers: dedicated parking spots, placing a pickup kiosk or lockers in a practical location in the store, and displaying pickup signage.

Gain real-time access to performance indicators

With all the information you need in one place, analyze data fast for actionable insights and track your key performance indicators (KPIs).

Spend less time poring over spreadsheets and pulling outdated reports. See the whole picture in minutes in order to assess business performance, monitor trends, and identify improvement opportunities.

Preparation favours success

Fast growing as online sales may be, e-business profitability is by no means systematic. Lured by the promise of financial gain, many businesses venture into online sales without taking the time to plan out the process or the structure of their site.

• What is your business vision?
• What are your goals?
• What is your target audience?
• What advantages does it offer your customers?
• What are the impacts on your existing IT systems and operations?

Proactively planning a strategy that integrates both your online and brick and mortar business, will maximize your chances of success.

Contact us to learn more about the solutions that fits your current needs and your business vision for the future.

From setting up the business to running it like a pro, businesses need to maximize time and efficiency.

Invoicing is an essential part of managing a company’s cash flow. Since most of a company’s revenues rely on invoicing, inadequate invoicing could seriously compromise a company’s ability to pay its operating expenses.

See how the ACCEO integrated management software solutions and services can help save you time and money every month on your end-of-month accounting operations.

How to streamline your accounting processes

Optimize billing management

Paper invoicing and sending account statements by mail is a little old-fashioned. If you mail statements,  the process can take you hours or even days to print invoices, stuff envelopes, and apply postage.

With an integrated software solution such as ACCEO Dokmail and ActiveFax, you can email statements and invoices instead, helping you get paid faster while saving significant time and expenses. Combined, these solutions give your customers 24-hour access to receive and review their documents online. It will not only increase employee productivity, but also decrease your costs, while making a difference for the environment.

Learn more about the solutions and see how you could optimize billing management for you and your customers.

Electronically manage accounts payables (AP)

In 2020, we introduced our new Electronic Supplier Payment Management integration with features to optimize supplier payment processes for businesses like yours!

It is now time to move away from the outdated payment method of processing cheques in-house. Electronic payments are more efficient and easier to trace, and they provide more control over the payment process, which means you will also be paid faster.

Our integrated electronic supplier payment management solution allows you to review invoices, track payments, and resolve disputes electronically rather than through manual follow-up.

Key benefits include:

• Remove the potential for cheque fraud and enjoy the freedom to approve payments from anywhere, at any time using the secure web portal.
• Eliminate cheques and reduce processing and labour costs by conveniently making Electronic Funds Transfers (EFT) directly from your accounting system.
• Quickly manage batch payments, payment submissions, and approvals. Eliminate double entry between your banking system and your solution.

Manually checking transactions one by one is a long process that also comes with a major risk of making mistakes as well. A bank reconciliation that takes several hours to carry out manually can be settled automatically in just a few minutes. Learn more about the solution and see how you could save time and money.

Benefit from mobile technologies

Often presented as an application, mobile technology can help you save paper by accelerating your billing and payment process, by delivering a superior customer experience, and by facilitating management of your inventory and deliveries.

For example, mobile applications and devices already greatly facilitate the work of employees on the floor, or on the road and have a positive impact on the profitability of businesses that use these new technologies. Once you try it, you will no longer be able to do without it.

Reassess your current processes

For each of your business processes, there is a solution that can lighten your workload while making you more efficient. It is therefore important to take the time to find solutions that meet your needs and to reassess their effectiveness throughout the years.

Whether you simply want to make sure that your ACCEO software configuration is optimized for your business or that you are making full use of all the software features, ACCEO provides the training and audit services you need to get the highest return on your investment with practical advice.

In Conclusion

Keep in mind that the business needs you have when you start out will no longer be the same a few months or a few years later.

The management techniques and tools that you choose in each step of your path will help you to continuously improve the management of your business and will likely have a major impact on the success of your business. Contact your sales representative to learn more about adapted solutions and services for your business.

With gardening season fast approaching, you’re no doubt starting to think about marketing, inventory management, automation possibilities, and how to improve on productivity and increase profitability for your business.

Your integrated management and point of sale solutions should allow you to organize and oversee all of this with a single business management platform and it should be one that was created with your industry in mind.

5 Key features for a business like yours

Increase and maintain efficiency by optimizing inventory

Turns play a major role in the profitability of a retail garden center. Having a point-of-sale solution that allows you to verify live inventory levels, is an invaluable feature; the fact that it also allows buyers and floor staff to search for requested merchandise and/or request a re-order is game-changing.

Being able to look up what you have in stock, when you’ve received it, which vendor they came from and how many, if any, are on order, is information that will allow you to manage current stock, change order dates, and adjust quantities based on demand and weather. This allows you to identify trends, meet customer needs and increase turns.

Another major factor, when considering turn rates, is loss prevention. By tracking disparities between what has been ordered, what was sold, and what is missing, you’ll be able to work with your employees to determine from where issues originate, be it from maintenance, from merchandising, due to a lack of demand, or from a need for better promotion.

Sell Online and In-Store

Now, more than ever, retailers are looking for a point-of-sale solution system that will integrate with e-commerce and inventory management. You can eliminate the need to spend extra time and money on manually maintaining product prices, descriptions, images, and quantities for your online store, with ACCEO software or by linking it to your web store.

You can also manage in-store or curb-side pick-ups of online purchases, which is especially relevant and appreciated by customers, now.

Build a profitable future by understanding your sales history

As you’re planning your next steps, you can refer to your sales reports and statistics, in order to track the history of any product. This is crucial in understanding how best to proceed when creating sales goals, as it will allow you target your marketing and refine your inventory, based on what has already been proven to work for you.

Simplify the customer experience, thus improving relations

ACCEO management software plays a huge roll in customer service. Every time staff can quickly access inventory information for a customer and either locate what they need or order it on the spot, the foundation for an excellent customer relationship is built. The system also makes checkout and processing returns simpler, creating an overall better customer experience and one they will be happy to repeat.

Guarantee displayed prices are always accurate and inform customers of product availability or upcoming shipments. You can also reduce lineups at the cash by preparing customers’ orders in advance.

Increase employee efficiency with mobile applications

Post the schedule for your trucks and drivers in order to plan deliveries, track them in real time, and use automated emails and text messaging to keep your customers informed of their deliveries, making the experience a smooth one, for everyone, from beginning to end.

Mobile pin pads will allow you get funds from your customer in a safe way, as you can bring the sale to the customer, instead of having them socially distance themselves from your POS.

Plus, increase your efficiency with handheld devices, an essential inventory tool for business like yours. The mobile scanner, equipped with fast Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, is a modern alternative to RF devices. It provides real time-savings with an all-day power guarantee.

Let’s continue the conversation

ACCEO offers a full-featured point-of-sale system and management software specifically designed for hardware, lumber, building materials and garden centres.

For a turn-key solution that includes training, installation, hardware, and data conversion services by our team of nearly 145 bilingual industry experts, so that your business can run smoothly today and support future business needs with confidence, request a demo of ACCEO’s software today.

Consistently having to adapt to new customer behaviors, retailers are turning to innovative cloud-based products and services that lower costs, maximize efficiency and profitability, and deliver better customer service. Retailers recognize that by improving their inventory, delivery processes, and sales practices they can produce a positive impact on the bottom line and free up resources for other business-critical priorities.

Here are 3 of the many ways that mobile solutions can help:

Efficiency in your hands

The traditional way of managing inventory is outdated. Now it is all about having the convenience of mobility to track and manage your inventory. With the help of mobile inventory management applications and handheld devices, staff can track products in real-time, take physical counts directly from the shelves, order products, create purchase orders, and verify orders on the go.

Employees can use walkie-talkie functions on their mobile devices for quick and clear communication across departments. Information is updated and the data is accessible in real-time by the entire staff connected to it. No doubt it will improve your customers’ shopping experience as staff can quickly locate the products customers are looking for and reduce lineups with advance ordering capabilities.

Save time, ensure data accuracy, and eliminate paper documents when you create electronic purchase orders that update inventory levels automatically.

Delivery management in real-time

With customers’ on-demand delivery expectations on the rise, businesses must embrace increasingly smarter and faster ways to enhance their delivery operations. Many are taking control of their delivery management by adopting a reliable delivery management solution that simplifies complex deliveries by leveraging seamless communication between the organization, drivers, and customers.

The ACCEO delivery management solution, connected to your ACCEO management software, integrates dispatching, scheduling, web-based work orders, electronic signatures, automated delivery notices, GPS route tracking, and more. All the information you need to ensure you are meeting your customers’ delivery expectations – all in real-time. Say goodbye to your whiteboard and give your employees access to the latest information while on the road.

Drive better business decisions – anywhere, anytime

Who has hours to waste aggregating sales data manually or creating decks when a sales analysis dashboard can do the work for you? Gain insight into relevant and actionable real-time sales data from anywhere, anytime, in order to make data-driven decisions quickly. With easy-to-use visual dashboards, you can immediately get a pulse on the overall performance of your sales, monitor trends, and identify improvement opportunities.

Having secure access to your live data wherever and whenever allows for real-time insight into inventory, so you can quickly identify, track, analyze, and manage products throughout their lifecycle.

Leverage your data to drive better business decisions with our analytic add-ons.

Keeping in mind

Take your business farther. Our solutions provide deeper data insights, solutions customized to industry needs, and advanced efficiency tools. Contact us to harness the full power of your management software and deliver a superior customer experience by adding these complementary solutions.