What are the technologies out there that retailers are using that could help my business?
Bhavin Patel, Tylers Green Stores, North Weald, Essex
Peter Bhadal, Londis Woodhouse Street, Leeds
“I bought headsets for my team and me. I’ve bought four of them for both stores and they’ve been well received. We got them in July and I wish I’d got them earlier. It’s been a game changer for us. In the first instance, it helps with things like customer abuse and handling shoplifters and opportunists who might want to take advantage of a single point cashier. Now we’ve got the headsets, they know they’ve got backup at the press of a button.
“It also means we’re not chasing each other around the store, trying to find people you need to help you with a job. I couldn’t put a figure on how much it’s saved us, but when a customer needs help, there’s a team behind the staff member helping them. They weren’t cheap, so I only got four. However, I never have more than five people working. It means I’ll forego one person going without as long as there are four headsets running.”
Justin Whittaker, Premier MJ’s, Oldham, Greater Manchester
“It was a simple thing, but we got these little fridge alerts. When the temperature drops on a fridge or if the door hasn’t been closed properly, it just rings at you to let you know. I got them really cheap, but it’s already saved me a couple of times. It’s called Fridge Alert. There are more advanced gadgets out there that record the temperatures and email them to you, but when your fridge is beeping, you can’t ignore it.
“We don’t have them on all our fridges, just the freezers and the fresh and chilled – the ones where there’s a serious and genuine health risk if the temperature get too high. They’re not on the soft drinks fridges. Retailers should really be investing in this. It’s good for peace of mind and it’s also good for reduces unnecessary food and energy wastage.”
Jay Javed, Nisa Rutherglen, South Lanarkshire
“We opened a store in December last year and it was the first one we opened with electronic shelf-edge labels (ESL). And now we’re going to put them into our other 11 stores. We invested almost £50,000 in the Nisa EPoS systems along with ESLs from Herbert Retail. But every single one is a game changer.
“There’s the savings in labour costs which are huge and then there’s the transparency of pricing that you can provide customers. On top of that, you’re able to offer more promotions and that’s meant we’ve seen an uplift in sales in the store that has it compared to the others. The information is always precise and never out of date. It’s a big commitment, but I reckon it’s saved us 15-20% in labour costs already.
“When the Minimum Unit Pricing went up, we had to spend huge amounts of money getting all the prices changed before that Sunday, getting IT people to come up from Liverpool to check them. Except in the ESL store where we pressed a button and it was done.”
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