If you are like most hotel managers, you likely have a good idea of when the busiest times of the day/week are and when you need extra help at the front desk. However, not a lot of hotel managers can say with confidence what items in their marketplace are selling the best, the best place to display those items and when people are buying those items. Point-of-sale (POS) data can help you dig significantly deeper into this concept by providing much more specific information about your customers' buying habits. Impulsify's retail management system is a leading POS software option that can help you use this information to make strategic decisions that help you save money and boost your revenue by analyzing what your customers want from your business.
What Is POS Data?
Point-of-sale (POS) data provides a wide range of data about your hotel pantry or grab-and-go kiosk that can be used to adjust your current strategies to prioritize the aspects of your pantry that your customers prefer. With POS data, you can track the specific products or services that are currently and have historically sold the best, determine the overall profitability of your current revenue, and keep track of your inventory.
Knowing your customers' favorite products allow you to consider how you might incorporate similar options into new collections, and this data can also help you determine which products customers do not like as much to move away from in the future.
Similarly, consistently keeping track of your pantry’s overall revenue over time is a useful way to identify trends that surround whether or not your pantry is meeting your profitability goals. Keeping close tabs on your inventory is an important step in knowing what you have plenty of in-stock and what you need to order more of to avoid disappointing customers that are looking for a specific item.
These types of data work together to provide you with in-depth insights into which aspects of your pantry or kiosk are performing the best and should be emphasized, as well as which aspects are not as profitable and should be reevaluated and potentially phased out in favor of a more profitable option.
A major advantage of POS data is the automation. This means that you and your customers do not need to do anything extra to gather this data once you implement a comprehensive POS data system. This data helps you track several types of trends over time to better understand your pantry or kiosk, including customers' purchasing habits, the most popular times of day for purchases to be made, and the popularity of each specific product so that you can adjust your future designs and order sizes to best match what your customers want.
Importance of POS Data for Hotel Pantries or Grab-and-Go Kiosks
POS data provides several benefits for nearly any type of business, including several that are specific to businesses that rely heavily on a grab-and-go market such as hotels. Inventory management, sales data, product data, and strategy are among the most important ways POS data can benefit your business.
Inventory Management
Knowing what products you have plenty of and which ones you are nearly or out of are helpful tools in predicting future purchase levels, which can help you order a realistic amount of products. Analyzing POS data instead of choosing numbers arbitrarily or ordering the same number of each color of a particular item gives you the best chance to avoid running out of popular items too quickly or having too many unpopular items that you cannot sell. Inventory management data also lets you know exactly where products belong in your pantry to assist you during restocks.
Sales Data
Your sales data provides insights into specific parts of the day, week, and year that tend to result in the most sales. This POS data works hand in hand with your inventory management data to help you determine when to proactively place orders that will arrive on time to minimize shortages, especially during the busiest times that would result in the most lost income if the products your customers want are unavailable.
Product Data
Your product POS data keeps track of the net sales for each specific product, which lets you know what your top sellers are. You can use this type of data to track both how many of each product you have sold and how much money that item has brought in. This category of POS data works with your inventory management and sales data to give you the best possible predictors of when you need to order each product and how many you should order to match your customers' purchasing habits.
Strategy
By helping you find strategic ways to match your orders to your customers' buying habits, you can help your pantry save money and increase revenue. Both categories work together to increase the overall success of your pantry or kiosk.
How to Track and Use POS Data
Implementing a quality POS data program is an important step in getting the most out of every aspect of your business.
Make Educated Decisions Based on Popularity
By analyzing what is not popular at any given time, you can make educated decisions to best align your future orders with what your customers want. By implementing this strategy, your business can maximize profits by having more of what your customers want on hand and reducing wasted products that no one wants and you can’t sell.
Utilize a System for Obtaining In-Depth Insights
If you have not already implemented a system for collecting and analyzing POS data, now is the time to do so to help your hotel pantry start earning and saving more than ever. Impulsify is an all-inclusive option that empowers hotel managers and owners by providing resources for tracking and using dozens of data points, as well as reassurance that your grab-and-go shop is constantly being monitored even when you are not the one doing so.
Also, you do not have to wait for sales to happen to determine what products are selling or bot. Our ImpulsePoint: Retail Management System has captured over 15 million hotel retail transactions last year and compiled them into our Annual Best Sellers List in our 2022 Hotel Retail Playbook.
Our commitment to meeting the unique needs of owners and managers of grab-and-go kiosks strategize innovative ways to save and make more money by analyzing their customers' buying habits. Contact us today to learn more about how implementing Impulsify can benefit your hotel pantry or to get started!
