Odds and ends

A friend of mine went to Woolworths for the oldies shopping today. He got there at 7.15 AM. He found no toilet paper (no delivery apparently), no eggs no sugar etc.

Victorian Chamber of Commerce has here put together a COVID-19 (Coronavirus) resources for business here with many useful links for you.

I do not know what to say about it, no matter what you think of the Coronavirus effect, it is clear to our community this is Economic and Social disaster.

If it continues it may grinding much of the country to a halt.  Schools are shutting down. The Australian Grand Prix is cancelled, they are talking of closing down part of Australia as they have done in some overseas country e.g. Spain, Italy, South Korea and China where 100 million people are in lockdown. In some countries now save for supermarkets and pharmacies, all malls are closed. Restaurants, public hotel dining, gyms, pools, amusement parks, zoos, bathhouses, beauty and massage salons, event and conference venues, public boats, heritage sites etc. closed too. People in religious activities have to keep at least two meters from one another.  

I have clients that have 30% to 40% of their business is Chinese tourists and most of that is gone, and that is hurting. Where is this going to go? 

The closest example I can think of is the Spanish flu which my aunty talked a lot about it, it closed down much of Australia for over a year, made sick about 40 per cent of the population and killed around 15,000. Are we looking at something like this?

Several of my clients have received advise sheets that state

- That they have to clean up frequently their public areas, door handles, public bathrooms, etc. with disinfectant.

- Make available antibacterial hand sanitisers. 

In theory, it is all good advice. The problem is that try and get antibacterial hand sanitisers now, I went six (6)  time to my supermarket, and they had none.  

One of my clients reported to me that they rang the government Coronavirus helpline, and the phone rang out.

Another told me that Coronavirus tests in Australia are now only available to high-risk people. 

Two pieces of advice, I was told besides the  handwashing everyone talks about

1) Give yourself plenty of fresh air, make sure the air in the shop circulates

2) Do not touch your face but without a mask, its almost impossible to do as a study here showed

Where is this leading too?

As an Australian, it is lovely to celebrate Australia Day because it reminds how blessed we are to be in such a wonderful country.

For those that need support, rest assured that our support lines are all open today.

First of all, a very happy Chinese New Year to all our Chinese readers, we hope for your good health, good luck and much happiness throughout the coming year.

Surprisingly for non-Chinese, the rat is actually in traditional Chinese legends considered to being quick-witted, resourceful, and smart but lack courage. With rich imaginations and sharp observations, they can take advantage of various opportunities well. As a person who has involved in a few rat hunts, I can confirm that they are all this.

For those that do not realise it, this festival is celebrated by about 1.5 million people in Australia now and here is an article on how to attract Chinese tourists. 

Perfectionism is defined by the dictionary as "refusal to accept any standard short of perfection."

It is considered as being a psychological condition as perfection, an impossibility in reality. What tends to happen is because nothing is perfect, people do nothing, procrastinate and get depressed as nothing is done. As such it becomes a fast track to unhappiness and often leads to depression.

Why bring it up here in a POS software blog because too often people look at their point of sale system and they know it does much more then what they use it for but talk themselves out of using these extra features because they think it lacks something. As it is not exactly what they think they need they do nothing. 

My advice, use what you have.

Do it, once you get going you can always make it better.

It is the first step that is the hardest. The second is not so hard. The third often is easier still.

With us, you have a support network who will give you honest feedback. We can often introduce you to people that you can talk too that are doing and what you are thinking of doing. 

Remember.

Last night as it became apparent that these bushfires were growing, some of our clients in the affected areas started ringing us up for advice on taking a backup as they are moving out. Some of them had a cloud backup (its free with us so why would they not do it?) but just in case they wanted a manual backup. Thank goodness for mobiles when this is over we really need to think about improving some of the mobile phone coverage in some areas. We also need some decent rain now to end this drought.

We have three months to go on this bushfire season.

Thanks for your support over 2019, we are now the second most visited site for point of sale software in Australia, only retail express beats us and not by much.

Readers, I wish you our warm and heartfelt greeting to you and your family and your business.

I hope 2020 is full of health, happiness and prosperity.  

PS My thoughts for today. I will not make any new resolutions as I never keep them anyway. Mine last year was to lose weight, it is now unchanged from the previous year, and it was a big struggle to keep it the same.  

Accept that many of the things happen in life, that I can never go back.

Switch off.

Do not worry.

Enjoy the moment

I thought I better write this before the festivities begin today and I start on the festivities.

Like this guy here, we are to leap forward. 

I like this picture as he is not looking backward. It would be dangerous for him to do so. It shows that there is no going backwards; the way things used to be is gone.

In 2020, retail in SMB will be about data. With our software, you have one of the most powerful reporting systems for real-time data and analytics. In 2019 in our market space, after a review, it was the system selected for the Australian Government trials with its major reform of EFTPOS with the CDC cards.

This real-time data and analytics can completely transform the way you handle the strategic and tactical decisions you need to make about pricing, promotions, and product placement too often much better than you can manually? 

A typical client of ours sold 20,060 different stock lines in the 2018 year. Do you think that manually they could keep track of the stock quantities needed for each of these lines in their shop, our program can! 

The time is long past when suppliers would supply you the retailer with sales data to help you sell more. You have to get it yourself. Rather than relying on guesswork and feel, to make smarter decisions for your shop.

Here are some things that our software can do: 

1. It can predict with accurate recommendations.your stock purchases
2. It can give you essential performance metrics KPIs
3. It can forecast overall trends.
4. Give you all your stock lines a sales forecast.
5. It can do a market basket analysis that shows you what products customers are most likely to purchase together. 
6. It can help you to optimise your pricing.

Okay, I could go on and on about this stuff with the requirements now for 20/20 vision, but I’m just going to stop here, I will discuss it more in detail later.

I do want to say now a big thank you to all my readers for a fantastic year! Your support, comments and kind words mean so much to me and I am very grateful to you all.  

Forward to 2020 

The holiday season begins. 

To all our readers and supporters here, thank you for your continued support this year and we hope next year you will continue to enjoy and engage with other progressive-minded retailers in debates on issues here.

So from everyone at the POS Solutions team, we would like to wish all of our readers and supporters here a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

I shared a video on gift wrapping and got so many comments that I thought I should explain.

In my grandfather's shop, grandfather was very good at wrapping gifts. It is an art to do it right. It does not take long to learn and once you can do it well, it is very quick to do. It certainly helps to sell your products. In this time of year is an important part of your offering which adds value to your store. We used to have queues with people waiting to get him to gift wrap their purchases.

This video shows how quick it can be done and how good it can look.

This video will show you how to do it. It explains step by step really well. The instructions are clear and I like the different camera angles that show clearly what she is doing. 

Also note that this woman is not wasting paper because she is using the exact amount that you would use. See how good the finished product looks. 

Give it a try.

If you want to get into gifts, its a good idea.