5 business problems solved by electronic shelf labels
5 business problems solved by electronic shelf labels. Electronic shelf edge labels deliver digital in-store pricing, replacing traditional paper price tags.
This may sound like just another shiny new piece of technology to fork out for. However, in terms of business, they offer much more than just a modern look.
In a highly competitive retail market, smart retailers are always on the lookout for a competitive edge.
Any innovative product that could save time, money, and effort is always worth a second glance.
Find out more about electronic shelf edge labels (ESELs), and how they are assisting busy retailers every day.
Time
Most retailers update their prices at least once a week. Think about how much time retail workers spend checking, printing, and changing store price labels. It can be upwards of 20 hours per week, depending on the store size. Some larger retailers will spend double this time – the cost of one full time member of staff!
Monitoring prices and keeping them current is a never-ending task. For example, every time there is a sale, promotion, or update, staff hours are lost to changing price tags. In addition, major seasonal sales and pricing updates can keep a team working late into the night.
As manual price changes are time consuming, they are consequently costly.
Electronic shelf labels offer huge reductions on the time spent making price changes. Prices are set at the back office and automatically distributed throughout the store.
This saves hours printing labels and switching price tags. Additionally, staff are freed up for more productive tasks such as managing stock or taking care of customers.
For retailers who belong to a symbol group, frequent promotions and price changes are easily managed with ESELs. Simply download the new price bulletin, upload to the EPOS system, and automatically roll out the new prices across all your sales channels.
Staying ahead of the game
New technology should always positively impact your business. Where electronic pricing makes better use of retail hours, this can offer you a competitive edge.
Instead of labelling, staff can focus on other, more profitable tasks. With a potential saving of 20+ hours per week, this could even include expansion, or adding a new service.
Dynamic pricing facilitates fast reaction to the market. Therefore, if a competitor changes their prices, you can react instantly with your own price updates, even when not on site.
Prices are centrally managed, allowing you to dial into your back office and update prices from anywhere, at any time.
In just a few clicks, prices are changed across the store. If you have more than one store, the updates can be rolled out singularly, or across the entire network. Where you have multiple sales channels, you can choose to automatically update these too.
ESELS enable frequent and ad hoc price changes, giving you full flexibility and control.
Error reduction
Have you ever felt obliged to sell a product at a reduced price because the display price was wrong? It’s often necessary to keep your customer happy, but the losses can add up if this occurs too often.
Human errors do happen, but pricing discrepancies create mistrust among your customers.
Electronic price labels can completely eliminate pricing errors, offering peace of mind to you and your customers.
As integrated pricing automatically updates across all of your sales channels, pricing is always up to date and accurate. Should you wish, your customers can find the same prices wherever they go; in store, online app, or web shop.
As an added bonus, digital prices cannot be switched or removed, everything is scanned. This reduces the possibilities for fraudulent transactions.
Improved experience
Electronic shelf labels are sleek and tidy, giving your store a more modern image.
They’re simple to install, clear and easy to read for customers, and user friendly for store staff.
The electronic labels can be updated with all kinds of custom information to inform your customer, and help to secure their purchasing decision.
Use them to display stock levels, price reductions, product details, or additional messages.
You can even create offers based on where a specific customer is standing in the store with just a few clicks!
They also collect data that provides useful insights into purchasing decisions made at the shelf edge.
Waste reduction
With ESELs, you can quickly view, relocate, and re-label short dated or slow moving goods to a more visible area. This can provide an immediate sales impact.
Where your business includes the sale of perishable goods, strategic markdowns can be arranged at optimal times to reduce wastage and loss.
This is also true of paper and print savings. ESELs are ultra low in power consumption and eliminate the need for physical labels and ink. This makes them far more ECO-friendly than traditional paper labels.
Electronic labels are durable, hardwearing, and almost completely maintenance free. They will even report back their condition to provide advance notice should they need replacing.
In conclusion
Retail technology is always improving, and electronic shelf edge labels are an important part of that progression.
Like all good retail technology improvements, they offer several benefits to the retailer. Most importantly, saving time through automation and reducing costs.
ESELs decrease the time spent on physical price label changes. This frees up time to focus on more productive and profitable tasks.
They’re environmentally responsible while helping to reduce stock wastage. They also improve the in-store experience with clear, sleek, accurate pricing.
Want to know more? Contact one of our experts with your questions Contact us
Who are we?
Retail Solutions is a market-leading EPOS provider with over 25 years of business experience. Our leading sectors are convenience stores, supermarkets, forecourts, and pharmacies.
We are dedicated to providing your store with the most up-to-date and reliable point of sale hardware. Our software management tools help you manage your business effectively.
Our self-checkout partners are NCR, which are global leaders in self-checkout technology.
To find out more about what we do, get in touch to chat with one of our knowledgeable consultants:
About the author:
Susan McGuire is originally from London, U.K., and has lived in Galway, Ireland, for 15 years. She has been with Retail Solutions for nearly 7 years, and during that time has had roles within the areas of Maintenance, Finance, & Marketing.
You can follow her on LinkedIn!
