Your Guide to Head Office
Your guide to Head Office Functionality. What is RS Head Office, and what kind of business would find this technology useful?
Here at Retail Solutions, we are pleased to be able to offer tailored EPOS solutions to meet the needs of any sized business, from a small single till site with limited space, to a large multinational chain of stores, in any location.
Head Office functionality is suitable for those business owners and managers looking to grow their business, or those who may already have more than one site to oversee.
What is Retail Solutions Head Office?
Retail Solutions Head Office software is designed for retailers with multiple stores, who want to control them from a single location.
It is enhanced retail software that is run from either a physical or virtual server, maintaining efficient day-to-day business operations, while incorporating the additional demands of multi-site businesses.
RS Head Office supports additional monitoring and reporting on each of your stores, on an individual, group, or overall basis as required.
What can RS Head Office do for you?
- Manage all stores remotely, dial in from anywhere.
- Handles independent retail price tiers across multiple stores.
- Maintain cost prices, promotions, operators, and suppliers from a central location.
- Control all promotions across all stores; choose to implement in selected stores and omit others.
- View individual site reports, area reports, or consolidated group reports all from your Head Office.
- Monitor local products and transactions in each store.
- Manage daily operations from head office.
- Reconciliation of branch purchases and sales via head office.
- Fast, intuitive, and easy to use.
RS Head Office Functions
Central Product Maintenance
- Centralised product data
- Feeds back product insights for multiple or individual stores
- Controls and maintains inventory
- Reporting metrics for effective decision making
- Monitor and distribute products within the network
Central Purchasing
- Purchase centrally for all stores
- Manage documentation and order history
- View and replenish branch stock via head office
- Enables bulk purchasing to reduce costs
Central Price Control
- Monitor and amend branch prices centrally
- Amend prices individually or for multiple stores
- Utilise centralised reporting to make price adjustments quickly and easily
Branch Management
- Communicate effectively and consistently to all stores
- Operational integration
- Control branch operations remotely
Consolidate Branch Reporting
- Generate reports for individual stores or the entire company
- Streamline in-depth reporting for effective data analysis and cross-referencing
Central Customer Control
- Centralised customer database
- Manage and reconcile all customer accounts
- Create promotions and plan marketing strategy using complete customer data for all stores
Management Accounts by Branch
- Generate and consolidate complete management accounting reports
Branch Comparison Analysis Tool
- Report on metrics and situations, drill down behind the numbers for effective business strategy
FAQs
Why would I use a Head Office?
The biggest advantages to having a Head Office system are complete control and saving labour.
For example, a new product being rolled out in multiple branches can be created just once on the Head Office system, and then automatically sent to all stores, saving you time and keeping product information consistent across all branches.
This becomes multiplied many hundreds of times over when a wholesaler price file is processed. The number of people that need to be proficient in this process is reduced, and countless labour hours are saved.
My shops have different profiles?
The Head Office system can allow different stores to have different pricing structures. This can be done using completely separate price levels, or using price matrixing. When promotions are setup on from Head Office, the user can determine whether the promotion should run in individual branches or all branches.
What is Price Matrixing?
This is the ability to have stores on different prices for different categories. It allows for very quick changing of prices in store by simply changing the matrix on the Head Office. This feature can be used to react to local competition or to take advantage of occasional social or sporting events.
What about cashier setup and other general data?
All information can be set up or amended from the Head Office, such as cashiers, receipt header and footer messages etc.
What if some stores start and end their promos on different days?
Each store can be given the autonomy to change the start and end of promotions to best suit their individual needs, e.g., when they have staff availability, or on a particular national day or holiday.
How are prices implemented at the store level?
Changes are stacked in batches for new products, increases, decreases, and promotions on and off. These are then printed and released by the local store user. If ESEL’s are in operation in a given store, this can be fully automated.
How long does it take for data to synchronise?
Synchronisation takes place on an ongoing basis. This means that in normal operation changes are pulled down and sales sent to the Head Office every minute, however, after processing a large price file (1000 changes) a delay of 15 minutes might occur while full synchronisation takes place.
What information is available to view in the Head Office?
All product and department sales along with current stock levels are available via the Head Office system, or at individual store level. The manager or administrator at Head Office has a complete overview of branch information.
Can I limit what users see?
Individual user profiles can be created on the Head Office system to limit the extent of viewable reporting, or even to block certain users completely as required.
What if I want a user to see everything, but only for certain shops?
Shops can be set in groups and then users can be restricted to viewing only the reports for the group to which they have access. This is very useful in larger store groups where Area Managers operate with complete oversight in their own area, but are blind to the rest of the business. The owners always have a complete view.
I’ve set reports every week, what’s the easiest way to get these?
All reports can be set on a schedule to run and be emailed automatically in Excel or PDF format.
What’s the maximum number of stores on a single Head Office?
There is effectively no limit to the number of stories on a Head Office, although there is a limit of 999 tills.
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, along with software management tools to help you manage your business effectively.
To find out more about what we do, get in touch to chat with one of our knowledgeable consultants:
Contact us!
About the author:
Susan McGuire has been with Retail Solutions for over 6 years, and during that time has had roles within the areas of Maintenance, Finance, & Marketing. You can follow her on LinkedIn!
