Since the pandemic, there has been a greater shift towards e-commerce and online shopping, and many retails and outlets find themselves struggling to attract and retain customers in an increasingly competitive landscape – not just with other brick-and-mortar outlets, but also online retailers that can operate far more efficiently with lower costs.
Rapid growth and expansion may seem like all is well and there is nothing to be worried about. However, if you can’t maintain visibility and consistent quality across multiple outlets, problems are bound to occur be it in the form of customer complaints or heavy financial losses. Here, we’ll be talking about 5 signs you’ll be needing an outlet management system, and fast.
1. Lack of visibility across outlets
It’s difficult enough getting one outlet running as it should, what with having to coordinate staff schedules, taking note of inventory, ordering new stock, maintaining equipment and utilities, and managing customers on top of it all. Now, imagine doing that across two, maybe four, and potentially even more outlets, sometimes spread out over cities, states, or even countries.
If that’s hitting awfully close to home, it’s definitely time to look into getting an outlet management system. An OMS can help with giving you a bird’s-eye view of how your outlets are running. Job scheduling solves the issue of coordinating shifts for your outlet team by having all staff and their assigned tasks, along with their job statuses clearly visible on the job dashboard, ensuring transparency and accountability for all your staff. Daily to-do lists and checklists are also helpful to outlet managers in ensuring all essential procedures are followed.
2. Maintaining consistent quality becomes more challenging
Quality is always the priority across various industries, whether you run F&B outlets, provide services, or even big-box stores selling a variety of consumer goods. Issues with consistency could easily cause customers to lose trust in your business. Being unable to comply with regulatory standards across your outlets can cause dips in quality, compromise worker safety, and result in legal trouble for your business- all of which will further degrade your brand reputation.
An OMS can help circumvent these issues by standardizing your outlet audits and quality control. Through digital forms and checklists that can be standardized according to established SOPs and government-mandated regulations, you can ensure consistent compliance across all your outlets, therefore maintaining the excellent quality you strive to deliver to your customers no matter which outlet they happen to walk into.
3. Resources and equipment are frequently idle
Frequent equipment breakdowns can be frustrating, and even more so when you’re dealing with breakdowns across all outlets. Outlet managers may not be able to have the equipment repaired or replaced in time, or even adhere to standard preventative maintenance schedules due to the excessive red tape involved in getting a simple issue resolved. This then results in increased equipment downtime and idle resources, reduction in productivity, and increment in wastage costs on perishable goods.
With an OMS, issues can be quickly resolved without unnecessary red tapes by using servicing tickets that can be directly relayed to HQ, ensuring issues are brought to attention immediately.
4. Employee training and internal processes are muddled
Opening new outlets also means expanding your workforce. Onboarding new staff and getting them familiarized with outlet operations can be quite a challenge, especially when there are no SOPs, which can result in a higher frequency of mistakes and prevent your outlet from operating as smoothly as it should.
With an OMS, managing a large workforce across many outlets is made easy with a centralized system. SOPs can be established and monitored by the management. New staff will find it way easier to get up to speed with the rest of the team as well.
5. Outlet performance is a mystery
As a business expands, many business owners often get caught up with continuous growth without thinking of gathering data as they open outlets in new locations. As a result, many rapidly expanding franchises tend to crash and burn quickly due to not making data-driven decisions. Many retailers in Malaysia still operate by manual processes, including reporting outlet performance, which is done by the outlet managers and may be subject to human error and can distort your decision-making.
With an OMS, all data is collected in real-time with staff input, allowing you to gain the most accurate insights possible to make the best informed decisions for your business. With metrics on everything from customer feedback to daily cash sales and the frequency of equipment breakdowns on-hand whenever you need them, you’ll be able to divert resources to where they need to go and make decisions that spur your business towards success.
In Conclusion
Having an outlet management system can give your business a significant edge in optimizing operational efficiency by centralizing all communications and maintaining quality control across all your outlets. It’s easy to get caught up with rapid expansion and become overwhelmed by the challenges of scaling, but with the right OMS in place, your business can prosper even amidst the competitive environment of the modern day.
Caction’s OMS is built to accommodate your specific business needs with various customizable features that can be tailored to address the challenges you face. To find out more, contact us for a free consultation.
