Even in today's online world, your trade counter is still a critical hub for customer relationships and repeat business.
To maximise its effectiveness, your team needs tools that streamline operations, enhance customer service, and drive success. Whilst many trade counter software options exist, those with true integration capabilities offer significant advantages for forward-thinking businesses.
The power of integration: why a native, built-in solution matters to you
As your business grows, your systems naturally evolve to meet changing needs. You may have added various software solutions to your core system over time to address specific requirements. While this may have been the right choice at the time, this approach can lead to data silos, inefficiencies, and errors in your business.
When planning for the future, look for an ERP system that has everything you need built into one complete package, including a point of sale system. This is the best approach for your next upgrade.
"Your ERP system should be the single source of truth for your entire business. With modern integration, all your data is up to date, all the time—not just after overnight updates. When everything feeds into one central hub, you get real-time insights that help you make better decisions for your business." — Leigh Butler-Weatherley, Senior ERP Implementation Consultant, Intact.
Here's why this matters to you:
- Seamless data flow: When you use a fully integrated system, data moves easily between all your departments. This gives you one clear source of truth. This eliminates your need for manual data entry and reduces your risk of inaccuracies.
- Real-time visibility: With trade counter software, you can see your stock, pricing, and customer information in real time. This empowers your staff to make informed decisions and provide accurate, up-to-date information to your customers.
- Streamlined operations: Your systems work together to automate tasks like order-to-cash and procure-to-pay. This saves you time and resources. This allows your team to focus on higher-value tasks, such as building customer relationships and driving sales.
- Improved customer experience: By connecting your systems, you can offer a more cohesive and responsive customer experience. Your staff can easily access customer history, check stock levels, and process orders from one interface.
- Better decision-making: With access to real-time data and analytics, you can make faster, data-driven decisions. You can identify trends, track performance, and optimise your operations to improve profitability.
Key Features You Need in Your Integrated Trade Counter Software
When evaluating trade counter software for your business, it's important to consider the full spectrum of capabilities that will benefit your business.
We've organised these essential features into three key areas to help you understand how an integrated solution can transform different areas of your business:
1. Sales enablement features that help your staff serve customers efficiently and boost your sales performance
2. Customer service capabilities that enhance the customer experience and create upselling opportunities
3. Financial management tools that streamline your accounting processes and provide valuable business insights
Let's explore each of these areas in detail:
Part 1: Sales enablement features to help your staff and Boost Your Sales
At your trade counter, every second counts. Your staff need instant access to stock levels, pricing, and delivery options. You need trade counter software that works well with your back-office system. This helps your team give fast and accurate service to your customers, keeping them coming back.
- Individual user login: Each member of staff should have their own login details. This lets you see who made each sale and how well each person is doing. Having personal passwords also keeps your system secure by making sure only the right people can use it to make sales.
- Quick find customers and products - Your system should let you search for customer and product information easily at the point of sale. Using partial details or other identifiers, will help ensure fast service and smooth order processing.
- Access to Cost Price: Having access to sensitive data, such as cost prices, is an important consideration for your business. While this might not be suitable for all members of your team, it can be beneficial for your managers or senior sales reps. Quick and efficient access to this data allows for informed decision-making and better negotiation with your customers.
- Sales History: Accessing your customer's sales history is important for your business. It shows previous prices paid. This will help you resolve price disputes more easily. This feature also allows you to quickly verify past transactions and maintain transparency with your customers.
- Cash Customers: Flexibility is key at your trade counter. Your software should handle both cash and trade sales easily from the same interface. This will give a smooth experience for all types of your customers. For customers choosing cash-on-delivery (COD), your software should handle delivery charges. It should also track COD accounts to keep them up to date.
Expert's Tip: Find trade counter software that connects easily with popular payment gateways for your business. Look for options like PayPal, Stripe, Square, Authorize.Net, Adyen, and Braintree. These integrations provide significant advantages, facilitating secure online payments directly through your ERP system or eCommerce platform.
- Rapid Order Entry: You can save a lot of time with streamlined order entries for your repeat or predictable orders. Your software should allow fast entry of common items or specific customer orders. This way, you won't have to input data repeatedly.
- Margin Control: Maintaining healthy margins is crucial for your profitability. Your system should help you control margins. Set minimum margins for each product. Limit the discounts that your sales reps can give. A margin buffer can be added to protect margin from trade counter staff who may be inclined to offer the best price to customers. Provide reporting tools to show your low-margin sales.
- Haggle: Negotiation is often part of your sales process. Your software should give your sales reps the information they need for effective haggling. This includes cost price, margin, and discount levels. It should also allow them to do "what-if" calculations quickly.
Part 2: Customer service capabilities for enhanced experience and upselling
Your customers expect quick, personalised, and efficient service. The right trade counter system has strong integration features and smooth connectivity. This will help you meet these expectations.
Additionally, maximising upselling opportunities not only boosts your revenue but can also enhance your customer experience. The right features can streamline your customer interactions and support your sales growth.
- Efficiently managing your customer and product information is fundamental for smooth operations. Software with good integration features allows fast searches for your customer records and products. This helps your staff find details quickly using partial information like names, phone numbers, or product codes. This speed is vital for maintaining your customer satisfaction and handling inquiries with ease.
David Philpott, Manager at Herne Bay Plumbing, said, "Having linked transactions on orders has truly saved us hundreds, if not thousands, of hours spent searching through old paper files and not finding what you're looking for. Everything we need is right there on the system. It's just so easy."
- For your repeat customers, the ability to maintain and retrieve customer-specific pricing ensures consistency and builds loyalty. Additionally, allowing your sales staff to select appropriate price bands for different customer types or negotiations streamlines your process and supports flexibility.
- Your software should enable effective upselling through integrated systems that prompt your sales reps with related products. This helps increase your sales and adds value for your customer. On the other hand, when stock shortages or customer needs arise, your software should suggest alternate products. This approach is proactive, keeps your sale moving, and minimises frustration.
Expert's Tip: Integrating marketing automation tools with your ERP system helps to sync customer data for more personalised campaigns, lead management and tracking customer engagement across channels.
- Preventing errors and maintaining accuracy is important when running your trade counter. Alerts for existing quotations ensures consistent pricing, while requiring a customer reference number (such as a purchase order) reduces discrepancies and streamlines your payment processing. If you're managing multiple delivery locations, the ability to store and select from various delivery addresses simplifies your order entry and ensures accurate documentation.
Part 3: Financial management tools for complete business control
Modern ERP solutions act as a central hub, connecting everything from your counter sales to your stock management, accounting and ecommerce into one unified platform.
This integration enables you to give your trade counter staff instant access to all the information they need at their fingertips:
- Credit Check: A traffic light system in your software can show your customer's creditworthiness. This can help you take the right actions based on their credit limit and outstanding balances. You can put accounts on immediate 'Stop' (red) if they exceed credit limits. You can also show 'Amber' warnings, where the user is prompted to alert the customer but continue with the transaction. Accounts in good standing could show 'Green' in your system. This goes beyond basic credit checks. There should also be an option to include ‘Unbilled’ and ‘On order’ amounts in the credit control check.
- Customer Ledger Easily Accessible: Seamless system integrations ensure instant access to your customer account information at every point of interaction. Your staff can quickly answer questions, reprint invoices, and see payment details. No need to switch to another system when everything is integrated into one platform.
- Multiple Payment Types: Your software should accept different payment methods from your customers. This includes cash, credit cards, and mobile payments. It should also offer complete reconciliation features for your end-of-day reporting. The integrated financial system will automatically record and reconcile each transaction, maintain clear audit trails, and reduce your administrative overhead.
- Payment Gateway Integration: Connecting with popular payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, Square, Authorize.Net, Adyen, and Braintree can enhance your payment capabilities further. These integrations allow secure online payments through your ERP system or eCommerce platform.
An important element of payment gateway integration also includes pay-by-link functionality, which allows your business to automatically send customers an email with a link to a secure website where they can pay their order or invoice. Once the customer makes a payment, your ERP system receives a notification, deposits the money, and processes the payment.
These payment gateways enable automated invoicing, payment status updates, and transaction reconciliation. They also help reduce errors that come with manual payment processing in your business.
- End-of-Day Reporting: Detailed end-of-day reports are important for your cash management, sales analysis, and reconciliation. This includes X-reads and Z-reads. These reports automatically consolidate your data. The integrated financial system automates your crucial daily processes with detailed end-of-day reporting. X-reads give you daily totals to track performance. Z-reads provide secure, final reports for your accounting and audits. These reports gather data from all your payment types. They track activities and user actions. This gives you clear insights for cash management and sales evaluation. It also removes your need for manual reconciliation.
The power of integration: end-to-end business management
Having all your business systems in one end-to-end platform delivers substantial advantages for your business. When your trade counter software is fully integrated into your ERP system, you eliminate the gaps and frustrations that come with separate solutions.
Your business benefits from seamless data flow between all departments - from the trade counter to warehouse, accounting, and management. Customer information, stock levels, pricing, and transaction history are all instantly accessible from a single source of truth.
This integration means your staff can serve customers faster and more accurately. They can check stock, process orders, verify account status, and answer queries all from one system, without switching between different applications or waiting for information.
Paul Lancaster, Finance Director at Galaxy Insulation & Dry Lining, noted, "Intact's intuitive interface and comprehensive on-screen information made it feel as if we'd always been using it."
Conclusion
Your trade counter software needs to do more than just process sales - it should connect all parts of your business. With the right system, your team can see customer information, check stock, and handle payments all in one place. This saves time, reduces mistakes, and lets your staff focus on helping customers.
Take a look at how your business works today. Where do you waste time switching between systems or entering the same information twice? These are the problems that good integrated software can solve.
Whether you're buying your first trade counter system or replacing an old one, choose software that works with all parts of your business. This will help you serve customers better, work more efficiently, and stay ahead of competitors.
