Swan Retail has launched a new method which places stock information, images and product options as well as the ability to take customer special orders into the palms of sales teams’ hands – an app for sales order processing.
Designed for retailers taking orders for bespoke items – furniture, beds, carpets, cabinets - creating a back to back order on a supplier or arranging home delivery, the solution replaces the traditional hand written sales docket with an easy to use, intuitive and simple application. The app gives retailers the technological and functionality leap which will allow them to engage efficiently and effectively with customers on a one to one basis, all while having the relevant information at their fingertips.
This app has been specifically designed for the iPad following Apple best practices. This is not a modification from mouse-driven software but a purposefully-constructed app encompassing a familiar user interface with all of the features expected of this type of solution, such as tapping a text field, the keyboard sliding up seamlessly without blocking the user's view, pinch to zoom, swipe to delete and more.
A further benefit of the app being purpose-built for the iPad is that it runs locally on the device, so it utilises the best tools for the job and as a result is faster and smoother than a traditional web page or a remote desktop solution. It is also less bandwidth hungry and doesn’t rely on any third party software, so calls made on the central database are very quick, allowing it to function seamlessly as an extension of Swan.
The app integrates to local hardware devices on the iPad such as the camera to use as a barcode scanner and can also be paired with wireless payment devices providing a smooth experience for both the operator and customer.
For sales staff, looking up stock or product information is at a touch of button - with a mixture of drop down selections and word sensitive lookups, finding products is easy. With the tablet in hand, supplier catalogues, product options, images, companywide stock, pricing, post code lookup, customer account information and so much more is all available there and then, making the capturing of the order and customer details smooth and swift.
Making the process painless reduces the likelihood of the customer abandoning the order as well as providing the staff member with the opportunity to upsell linked products, with the opportunity of increasing turnover.
From the retailer’s perspective there is no longer the need to manually enter the sales docket - deciphering handwriting, verifying that the options are correct, infilling the missing information – reducing administration time as well as removing the margin for error when copying across details.
This all leads to great customer service as it is less likely that there will be any issues with their order which would result in a poor experience and possibly negative reviews of the retailer's business. With stock and on order information available in real time, this potentially decreases lead times on order fulfilment, delivering better stock sell through rates and improving profit margins.
Chris Marsden-Jones, Swan business development director says: “The new app is not only a new sales order processing front end to the Swan Retail ERP solution, but a technological lead forward in interacting with customers and converting their needs into orders. With sales staff spending more focused time with the customer, they are delivering a high level of customer service while sales conversion rates are improved, administration errors are minimised and business overheads are reduced.”
