Throw shrinkage, internal theft and pricing discrepancies into the waste bin: Here's how

We get it: You’re crunched for time, lack full insight into your data and face a number of financial hurdles that eat at your margins.

C-store owners and managers typically see these issues come to light in the form of merchandise shrinkage, employee theft and price irregularities across one or more locations. Consider these facts:

• Shrink rates have doubled since 2015.
• In recent years, internal theft has accounted for 38 percent of all business losses.
• Since 2012, C-store inventory turnover has averaged 26.

Today’s technology, however, is addressing these core pitfalls, as the rise of scalable cloud connectivity and end-to-end software integration unlocks new levels of efficiency.

Let’s look at how these benefits can work for retail managers.

Obtain transparency and precision

The root weakness of any business is either the lack of data transparency OR analytics expertise to build upon data once it’s captured.

Automated retail solutions like PDI provide real-time, item-level inventory updates, daily reporting metrics and ordering precision. All those manual back-office tasks that once required hours of tedious paperwork or faulty spreadsheeting are now completed in the cloud.

This level of automation helps you stay out of the number-crunching and data-gathering weeds, delivering the insights you need straight to your tablet, phone or PC, wherever you are. In essence, you can understand where shrinkage is physically occurring, which products are most at risk and how much money you can potentially recoup once you’ve taken action to prevent further loss.

Additionally, discrepancies between stores – what and how items are ordered and stocked, promotions that are running, labor’s capacity to handle agile price changes, etc. – impact the bottom line and create disparities in how operations are managed. With retail software powering your store(s), you can enact multiple price changes, manage rebates, account for business fluctuations and optimize labor/workflow needs within seconds.

In the world of retail, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure” has never been more true. It’s time to switch to a platform built for the 21st century.

Build a digital ecosystem that works

Sometimes mistakes happen: We’re human, after all. But a simple clerical error or incorrectly input product value could result in thousands of dollars lost, especially when dealing with multiple third-party vendors, manufacturers and shippers.

There are more than 150,000 C-stores operating today, bringing in close to $600 billion in sales each year, according to the National Association of Convenience Stores. That’s a lot of competition, yet a lot of room for greater market share if you have an integrated tech ecosystem that gives you a leg up against slower, less agile companies.

Cloud-based software provides a superior foundation on which to stand, which could justify opening new stores, acquiring a local competitor or enhancing existing merchandise offerings. While competitors may be stuck with legacy software that’s incompatible with today’s web applications and business needs, you have the benefit of scaling your back office whenever the market demands it. That means you’re first to the punch every time, which translates to higher customer satisfaction, deeper customer loyalty and greater brand trust.

Moreover, the ability to integrate with third-party software means you’re crafting a comprehensive, personalized suite of technology applications that work for you. Need instantaneous recall of product delivery? Want to compile data on pricing strategies that seem to be working? Interested in fine-tuning your labor costs while boosting productivity? All of this, and more, is possible with the right technology.

C-store sales will continue to rise in 2018 – will you finally put shrinkage, theft and inefficiencies to rest so you can fully focus on profit?

Did You Know: Your Source for PDI News provided by PDI, the leader in enterprise management software for the convenience retail and petroleum wholesale markets.