Retail Employee Scheduling Software – What Can It Do For You?
The retail industry may be one of the most volatile in today’s ever-evolving business world. Even more, with the proliferation of E-commerce behemoths like Amazon, & eBay, it’s important for retailers to find new ways to compete. Retail employee scheduling software has a whole host of ways to help retail businesses tackle their problems. Above all, as the owner or manager of a retail outlet, you want to find ways to help you succeed. Below, you can find some ways that retail employee scheduling software can help you!
- Increase sales & productivity
- Manage multiple locations with ease
- Engage your employees
- Satisfy your customers
- Focus on the bigger picture
Increase Sales & Productivity
So, in an increasingly competitive retail landscape, one way for retail outlets to differentiate themselves and grow is through excellent service. One way to improve service is using retail scheduling software to create an environment where scheduling is stable. Why is this so important? According to the Harvard Business Review, more-stable scheduling increases sales and labour productivity. They even estimate that during their 35-week experiment, clothing retailer Gap earned $2.9 million as a result of more-stable scheduling. So if you want to improve your margins, retail scheduling software could be a simple way to do so.
Manage Multiple Locations With Ease
Scheduling software allows retail management to schedule their staff across multiple locations, removing multi-location complexity. Time Xpress from Celayix allows retailers to set stable scheduling for all their staff, across multiple different outlets. Retailers don’t want to be stymied by manual time collection or attendance monitoring, two of the main features of this retail staff scheduling software.
Engage Your Employees
“Actively disengaged employees cost the U.S. $450 billion to $550 billion in lost productivity per year” – Gallup.com.
That’s a lot of lost productivity. But, if you think that stat is scary, get a load of this – according to a workjam.com study, only 17% of retail managers had store associates employed who are very motivated and engaged. Either way, the concept of employee disengagement is certainly a frightening one, and this is where Celayix comes in. Retail employee scheduling software can increase employee engagement in a number of ways. Employees are given autonomy and flexibility when they can choose their own shifts. This freedom allows them to set their work schedule around their personal life. These benefits of scheduling software result in a more engaged, happier workforce. In turn, this leads to lower turnover, higher levels of productivity, and, as we’ll see – satisfied customers.
Satisfy Your Customers
As discussed, retail employee scheduling software makes for engaged, happy employees. Employees who are engaged are more likely to improve customer relationships, resulting in a 20% increase in sales, according to Forbes. From a retail point of view, if your customers are happier and more satisfied, this can only bode well for sales. Particularly, if employees and customers manage to build positive, lasting relationships this presents significantly profitable benefits. The lifetime value of an existing customer is a hugely important opportunity for a retailer to utilize. In fact, Invespcro.com suggests that increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%. Knowing this, what you want is a customer who is loyal and returns to your store consistently. Luckily, retail employee scheduling software can help with this, by enabling employee/customer relationships to establish and flourish.
Focus on the Bigger Picture
Regarding the workjam study mentioned earlier, it advises that 70% of retail managers clock extra hours to handle admin duties, like reassigning and swapping shifts. This pen-and-paper method tends to waste a lot of retail management time when it comes to scheduling. With the implementation of retail employee scheduling software, a retailer avoids this administrative nightmare and has more time on his/her hands. This is important, because they now have much more time to focus on management issues and to look at the bigger picture, allowing a more strategic approach. Growth is one of the main aims of a retail manager. With this extra time, they can develop new growth strategies, such as fresh marketing activities, creative guerrilla marketing, or just getting to know their customer better.
A Little Bit About Celayix
Here at Celayix, we like to solve problems. The more complicated, the better! We know that the retail domain can present significant staff scheduling complexity. So, we have developed a suite of scheduling software to simplify the process. Turning potential headaches into a staffing sigh of relief. Take a look at the video below to better understand what we do, or click here for access to a free live demo.
