When the usage of ePOS (electronic point of sale) is emerging in a management debate in our golf club, we should understand its importance from two main aspects: customer experience + sales efficiency.
Customer Experience
As golf club member or simple golfer what we see from ePOS is a small gadget that the waiter or pro-shop seller is using to settle the payment. If we were talking about a regular retail outlet (e.g. American Golf, Golf Town) it would be much more easier, but in golf clubs we have different challenges.
People are smooth and fluent (e.g. no worry about the accuracy of the pricing) transaction and efficient customer service in every part of the golf course. We should expect from ourdays' ePOS solutions to enable mobility, special offers and support customer loyalty programs (in addition to the standard features). This should not be a big deal since customer information is held in one place.
Today we are moving beyond fixed place ePOS to mobile ePOS.
Sales Efficiency
In addition to meet the above mentioned needs of our golf club members and players, we as golf club managers should think about how to improve sales operations. To have accurate sales report, better data integrity and stock control are really important.
Recently Club Systems International introduced the mobile version of MerlinTouch system: MerlinMobile. It is definitely an improvement in terms of mobility. This really can help to take orders faster and to avoid human errors.
However, just like in the original system, loyalty program should not only mean providing services for lower prices, but also giving personalized services ("I know what and how you like it")based on our golf club members' purchase history. A good ePOS system should support providing personal offers. To give % discount from prices is not enough to strenghten relationship and fidelity.
I think EZLinks POS is more advanced as it enables users to:
- Barcode tracking system simplifies checkout and tracks inventory across courses and allows courses to easily package products;
- Barcode tracking system simplifies checkout and tracks inventory across courses and allows courses to easily package products;
- Access reports from anywhere, at anytime;
- Features golfer loyalty programs linked to purchases – maximizing revenue and driving repeat purchases;
- Allows courses to enter and manage golfer data (including email address) into the database to build ongoing communications with golfers..