Advantages Of Using Point Of Sales (POS) System In Hotels
Introduction: Point of sale (POS) systems play an important role in the hospitality industry by helping hotels and restaurants manage their operations more effectively.
The Advantages Of Using A POS System In The Hospitality Industry
1. Reducing or increasing physical inventory:
By watching inventory reports, employees can ensure that ordering is more precise. If an organization is seasonal, it is not likely that it will need to stock the same amount of a basic product – such as flour or sugar – in the low season as it will in the high season. Watching inventory reports helps increase efficiency.
2. Watching margins:
By reading management reports, employees of an organization may find that it sold 500 tuna sandwiches that cost $3.00 each for $9.00 each (33.3% cost of sales) and 500 minute steaks that cost $10.00 for $20.00 each (50% cost of sales). The cost of sales report would suggest that the tuna sandwich is the preferred item.
However, the margin report would disclose that the minute steak delivers a higher profit margin ($2500 vs. $2000) and is therefore the preferred item over the tuna sandwich. Inventory reports will help an operation to stock more products that provide greater profits and fewer products that deliver fewer dollars to the bottom line.
Speeding guest ordering and checking out: Computerizing speeds up ordering and checking out. Depending upon the type of service, bar code scanning (scanning a code), price lookup (ordering by number), picture ordering (ordering by line art), and the like can speed both the ordering process and the checking out process.
Even if the organization does not use bar code scanning, checking out is still faster and more accurate, because the order is held in a pre-check function (allowing items to be added after the order is placed) or otherwise held open until the guest is ready to check out, which automatically ties back to pricing specified in the cash register program for each inventory item.
3. Ensuring accuracy:
Every menu item in an operation has a price associated with it. With a POS system, items are entered in single keystrokes (bar code scanning, price lookup, picture ordering, or other method) instead of open key prices (whereby a $2.95 item would be entered with three keystrokes). Similarly, entering prices by single descriptor increases accuracy, since employees will not be guessing, estimating, or otherwise entering incorrect prices for menu items.
4. Marketing:
A POS system can help you with marketing by providing you with data on what products are selling and how often they are selling. This data can be used to plan and design promotions. POS systems for restaurants are a great way to keep track of sales, receipts, and all other valuable information.
5. Security:
A POS system can help improve the security of your business by tracking employee and customer information. This information can then be used to prevent fraudulent activity and reduce theft, which is a major problem for many businesses.
6. Employee efficiency:
Using a POS system will make it easier for your employees to track their sales and take customer orders. This will allow them to spend more time interacting with customers, which will result in higher customer satisfaction.
7. Keeping track of guests:
The best customers are the organisations current guests. No matter the type of operation, organizations should try to develop a database including the name and address of their most frequent guests. Mailing to guests is a direct and effective form of advertising – even if only a postcard listing a few seasonal specials. POS systems include a database function whereby guest contact information can be collected and sorted.
Conclusions: A POS system can be a very useful tool for any business. For hotels, it is important to make sure that the POS system has all of the necessary features to keep up with current technology and still provide a great service to the customer.
