Have you ever been daydreaming of effectively running your business while lying on a beach and sipping margaritas? We know what you think: “I wish I could do that, but it’s hardly possible for a bar owner like me”. Well, maybe you’re right. But imagine if you had an assistant that could keep you in the loop of every tiny detail going on at your pub every minute? That would make remote management far easier, right? Then you’ll be glad to find out that such an assistant already exists and it’s called a point-of-sale system!
Remote management: Pros and Cons
Of course, saying that managing your business remotely is just a piece of cake would be misleading. Like everything in this world, it has its advantages and disadvantages, so let’s take a closer look at each side of the coin.
Cons:
- Lack of personal interaction with your team.
While you are away, some new staff members will most likely be hired and you’ll have very little sense of their individual personality which sometimes is essential for an effective management. However, if you have a reliable deputy whose choices you can trust, this might not be a problem for you.
- High level of anxiety.
If you are the type of person who’s used to being in control of everything, it might be hard for you to be away from your business.
- Advanced time-management and self-organization skills are required more than ever. Sometimes managing other people is even easier than managing yourself. Sure that you have enough willpower to handle running your pub remotely?
Pros:
- You can work from any place in the world. No comments.
- You can maintain a perfect work-life balance.
- You can spend less time on work with no significant loss in effectiveness.
If the cons haven’t scared you out, let’s discuss your responsibilities as a manager to understand which of them you can do remotely.
What you have to control as a bar manager
- Employee activity.
Staff always works better when they know they are being watched. Don’t blame them - it’s just a human nature. You can observe your employees’ activity by integrating digital cameras into a POS sale system benefits startups. This way you’ll be able to see how waiters interact with customers, how fast food and beverages are delivered to the tables and when transactions ring up at the point of sale. You can even catch your employees red-handed on stealing from you. Remote presence at a bar can even be better for watching your staff activity than actually being in the spot. Besides, with some POS systems you can see your employees’ work schedules and set a mode that prevents them from starting their shift earlier or finishing it later - so you always know who was on the shift when something went wrong.
- Cash flow.
This, probably, is the most important aspect of the business that should be carefully watched by the owner or manager. And with a help of the right POS software for pubs, it can be arranged easier than ever. You will see every single incoming and outgoing transaction. You can tune the POS system so that at the beginning and at the end of every shift each waiter will enter the current cash balance.
Besides, you’ll have access to revenue reports, sales per time of day/week, average checks and so on, so you can definitely be on top of your business finances even remotely.
- Inventory.
It’s time to throw away your abacus as a POS system allows you to check all your ingredient and product inventory calculations in real time! You will also get alerts when you start running out of a certain product, so basically it does all the control for you.
How to choose the right POS system
Now when you know how a POS system can help you to manage your bar remotely, it’s time to talk about what other features you should pay attention to when choosing a POS system that is right for you. And remember that you don’t have to get a pig in a poke - almost every POS system has a trial plan so that you could test it before buying and see if it suits your business. Anyway, here are the POS system features that are very important for any business:
- Cloud storage solution.
It has tons of advantages, but most important ones are data security and safety. When a POS system keeps your information on cloud servers, it gets saved and updated automatically and can be recovered anytime in case anything happens on your end. Besides, if the electricity goes out or internet disconnects at your pub, all the data will be preserved on the cloud storage. A great example of a POS system that uses remote cloud servers would be Poster POS - these guys will keep your data on several servers, located in different countries to max out your data’s security.
- Cross-platform POS.
A perfect POS system should support all kinds of OS and devices: iOS, Android, Windows tablets, laptops, monoblocks. This may not seem important for you now, but trust us - easy access to the data from any possible device might help you a lot in your remote management.
Must have POS system features
And last but not the least, what you should know about a POS system is what makes it so comfortable to use when you are running a bar remotely:
- Fast and easy access to any data in real time. It gives the ability to quickly understand if everything goes as planned and react timely if something goes wrong.
- Reports and other statistical data in dashboards means the ability to make data-driven management decisions, which is the key to any successful business.
So, now you have all the necessary information about such a qualified artificial assistant as a POS system. It will help you maintain a work-life balance and work better but not harder until robot-servants are finally on the market, but this is unlikely to happen in the next few years, so you can enjoy working with a POS so far.
