Department store management system

Managing the operations of a department store, especially a department store chain, can be a real challenge. When you sell merchandise in many different product categories (sports, apparel, toys, furniture, housewares, etc.), keeping track of everything you need to manage to stay efficient and profitable can become a nightmare.

As a store manager, you’re responsible for developing your team, keeping customers happy, ensuring inventory is maintained, and a host of other responsibilities. To stay on top of everything, department store retailers need solid skills as well as effective strategies to improve sales, marketing, management, and operations. To help you level up your department store, Multidev offers success tips for store managers.

Follow these eight tips for managing retail operations in your department stores

1. Centralize Your Database

Instead of having a separate database for each department, create a central database for your department store. This way, you can collect, store and maintain data in one place, but it can be accessed from many points. Handling one database is much more efficient than keeping track of five, ten, or fifteen different databases.

2. Setup Smart Promotional Rules

Chances are you’ll have promotions in multiple departments at the same time. If you have a centralized way to manage all your promotions from a single location, you’ll be more efficient and profitable. Not only can you manage each department’s promotions separately and simultaneously, but you can also establish promotional rules that are meaningful for your department store chain. The collective data can be used for automated, data-driven campaigns, such as communications or the initiation of offers based on brand loyalty.

3. Make Your Point-of-sale Mobile

Retailers that allow their employees to track sales from anywhere in the department store can streamline their operations and increase revenue. This will save your employees time, make your customers happier, and make you more money.

4. Manage Your Customers Better

You might have separate departments, but you probably have only one POS system. Even if you have more departments with their own POS terminal, you’ll be more efficient if you can manage all your customer relationships from one database. One reason is that your customers probably don’t come to one department. Each department has to access the same information about each customer.

5. Keep Your Staff Up-To-Date and Motivated

Ensure that your employees have good product knowledge. Train them regularly on new products to keep them up to date. Reward them with sales incentives to keep them happy and motivated. What happens if you have employees that work in several departments? Establish a way to track and monitor each employee’s commissions and bonuses regardless of which department they work in.

6. Manage Your Inventory from End-to-End

Department stores have a lot of inventory, and they have a lot of different types of merchandise. You need to manage each vendor and each product well. You have to track each product from the time you order it to the time it leaves the store in your customer’s hand. This is a big challenge. You need a robust solution to track and monitor all of your inventory across all departments in your store.

7. Increase Your Digital Presence

If you don’t have an online presence yet, you’re already behind. From selling on Instagram to launching an online store, retailers are experimenting with multiple ways to meet evolving customer needs. More importantly, connecting your web front-end to back-end operations can allow you to fulfill web orders, take online payments, and run a large online store. This will go a long way toward making your store a 21st-century shopping haven. Implementing interactive retail experiences bridges the gap between a store’s online and offline sales.

8. Omnichannel Fulfillment and Smart Checkout

To meet the needs of growing digital consumers, retailers have invested heavily in the digital infrastructure and experiential technology needed to succeed in the digital space. They must offer omnichannel fulfillment with contactless and frictionless payment. They can use both home pickup and BOPIS to improve sales and customer satisfaction. Local businesses can distribute their products faster than the big e-commerce players by offering same-day delivery.

These tips are great for department store retailers and can easily boost sales. Don’t let the efficiency of department stores change. Get the right operations management solution right from the start.

ChainDrive retail management software designed for department stores keeps the tradition of being a destination of choice to continue. You can stay relevant, optimize data handling, understand your customer, and strategize flexibly with ChainDrive department store management system.

Request a free demo to see how department store retailers gain visibility & retail insights into their business with ChainDrive, the best department store management system for retailers and wholesalers.