Summary
Automation is the process of utilizing tools or technology to accomplish repetitive, complex tasks with minimal or zero human intervention. From sending an invoice to virtually assisting your customers, automation is used in different ways across the retail businesses.
Why Automation?
Enhanced efficiency: You can perform all major tasks consistently and accurately.
Reduced Manual Effort: Efforts are reduced since the tasks are automated, and human intervention is only needed to set up the automation process.
Increased Productivity: Since repetitive tasks can be achieved by automation, staff can be used to perform other important tasks that can enhance productivity.
Scalability: Businesses can manage increasing workloads through automation without having to add more resources.
Enhanced Customer Experience: Data-driven insights through automation can help businesses provide a personalized shopping experience to their customers.
How can Zoho POS help you?
Zoho POS can help you automate your business by creating workflows to execute repetitive tasks such as email alerts, field updates, fetching information from third-party applications, and much more.
Workflow is a series of steps that are performed to complete a process or achieve a goal. To create a workflow, you need to understand these following parameters.
Input: Data required to begin or progress the automation. For example, when an invoice is created or when an order is edited.
Condition/ Creiteria: Logic that determines how the workflow proceeds. For example, when the invoice amount exceeds a certain value or the order amount is below a certain value.
Action/Output: The result or deliverable produced by the workflow. For example, sending an email or updating a specific field.
Sending offer mails based on purchase.
Assume you manage a supermarket and want to send promotional mail to high-value customers. You can set up a workflow by first selecting the input as invoice creation with the condition that the total value exceeds a particular limit, followed by choosing the action as email alerts and mapping your email template. So, if an invoice is generated with a total value greater than your defined limit, an email alert will be sent to the recipients.
Payment reminder SMS for overdue invoices
Imagine you run a departmental store, and you want to send payment reminders to your customers through SMS. You can create an invoice by selecting the input as invoice creation with the condition that the invoice status is overdue, followed by choosing the action as webhook, which connects Zoho POS with the SMS gateway. So, whenever an invoice status turns overdue, an SMS will be sent to that customer with specified details.
Apart from these scenarios, there are numerous other scenarios where automation can perform your tasks consistently and error-free for you. You simply need to create a workflow rule and execute it.