Technology and the internet are a part of everyday life for collegiate retail stores. Today, concerns for those stores include focusing on things like increasing sales through the store website or securely organizing their data or inventory in a digital format.
Meanwhile, these tasks are being handled as stores simultaneously try to combat online conglomerates like Amazon from poaching their customers. And, as all this is happening, the store is constantly trying to make sure
that they are maintaining good relationships with their customers and doing their best to target specific customer demographics in order to send out relevant marketing materials. That’s a lot to have on a store’s plate.
However, there are ways to utilize technology to tackle all of these challenges without sacrificing your effectiveness in any one specific area. That starts with making sure your store is digitally secure. There are a couple ways to ensure your store accomplishes that goal: you can integrate tokenization and P2PE encryption.
Tokenization takes secure data, like credit card numbers, and replaces them with a “token,” with is a meaningless surrogate value that is useless in the event that it is stolen. P2PE, meanwhile, is a payment security solution that instantaneously converts confidential credit card data and information into indecipherable code at the swipe of the card to prevent hacking and fraud.
Without taking these modern security measures, retailers can put themselves at risk of getting behind before the race even gets started. Above all else, customers have to feel like they can trust the vendor they’re interacting with; otherwise, they’ll go elsewhere for the product they desire. But that’s only one part of utilizing technology to organize your store – you still need good ways to manage your inventory and promote your products to your customers.
Finding a solution that will help you organize your products and stock is essential to the organization for your store as a whole. That starts with making sure your store has the right books, as that is the core of the majority of collegiate retail operations. This means that a) you need a provider that can get you those books on time and in the right quantities, and b) you have the right software that can simplify the process of organizing those books when they arrive at your store.
MBS, for example, has a 10-million-book warehouse that fulfill orders for hundreds of stores, while simultaneously offering programs like GM/GM2online or TA/TA2online to make your life easier whether you’re dealing with general merchandise or textbooks. With the right software, you can do things like manage adoptions, fill out purchase orders and update online merchandise (among many other things), all while sitting at your desk.
Finally, none of this really matters if you can’t get customers in your store to show them why you are the best choice for them. But it’s not just finding customers in-store – it’s reaching alumni or fans of your school across the world over the internet. In order to accomplish that goal, you’re again going to need a piece of technology that can help you target those hard to reach customers, and find ways to offer them items that appeal to their specific interests. MBS Customer Relationship Management can help you target specific demographics and ultimately minimize your marketing costs while increasing response rates and growing your customer base.
So no matter what area of your business you think could use some help, chances are there’s some bit of technology out there that’s designed to meet your specific need and help you stay organized. How does your store use technology to solve problems? Let us know in the comments!
