Retailers are harnessing technology to compete.

Retailers who are leaning into cutting-edge technology have an advantage.

Technology and automation free up employees’ time spent on manual tasks so they can focus on making a bigger impact on the business. A full 100% of retail business owners surveyed said that technology and automation have improved their businesses. For those focused on growth over the next 12 months, order tracking (43%) is the top area they're automating, followed by payroll and benefits (42%).

We chose Square for Retail as we wanted an automated system that would connect our physical and online stores and save us time in manually adjusting stock.

– Alexandra Marcher, manager of Leamington Wine Company (UK)

Square for Retail provides alerts when stock gets low, provides automated inventory sell-through reports, and sends automatic purchase orders to vendors.

The automated inventory sell-through report is a tool that we use to really look at the future of our business. We want to look at the sales velocity and we want to know what's doing well. So that really helps us just discuss our numbers, and look at what we need to change, and just keep pushing forward to the future.

– Alexis Lilly, co-owner, Nappily Naturals (US)

The right technology can accelerate business growth, but the wrong technology can be a burden. Of the top challenges retailers encounter with technology, communicating with customers across channels (42%), accessing order and purchase history (41%), and creating personalized communications (41%) are the hardest to overcome.

PRO TIP

Managing purchase orders through the same system where sales are processed enables retailers to easily stay on top of their inventory and better plan for the future.

We used to handwrite every order in our account book, so there were constant errors and inventory issues before we switched to Square. Now that we have a team and a reliable POS system, we are planning to expand our stores not only in Sydney, but across Australia. Our first Melbourne store was very successful, so that is our starting point to expand further across Australia.

– YoungMin Jo, director, Tom's Project (AU)