When to Look for a New POS: 5 Warning Signs

Fall is fast approaching (yes, go ahead and order your pumpkin spice with wild abandon), and most of us in the amusement industry are gearing up for fall trade shows to learn what’s new and hot in the space.

While you’re on the hunt for your next attraction or product offering, it’s also a good time to evaluate the current state of your facility’s operations to make sure your systems and capabilities are enough to support your continued growth.

Your point of sale touches every guest and every dollar, so it’s a critical component of your success. Here are five warning signs that will let you know it’s time to consider an upgrade.

1. You are considering installing a new attraction.

Installing a new attraction is a terrific way to entice new and repeat guests and increase facility revenue.

In order to maximize your new attraction’s potential, you may need a session schedule to streamline your operation. Your current facility management software may be equipped to handle your existing attractions and offerings, but will your facility now need capacity management for your attractions? Or will your facility now need to incorporate a liability waiver?

Trying to make do with a pieced together solution with different systems, service agreements and licensing fees can be time consuming, frustrating and expensive.

2. You want a more streamlined party scheduling experience.

Your parties and group events are a critical part of your business and most likely where you spend a lot of time. As you grow, look for ways to streamline your party processes and guest event communications.

One way to do this is by using a party booking platform that is already incorporated into your point of sale. This streamlines the booking experience for guests booking in person and online, manages tracking of deposits and event settlement and reduces the potential for human error when scheduling.

The larger your offerings, the more complex scheduling your attractions, party rooms and food and beverage needs can get. A solution that provides a cascading scheduling option will help streamline your parties so party coordinators don’t have to manually schedule parties and capacities. Automated party flows will keep your schedule tight so that guests can move from laser tag to go-karts to party time with food and beverage all the way to your arcade, all while factoring in walk-in traffic and advanced reservations, making it easier for you to manage your experience and reduce confusion.

3. You want to build out your food and beverage operation.

In recent education sessions, we have heard that breweries continue to grapple for your guest’s attention, so many family entertainment and amusement facilities have been taking this opportunity to dive into “eatertainment” to win guests back.

With a more sophisticated food and beverage operation, you may now have advanced needs for recipe building, kitchen display systems for food preparation, inventory management, ordering, and table, seating and check management.

Like other areas of your business, you can save yourself headaches by using a POS solution that can handle those needs while still fully integrating into your POS so you have one place of truth for all the revenue that comes into your facility. This not only creates more efficiencies for you behind the scenes, but also provides your guests with the ability to purchase food and other offerings at the same time from anywhere you want them to at your facility – making it easier for your guests to do business with you.

4. You want to create more brand loyalty and repeat traffic.

Competition for your guests’ entertainment dollar is fierce, and you’re probably looking for ways to bring more repeat business back to your facility. Creative loyalty rewards programs can go a long way to rewarding your best guests. The best programs entice your guests with unique rewards and offers while providing your facility with terrific insights about customer demographics and spending behaviors.

Like loyalty rewards, membership programs help your facility increase repeat visits, and they also introduce the potential for a recurring revenue stream. By offering a monthly membership program, or even a season pass with a payment plan, you can offer guests the chance to buy a larger ticket item with a lower cost of entry and lower monthly fee. This helps broaden adoption of some of your higher priced offerings.

Creativity is the key to a successful program, though, so don’t be afraid to consider combining different membership plans with loyalty rewards programs to create entirely unique and compelling tiered membership offerings.

5. You need more insight from your data to grow your business.

You probably want a firmer grasp on what’s happening in every area of your business beyond just understanding what’s being sold each day.

As your business continues to grow, your data needs evolve, and you need to be able to gather and analyze the health of your business easily and quickly – so that you can ensure your operation is nimble. As a start, you need insights into:

• Guest demographic, behaviors and spending data
• Front line sales performance by team member, station or product
• Group sales performance by team member, gratuities or product
• Labor vs sales cost analysis

It takes time you may not have to regularly gather and manipulate different pieces of information to provide you with the business intelligence necessary to make quick decisions that can impact your business. Look for a POS that can consolidate data from multiple areas of your business into one place and delivers a dynamic platform that gives you access to your data in the way you wish to see it.

If you can relate to any of these warning signs, we can help. Schedule a demo today to see CenterEdge in action.