Summary

America’s Mattress owner, Mike Conner, wanted to provide a better customer experience and streamline his sales process at the point-of-sale.

Conner decided upon the Smartwerks because it handled more complex transactions and offered cloud based functionality for his operations.

Immediately after implementation, his store was able to:

• Process all transactions from start-to-finish, purchase and delivery, without leaving the showroom,
• Lower his total cost of ownership and pay only $2.50 per day for a complete POS solution,
• Create real-time sales reporting, accessible when he was traveling.

Challenges

Prior to implementing the Smartwerks, Conner’s store used Quickbooks POS. Unfortunately, the Quickbooks software required manual adjustments of inventory after every transaction. Manual data entry was time consuming and caused inaccurate inventory counts.

For a mattress store, delivery and layaway options are a necessity. The Quickbooks POS was unable to handle delivery orders or layaways properly, which caused negative customer experiences, especially when his salespeople could not keep their promises. Customers expected in stock products and quick delivery, and his store failed to deliver.

Another challenge was a lack of sales reporting. Conner’s business was growing and he needed to keep track of sales goals and his employees’ activity. Quickbooks did not have a specialized reporting function on product sales and top sellers. Sales reporting would enable him to know how well his employees were performing.

Two other challenges related to his old POS system were server maintenance and employee training. Conner’s POS system resided on a server he had to maintain, costing him more than $15 a day. Always being present at the office was not physically possible, so Mike needed a solution that would reside in the cloud and allow him to travel for business. And Quickbooks was not intuitive. He had a lot of difficulty training new employees, and his veteran employees were frustrated because of the lack of functionality.

Improved Results After the Integration

Within days, Conner’s store integrated Smartwerks into its operations. The Smartwerks team helped during every stage and continued to support the company after integration was complete. Training on the new software only took a couple of hours, because the software was designed to be intuitive and easy to use.

Conner described the mobile point of sale screen on their tablets as one of the best features of Smartwerks. Customers no longer waited for his sales associates to answer questions about availability or delivery times. Sales associates no longer had to leave the showroom floor to make a call or check multiple computers for in-stock inventory. More time was spent interacting with customers and enhancing their in-store experience.

Operations at his location have been streamlined and employee productivity has increased, because the entire system is automated. Smartwerks coordinates inventory, purchase orders, customer data, and sales, and also re-orders product. Profitability has increased due to more sales and fewer problems with inventory.

Finally, sales reporting is simplified. Real-time reporting shows product sales, sales associate’s activity, top sellers, and dead stock. Granular sales reports provide areas of improvement and marketing insight. In today’s retail environment, the functionality of a complete system proved to be invaluable for Conner’s store to grow and expand in Northern Florida region.