A new resource for garden centres is nearing launch. It will help benchmark sales performance against regional and national averages for garden centres. It looks like being a great resource for monitoring and managing performance. Finding opportunities to improve. And it looks like it will provide the sort of data that the banks are keen to see in business cases.
The Garden Retail Monitor will take sales data from garden centres’ ePOS systems and collate it anonymously on a secure encrypted server. This aggregated data feeds live online reports for garden centres. These reports compare sales performance and other metrics of your garden centre with average down to department level. There’s no fee for HTA garden retailers wanting to use the system . Any garden centre or retail nursery willing to submit their data from their epos system can get access to the benchmarking reports.
NedFox is working closely with the HTA on this project and ‘The Monitor’ is fully integrated in the ePOS solution which means participating will be effortless. The default product grouping will match the HTA’s template and reports will be generated routinely.
If you want to see more about getting your garden centre signed up, please visit the HTA in Stand 20H10-J11 or come to the seminar Productivity and Profile at 13:15 in the seminar area on the 12th and 13th September.
HTA FAQ:
FAQs
Q. Is my data secure, and can other people see my store’s data?
A. Your data is encrypted and secure server and cannot be accessed by other garden centres. You are the only person that can see your store(s) specific figures.
Q. Do I have to pay to use the system?
A. No. If you’re a garden centre and you are willing to put your data in, you can get access to the benchmark reports.
Q. I want to benchmark my business using the GCA barometer of trade categories. Can I?
A. Yes. We’ve designed the system so that you can compare your business with others using a wide range of ‘departments’. You will also be able to benchmark using your own epos department hierarchy, so there won’t be any of that worry about whether you’re comparing apples with apples.
Q. I don’t have an epos system – does that mean I can’t take part?
A. Sadly it does. But we do have a separate system you can use where you manually type in your sales figures every month. If you want to use that, please let us know and we’ll get you signed up
Q. What benchmark measures are provided?
A. You can look at total store and department performance to quite a detailed level. You can also see how sales trends over time compare with other garden centres, as well as looking at metrics such as transaction numbers, average transaction values and gross margin performance.
More information : http://hta.org.uk