What do you do if you’re at a sporting event and want to know who is winning? You look at the scoreboard.
For your retail store, you need a similar scoreboard. But instead of knowing who is winning, it’s about how your store performs in key areas. What you need is a “store performance dashboard.”
Your dashboard should give you a performance snapshot of all the critical areas of your business, from inventory and sales to customer makeup and point of sale (POS) analytics.
In this article, we’ll explore the reports that can benefit your store’s dashboard. You’ll learn about the different types of reports, their measures, and how to use them to your advantage.
Reports That Are Vital for Your Retail Store Performance Dashboard
If you want your store to succeed, you need to keep your finger on the pulse of sales and performance. In short, you need a store performance dashboard. But what exactly is a store performance dashboard, and why is it so important?
A store performance dashboard is a centralized visual representation of key metrics and data points that provide a complete overview of your retail store's real-time performance. By consolidating vital reports and insights into a single, easy-to-understand interface, you can identify trends, spot opportunities, and optimize your operations.
Why do you need access to real-time point of sale data? You already likely know that consumer preferences and market conditions are constantly in flux. With continual access to your data, you can better adapt and keep your store competitive.
With a store performance dashboard, you can:
- Monitor sales, traffic, and conversion rates to identify areas for improvement.
- Track inventory levels and supply chain metrics to ensure optimal stock levels and minimize stockouts or overstocking.
- Analyze customer behavior and feedback to enhance the overall shopping experience and build brand loyalty.
Related Read: 5 Tips for Using Retail Analytics To Boost Your Profits
But how can these dashboards actually drive business value? Let's explore a few key areas.
- Enhanced inventory and supply chain management: By closely monitoring inventory levels, sell-through rates, and supplier performance, you can optimize your stock levels, reduce waste, and improve overall efficiency.
- Improved sales and marketing strategies: With detailed insights into sales performance, customer demographics, and marketing campaign effectiveness, you can refine your strategies to target your ideal customers better and maximize ROI.
- Better customer engagement and experience: Tracking customer feedback, satisfaction scores, and engagement metrics helps you identify areas for improvement in your customers’ shopping experience.
Armed with this information, let’s examine some essential reports you must include in your store performance dashboard.
Inventory Reports
Start with a solid inventory management report. This report provides valuable insights into your inventory's performance, helping you make informed purchasing, pricing, and merchandising decisions.
Let's look at some of the most critical inventory reports you should utilize:
- Sell-through rate by product: This report displays the amount of inventory sold compared to what you bought from suppliers. It's a useful way to see which products are popular and identify items that might be staying on your shelves for too long.
- ABC analysis by product: This report divides your inventory into three distinct categories based on their sales performance:
- Item A: The top 15% of your products that represent a whopping 70% of your total sales.
- Item B: The middle 20% of your products account for 20% of your sales.
- Item C: The bottom 65% of your products that make up the remaining 10% of your sales.
- Percent of inventory sold: This one tells you exactly how much stock you have left of each product, expressed as a percentage.
- Days of inventory remaining report: This report estimates how long your current inventory will last based on your sales patterns. It helps you plan purchases to avoid overstocking or running out of popular items.
- Month-end inventory snapshot and value reports: The snapshot shows you the ending quantity of each product at the end of the month, while the value report calculates the dollar value of your entire inventory.
Related Read: How To Improve Inventory Management for Small Grocery Stores
Retail Reports
Retail reports are another type of report you need to include on your store performance dashboard. These reports provide invaluable insights into your store's sales performance, helping you identify trends, make informed decisions, and ultimately boost your bottom line.
Related Read: Automated Inventory Management: Why It's a Critical Feature for Retailers [EXAMPLES]
What are some of the retail reports you should include in your dashboard? Let’s take a closer look:
- Retail sales by product variant or SKU number: This report gives a detailed breakdown of each product's total sales and variants over a specific period.
- Retail sales by product type: This method identifies your highest-performing product categories. By grouping your sales data by product type, you can see which categories drive the most revenue for your store.
- Retail sales by POS location: If you have multiple locations, this report can help you compare sales across your different stores. It can also identify which products sell best at each location, helping you tailor your inventory and merchandising strategies to each store's unique needs.
These retail reports give you at-a-glance insights into what products and locations are performing well and which may need special attention.
Sales Reports
Your retail management dashboard needs detailed sales reports in addition to inventory and retail reports. Why? These reports give a comprehensive view of your sales performance across various channels.
Let's examine some of the most critical sales reports you should use.
- Sales by channel: This report allows you to compare sales through your brick-and-mortar store, online store, and any other channels you use, such as social media or marketplaces.
- Average order value (AOV) over time: You calculate AOV by dividing your total sales by the number of orders in a given period. Tracking your AOV over time can help you identify trends in customer spending behavior and adjust your pricing and promotions accordingly. For example, if your AOV is consistently low, consider bundling products or offering free shipping for orders over a certain amount to encourage higher spending.
- Sales by billing location (if you have an online store): If you have an online presence, it's essential to know where your customers are coming from. This report shows you the total revenue generated from online orders in specific regions, helping you identify your strongest markets.
- Retail sales by staff at register: Your sales staff plays a crucial role in driving revenue for your store. Tracking sales by individual staff members can help you identify your top performers.
Regularly reviewing these sales reports will help you understand how well your store is selling. You can then make better decisions about staffing, promotions, and other important areas.
Customer Reports
Now that we've covered inventory, retail, and sales reports, let's focus on one of your business' most important aspects: your customers.
Related Read: 5 Customer Loyalty Program Ideas to Run This Year
Customer reports give you insights into your customers' demographics, origins, and engagement with your store.
Let's explore two key customer reports you might include in your dashboard:
- Customers by location (for online sales): This report shows you the total number of customers in different towns, cities, zip codes, and states, helping you identify your strongest markets and potential areas for growth. By understanding the geographic distribution of your customer base, you can optimize your shipping and fulfillment strategies, tailor your marketing messages to specific regions, and even consider opening new brick-and-mortar locations.
- First-time vs. returning customers: This report helps determine how effectively you retain current customers while attracting new ones. If you notice that your percentage of returning customers is low, it may be a sign to focus on improving customer loyalty through targeted promotions, personalized communications, or enhanced customer service.
Understanding and catering to customers is critical to your store’s success, and learning from reports like these can help.
Point of Sale Analytics
Finally, you should leverage your tools and technology to their maximum potential. One of the most critical tools in your store’s arsenal is your point of sale solution. Use your point of sale analytics to get real-time insights into how your store is performing in different categories.
What key POS metrics should you be tracking? Let’s explore the top four:
- Net sales: This is your store's total sales minus any returns and discounts. Monitoring your net sales daily gives you a clear overview of your store's performance and helps you identify trends and patterns.
- Net sales by staff: Tracking each staff member's revenue over time helps evaluate individual performance and identify top performers. Consider implementing incentive programs or sales contests to motivate your team and boost performance.
- Average items per order: This metric shows the average number of items customers purchase per transaction. Monitoring this metric can help you gauge the success of your cross-selling and upselling efforts and the effectiveness of your point-of-purchase displays.
- Top products by net sales: Knowing which products or product types are your bestsellers in a given period (e.g., week, month, quarter) is essential for optimizing your inventory and merchandising strategies.
Related Read: Cost to Revenue Ratio [Definition, Importance, and What's a Good or Bad Ratio?]
With these metrics in your arsenal, you will have the tools needed to optimize your operations, inspire your staff, and provide an outstanding customer experience that encourages repeat business.
Your Store Performance Dashboard Is Only As Good as Your POS System
A solid store performance dashboard is critical to making the best decisions to drive your store forward. However, you can’t gather this information — and trust the data you’re seeing — if you don’t have the right tools and technology in place.
Traditional cash registers and outdated POS systems lack the functionality needed to build a comprehensive performance dashboard. These legacy systems often have limited reporting capabilities, making it difficult to access the real-time, granular data you need to build your dashboard.
To truly leverage the power of a store performance dashboard, you need a modern POS system with built-in reporting features.
Enter: POS Nation!
Our POS system can meet the needs of nearly any independent retail store, regardless of size or specialty. With POS Nation, you'll have access to a wide range of built-in reports and dashboards that provide real-time visibility into your store's performance, from sales and inventory levels to customer behavior and loyalty.
Schedule a demo today to see our store performance dashboards, inventory management tools, customer loyalty features, and more in action.
