An interesting read from NACS Daily as it speaks of Wal-Mart stores using a “machine” to count their currency as opposed to an employee. Nobody wants to see lost jobs, however our ‘machines’ can greatly improve the bottom line. Running a business is hard. Running a small business is even harder.
“Small Business” is a term that I believe is relative. I remember years ago my friend owned a 79′ Chris Craft Yacht and his young son felt oh so proud that his daddy had such a HUGE boat. But when my friend took his boat to Miami the young son said,
“Daddy! Look at that boat – it’s so BIG”.
Mr. H said “Son, there’s always a bigger boat”.
This is true for so many things. There’s always a bigger business, a bigger store or a bigger budget. The goal is to be successful no matter the size of your business.
So, what’s the point in all of this? Like Wal-Mart, don’t pay an employee to do a job that can be done [in a fraction of the time, at a fraction of the cost] by a machine. The machine you need for your business is backOffice™ Software from Insight Retail Software.
Do NOT have an employee spending hours………..
- receiving an order from your vendor – use our EDI Module.
- entering and attempting to submit data to Altria for Scan Data Incentive – use our Scan Data Service
- entering and attempting to submit data to RJR for Scan Data Incentive – use our Scan Data Service
- changing 100’s of Cigarette prices one at a time – use our GROUP CHANGE feature
- wondering if your margins are correct – use our backOffice™ Software Reports
……. and the list goes on and on.
Our backOffice™ Software [AKA The Machine] will pay for itself in a very short time. Remember, Wal-Mart started with one store in Newport, Arkansas. They were a “Small Business”.
Call Chris @ 518-633-4111 x 108 for more information.
Article from Nacs Daily – click here
SO MAYBE THE ROBOTS REALLY ARE COMING
NEW YORK – When a Walmart store began using the Cash360 machine to count currency, and digitally deposit the money at the bank, the retailer also replaced a task previously assigned to a human, who made $13 an hour counting cash and tracking the accuracy of the store’s book, writes the Wall Street Journal.
“They think it will be a more efficient way to process the money,” the employee, who has worked with Walmart for a decade, told the news source.
Nearly 4,700 of Walmart’s U.S. stores have a Cash360 machine, notes the Journal, which is making thousands of positions obsolete. Employees whose job function has been replaced by the machine have moved to other positions or left the company. “The role of service and customer-facing associates will always be there,” Judith McKenna, Walmart’s U.S. chief operating officer, told the news source, adding, “there are interesting developments in technology that mean those roles shift and change over time.”
Meanwhile, some economists say that many retail jobs can and should be automated. A 2015 Citi Research report found that two-thirds of U.S. retail jobs are at “high risk” of disappearing by 2030. “The primary predictor for automation is how routine a task is,” said Ebrahim Rahbari, an economist at Citi Research. “A big issue is that retail is a sizable percentage of the workforce.”
The Journal writes that self-checkout lanes “can replace cashiers. Autonomous vehicles could handle package delivery or warehouse inventory. Even more complex tasks like suggesting what toy or shirt a shopper might want could be handled by a computer with access to a shopper’s buying history, similar to what already happens online today.”
Automation is filtering through the retail industry. For example, Home Depot has self-checkouts in most stores and is testing handheld scanners for larger items like lumber. “We want to simplify the stores so that we can free up our associates…so they can focus on selling,” Carol Tomé, CFO of Home Depot, told the Journal.
CNBC also reports that half of American jobs are at risk from automation, according to a new study by Ball State University’s Center for Business and Economic Research. “How Vulnerable are American Communities to Automation, Trade, and Urbanization?” combines several recent studies on employment trends to present a stark view of the future job situation for certain parts of the United States, notes the news source.
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