A growing salon or spa can quickly get tangled in a mess of different software applications, causing more headaches than the programs were supposed to solve!
A typical salon may start out by first installing a point-of-sale (POS) program to accept payments and a calendar system to help manage appointments. Once it obtains some loyal clients, that same salon may purchase a subscription to a customer relations management system (CRM) and an email marketing software. Then to continue growing the business, the salon may start an e-commerce site to book appointments and sell gift cards, and purchase an inventory system to begin selling product.
This “software hairball” can wreak havoc on your bottom line and frustrate your ability to grow your business in more ways than you think.
4 WAYS INDIVIDUAL PROGRAMS ARE HOLDING YOU BACK
- Employee Productivity: When your salon or spa is small and growing, you have to run a tight ship and every employee must be operating at optimal productivity. If your employees are bogged down with inefficient and disjointed processes, it increases errors and takes time away from their more important core duties. For instance, your employees may spend hours manually entering customer information into marketing and appointment reminder applications, while other employees pull that same information from your CRM system to complete product sales and to calculate their commissions. If any changes occur to your clients’ information, your employees have to sift through mounds of data to reconcile this information again. Such labor-intensive and manual tasks reduce the agility that your salon or spa needs to grow.
- Lack of Visibility: Multiple software systems that aren’t integrated make it difficult to see how your salon or spa is performing. Having reports that show performance across your sales, marketing, service, and other departments are crucial to giving you a complete, real-time understanding of your business. Most salons and spas simply give up on getting this information on a regular basis because of the amount of time it takes to source, extract and analyze this data from their software hairball. For those that do, countless hours are wasted trying to tie unrelated, error-prone, and out of date information together into a cohesive report. Consequently, many salons and spas make slow decisions based on inaccurate information, or they make hasty and risky decisions off of gut instinct.
- Complexity and Cost: With so many different applications, you or your IT guy wastes an enormous amount of time and money on integrating, maintaining, and acquiring new versions of these applications. Often times, once new versions are purchased, even more integration and maintenance needs to be performed for all the different versions of software to work together. Consequently, valuable time that could be used to make the business more productive is wasted, while maintenance costs skyrocket.
- Customer Satisfaction: With fierce competition, it is essential that your salon or spa provides an exceptional customer experience. When customers are unable to quickly make and confirm appointments, easily shop for products and services, or get information about their membership or gift card status, they will be less satisfied and less likely to return. An integrated software system ensures that customers have a great experience because their activity is easily tracked and monitored across different departments, and ensures your employees have the information they need to service and sell to your customers quickly and efficiently.
YOU NEED AN INTEGRATED, ALL-INCLUSIVE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
Many salons and spas are still struggling to keep up with their growth and manage costs effectively because of a hodge-podge of disconnected systems. To keep your business growing at the dramatic rates you plan for, it is essential to have an integrated software solution that is built around a single database and business process which will yield tremendous cost savings and improved business productivity. With an integrated software system, expansion to multiple locations and additional sales channels can be accomplished a lot faster because of the unified processes and data it provides.
That’s why ProSolutions offers the best all-inclusive salon and spa business management software on the market. From online booking and automated marketing to personalized smartphone apps, we are the only software you’ll never outgrow!
