Nothing stands still in the world of technology – systems evolve and become ever more sophisticated and capable. This is certainly true for retail systems, which have evolved significantly since their inception, and which are now an invaluable way for retailers to engage their clients and grow their businesses. Here we take a look at the evolution of retail management solutions and why understanding today’s solutions and harnessing their power is crucial to retail success.

The retail technology evolution

Stage 1 – cash register: When technology first appeared in retail, it was in the form of cash registers – relatively simple devices that recorded sales, took payment and issued a customer receipt.

Stage 2 – Point of Sale: Point of sale (POS) was the second major stage in the development of retail technology – computer systems running specialist point of sale applications, and which use peripheral devices such as scanners to read barcodes and look up prices, integrated scales, and receipt printers. The software primarily records transactions and can also functions such as updates to inventory management.

Stage 3 – Retail Management Solution: The latest level of evolution in retail technology is the retail management solution. A retail management solution has the best retail point of sale at its core and delivers efficient and fast POS, plus the important option of contactless payment. But it also offers a much more holistic approach to managing the entire retail business, integrating:

• Sophisticated inventory management that provides a single view of stock no matter where it is held in the business and updates stock levels in real time.
• New ways to shop – enabling customers to integrate online offline activity in a single transaction.
• Loyalty and personalised marketing – helping retailers to capture and analyse detailed information and use it to create tailored promotions and offers.
• Mobile POS – unleashing sales transactions from the fixed checkout and empowering staff to interact with customers anywhere in the store.

The key to a retail management solution is that these functions are fully integrated, and can pass data between them for seamless, efficient and effective retail process management.

Good retail management solutions also offer deep, ready-built integrations to other essential retail systems, particularly Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems such as Sage, Microsoft Dynamics and SAP Business One. They have an always-on POS architecture for greater reliability and an intuitive user interface making them easy to use for associates and reducing training costs.

Today, many retail management solutions are provided under a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model via the cloud, rather than having to be run and managed on in-house infrastructure.

Why this evolution is crucial for retailers today

For retailers, especially those who are still running basic POS systems (or even cash registers), it’s important to understand this evolution and consider moving to a retail management solution, and reaping the rewards of its three key benefits:

1. Engagement and experience – for today’s shoppers, in the current highly competitive retail landscape, experience is a very large factor in their choice of store. It’s enough to ring up the price, take payment and issue a receipt. Retailers need to provide a memorable experience – for example through:
   • Loyalty programs – using customer and transaction data to understand customer preferences and develop rewards and incentives to keep them coming back.
   • Personalisation – driving up sales by sending customers personalised marketing offers based on their shopping history and preferences.
   • In-store engagement – not just at the checkout, but helping shoppers in the aisle, with associates equipped with Mobile POS.
2. Omnichannel shopping transactions – retailers know that having an online presence is essential. But it’s important that this is not separate to the in-store experience, but part of an integrated whole. Retail management solutions enable customers to create online offline transactions – for example, by browsing and buying online, but picking up in store (click and collect,) or buying online and returning in store (BORIS).
3. Efficiency – driving ever greater process efficiency is a given in retail, and a retail management solution can help to make the most of people, processes and products.
   • Streamline backend processes – a retail management solution can be the foundation for automation of processes such as inventory management, where orders can be automatically stock levels reach key thresholds.
   • fficient use of IT staff and resources – selecting a cloud based retail management solution can free up IT staff from managing software updates and hardware capacity. This leaves them to focus on strategic planning and on getting the most out of the solution.

Store technology has been through a significant evolution. Retailers who stay abreast of these changes and who embrace the latest in retail management solutions can deliver the customer experience, omnichannel retail and process efficiency that will maximise sales and profit.

FAQs

What happens if I use a cloud based retail management system and my network fails?

This is a risk that worries many retailers, especially in countries where internet reliability may be patchy. The answer is to ensure that you use a cloud-based system that also has the ability to operate offline and then seamlessly reconnect once the network connection is restored. The risk of losing connectivity does put some retailers off using a SaaS retail management system, but with software like iVend that seamlessly cuts over to stand alone mode, and then transmits the transaction data when it is back online, there is no risk of not being able to trade, or of losing data.

What are the benefits of integration between my point of sale and my ERP?

POS and ERP integration delivers real-time data synchronization, improved inventory management, enhanced financial reporting accuracy, streamlined operations, better customer insights, and overall increased business visibility and control, leading to improved decision-making and profitability. Whilst you could develop this yourself, a retail management system like iVend comes with built in integrations to all the major retail ERPs to save you a great deal of time and money and eliminate the chance of human error in transferring data between the two systems.

Content Sources:

McKinsey

Deloitte

Forbes