By: Adarsh Halwe, Principal Consultant

Brick-and mortar-stores have always been the crucial link in the shopping industry. These are locations where customers take last-minute decisions and when sales are closed. They are complemented by Point of Sale (POS) systems, which allow the stakeholders an in-store experience. These systems allow customers to check the visual details of products, comprise self-checkout kiosks to drive impulsive purchases, and know the delivery status before purchase (critical in high-cost custom products). In terms of retailers, they help with in-store marketing through displays, enhanced customer experience, creating a shop inside a shop, and managing smart shelves. They also help:

• Store agents demonstrate product details to customers, apart from checking the inventory and billing, and offering discounts/rebates
• Service and business teams know customer profiles and manage loyalty services by pushing custom promotions, leading to opportunities for upsell/cross-sell
• Marketing and merchandising teams improve brand visibility and product mix across stores
• Business teams view sales positions and inventory movement possibilities, and perform data analysis to improve product line up and sales/bottom lines
• The supply chain line to understand consumption patterns and make the inventory available at the point of consumption

Before the pandemic, POS was largely marginalized, with brands not spending much on feature revamps, since customers largely focused on e-commerce and social commerce touchpoints for their purchases. Pricing, customer information, product features, and promotion data were maintained at the enterprise level, while other systems were mere consumers, including POS. It was projected that if a brand was not into digital commerce, it could be written off, given its reduced market reach. This, along with customers’ digital interactions, resulted in many online purchase decisions.

However, in the post-pandemic period, customer asks have changed. People want to go out and have interactions at stores. Here are a few recent statistics that put things in perspective.

• As per 451research.com, over 50% of consumers (who participated in the research) have expressed their desire to start shopping at retail stores once the risks surrounding COVID-19 are minimized.
• A respondent in Forrester’s Consumer Voices highlighted, “Going to stores was a social event for me, a time to meet and make new friends, and buy quality merchandise. My life was a void without this.”
• In July last year, Forbes reported that consumers rely on in-store shopping for ease, speed and the having a sense of community. They cite, ‘online shopping frustrations as one of the key reasons to turn to the physical store, along with the desire for community and immersion.’ When reflecting on their quality of life without brick-and-mortar stores altogether, consumers lament the loss of having an emotional experience.

Given that brick-and-mortar stores seem to be gaining more traction, the following use cases can be adopted by various businesses (based on their size, product mix, type, and location presence).

• Creating a holistic experience for the customer using an effective omnichannel strategy like BOPIS (buy online and pick up in store) /ROPIS (reserve online and pick up in store) /BOPAC (buy online and pick at curbside) for a robust customer experience and eliminating or minimizing returns.
• Ensuring real-time banking reconciliations for revenue realization and reporting
• Creating and starting ad-hoc shops (inside – to address trade promotions, or outside – through mobile stores) to maintain business continuity.
• Maintaining a demand signaling-based supply chain across online/offline stores and regions
• Using Web3 technologies like distributed ledger (especially niche retailers), which can be used to understand the origin/transit of a product and quality check parameters, thus allowing the customer to have more confidence in the quality. This can be provided by scanning a QR code or a link in the product’s details to know a product’s background.
• Ensuring POS + OMS (order management system) to effectively manage internal and external sales
• Self-service capabilities for customers like curbside pickup, contactless payment, self-checkout, etc.
• A cloud-based POS can help in terms of scalability by integrating with new technologies like payments/shipment/loyalty CRM systems, etc.

Evidently, POS is no longer just a point of purchase for the stakeholders. Instead, it is a point of service, which needs to be holistic across the value chain with the customer in the driver’s seat. In the whole gamut of things, retailers will need to realize that they need to focus on a unified experience for all stakeholders. The following could be used, as a go-to list, to make sure that POS systems are ready for the next pivot:

• Integrated systems across online and offline for a singular point of truth, whether for inventory status or customer personas
• Possible sales channels (store or region-wise) on the Metaverse to give customers an immersive experience and co-create with them using NFTs (Non-fungible tokens) for better brand closeness
• Flexibility to manage multiple stores of: a. Varied size (brand owned/franchise owned or mix) b. Specialized or diversified product portfolio c. Separate brands under one umbrella
• Single customer view through robust 360o profiling across brands, instead of just one dimension using a data lake
• Power to business teams to manage the marketing mix across 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, and Promotion), with the ability to customize promotion at the customer level
• Accurate pricing across stores (online and offline) to plug revenue leakages and ensuring the same price to customers across channels
• Differential pricing across markets and geos
• Ensuring a synchronous view of inventory numbers, age, catalog, and diversity at factory and stores to allow for sale through the front and backend integration
• Real-time dashboards to display revenue information using filters for regions, stores, products (categories/SKU), salespersons, etc.
• Ability to validate and use vouchers or loyalty points by customers across channels, stores, products, brands, etc.
• Data security in the age of data being the new currency needs to be well understood and protected.
• Allow business expansion not only in a country, but also globally, considering tax structures, invoice printing statutory guidelines, and any other brand customizations

In business parlance, POS must be more versatile to equip businesses to endure the rigorous and fast-paced environment. It needs to be sustainable, scalable, and flexible to allow for managing challenges emerging out of political, economic, social, and technological changes.

At LTIMindtree, we understand our clients’ needs and enable them to make these transitions – from point of sale to point of service – possible. Please get in touch with us; we will be happy to collaborate with you in your transformation journey.