POS Solutions, Ecommerce Merchandising
Article | June 7, 2024
In recent years, with the progression and development of information technology and the Internet, the third-party payment platform has experienced immense up-gradation. This has resulted in facilitating people's lives to a great extent and simplifying and transforming the method of payment.
With the accelerated advancement in the era of the Internet and the significant rise in the scale of third-party payment transactions, in comparison to the conventional mode of payment, these solutions have substantially increased people's consumption power by not only making operations more convenient and reducing transaction costs, but also by safeguarding the rights and interests of both parties.
Shift Towards Cashless Transactions Bolstering the Third Party Payments
There is a rapid shift towards the use of cashless point-of-sale (POS) solutions, driven by the growing digitalization. According to a study, nearly 82 percent of the population in the U.S. are using digital or cashless payments—defined to include in-app or browser-based online purchases, QR codes, in-store checkout using a mobile phone, and person-to-person (P2P) payments.
Citing the trend, about 27% of consumers and around 32% of business owners said they believe the U.S. will become a completely cashless society in the coming future. Third-party payment solutions add functionality to the cashless transactions and act as payment aggregators, providing freedom and flexibility to customers to select the solutions they find most favorable to meet their financial needs. Therefore, with increasing cashless transactions, third-party payment solutions will gain huge traction across the POS sector.
What’s Next?
With the improvement in the urbanization level, the continuous growth of the urban population, and the appeal of third-party payment solutions, it is crucial to tap into the spending potential of customers. Hence, leading POS solution providers are emphasizing on development and introduction of new third-party and mobile POS systems.
For instance, Paynear Solutions Pvt. Ltd., a financial technology company, announced the launch of a third-party omnichannel cashless solution under an umbrella through a mobile PoS solution, enabling all the business owners signed up with Paynear to seamlessly accept UPI transactions.
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POS Retail
Article | May 10, 2024
Top e-commerce marketing tools help companies provide frictionless shopping experiences to their customers. Discover how leading e-commerce platforms help companies spur inimitable success and ROI.
Contents
1. The Strategic Relevance of E-commerce Platforms
2. Prominent Trends in E-commerce Platform Development
3. Top E-Commerce Tools Driving Operational Efficiency and Growth
3.1 FastSpring
3.2 X-Cart
3.3 Emporix
3.4 Elastic Path
3.5 Kibo Commerce
3.6 Cleverbridge
3.7 Vendasta
3.8 BetterCommerce
3.9 CommentSold
3.10 Virto Commerce
4. In a Nutshell
1. The Strategic Relevance of E-commerce Platforms
Today's leading e-commerce platforms offer remarkable perks like business expansion, unmatched personalization, and data insights, holding immense strategic relevance for businesses worldwide. The inclination toward digitizing commercial operations has further intensified with varied environmental, economic, or social factors that induce consumers and clients to engage in online shopping and interactions from the comfort of their homes. Leveraging these platforms, firms successfully offer their customers exceptional product varieties, ease of return, and exciting discount offers, elevating their brand image and user satisfaction.
Moreover, as essential tools guaranteeing operational excellence, e-commerce platforms are helping businesses optimize their sales performance, providing them with a solid online presence and streamlined purchase processes. With crucial consumer behavior insights, these tools empower companies to fine-tune their product offerings,marketing pursuits, POS techniques, and other strategies. Therefore, investing in the best e-commerce tools and implementing a well-thought-out internet commerce strategy have become imperative for companies to thrive in the digital marketplace and address the shifting consumer demands.
2. Prominent Trends in E-commerce Platform Development
Emerging e-commerce platform development trends are optimizing business processes to ensure the best customer experiences.
Here’s a glimpse at the prominent trends gaining momentum among e-commerce businesses:
Preference for Personalization
With the effective implementation of advanced AI technologies and data analytics for marketing enhancement, e-commerce platforms today are affording businesses impressive customization abilities, including personalized product offerings and marketing messages, which secure greater customer satisfaction.
The Surge in Mobile Commerce
Mobile commerce has become another notable trend in e-commerce platform development, accounting for a considerable part of retail e-commerce sales. Likewise, many e-commerce websites are establishing dedicated mobile apps to offer an easy shopping experience to users across different devices, elevating conversions and brand image.
Subscription-based Offerings
Subscription services have become more influential in the digital business arena, for they foster customer loyalty toward a brand and ensure long-term relationships with them. Providing consumers with repeated services or product deliveries, these offerings secure a steady revenue stream and help companies engage in sound financial planning due to income predictability.
APIs for an Omnipresent Business
The present era of e-commerce is especially marked by API-led omnichannel integrations, which facilitate easy data exchange and communication between systems. By simplifying order management, enabling personalized experiences, and unifying data access, APIs help businesses offer seamless shopping experiences to customers across digital touchpoints.
Augmentation of Shopping Experiences with AR and VR
Today, businesses are more inclined to explore AR and VR technologies because of their ability to provide immersive shopping experiences. From enhancing customer engagement to limiting cart abandonments, such technologies have, therefore, emerged as essential stimulants of sales and revenue growth.
Scaling with Headless Commerce
Often called the future of digital commerce, headless technology has become a favorite among e-commerce businesses. As the technology provides greater flexibility and scaling, enterprises are increasingly integrating with headless setups, benefitting from limitless personalization and advanced tools.
The Growth of Voice and Social Commerce
Voice commerce helps businesses offer hands-free shopping experiences to their customers, elevating checkout processes and decreasing cart abandonment. Likewise, social commerce is gaining traction, owing to the employment of social media platforms as search engines. E-commerce platforms, therefore, leverage this impact and drive sales by creating shoppable posts and allowing in-app purchases.
Promotion of Sustainable Practices
With ‘sustainability’ as the catchphrase, e-commerce companies are endeavoring to highlight their sustainable practices by offering eco-friendly products, contributing to carbon footprint reduction, and providing information regarding sourcing and production processes.
3. Top E-commerce Tools Driving Operational Efficiency and Growth
Leading e-commerce marketing tools offer robust technical support to online businesses, helping firms augment productivity and carve a niche in the digital marketplace.
Here’s a list of the top e-commerce tools that companies leverage to outshine their competitors:
3.1 FastSpring
An ingenious tool for managing subscriptions, payments, and global sales taxes, FastSpring is a comprehensive payment and subscription platform catering specifically to software, SaaS, and online content providers. With its impeccable features, the tool facilitates easy global expansion for companies, helping them handle tax collection in different jurisdictions, streamline functions, and provide excellent purchasing experiences to customers.
The notable features of the tool enabling effective e-commerce internationalization include:
International Payments: FastSpring ensures exceptional revenue potential and unmatched transaction acceptance rates globally for companies. The tool allows smooth receipt of global payments, entailing single-time purchases, recurring payments, and SaaS subscriptions.
Easy Subscription Management: By streamlining subscription management processes, FastSpring further empowers businesses to customize their plans with upgrades, downgrades, trial periods, etc. It augments customer satisfaction through features like pause subscriptions and billing intervals.
Matchless Checkout Experiences: Another prominent aspect of the advanced tool is its ability to drive conversions and enhance revenue at the POS through remarkable checkout experiences. Accordingly, by simplifying checkout processes, the tool ensures minimized cart abandonments and promotes customer loyalty.
Simplified Tax Compliance: FastSpring’s tax management feature secures complete tax compliance across jurisdictions. This relieves businesses of the burden of handling intricate tax requirements, enabling them to focus on core e-commerce operations.
Comprehensive Dashboards for Data Analysis: The innovative tool further offers businesses easy-to-understand analytics dashboards for quick evaluation of subscription and revenue data, helping them leverage crucial customer insights and make well-informed decisions to enhance efficiency.
B2B Order Handling: With FastSpring, B2B businesses can simplify their order management processes by combining payment and subscription features with orders. The tool further streamlines billing operations and decreases system complexities.
3.2 X-Cart
X-Cart is an enterprise e-commerce platform that helps businesses with their scaling endeavors, securing long-term success and high ROI. It offers API-backed solutions to businesses, allowing them to benefit from featured integrations and customizable design options. It further ensures data-driven growth for companies using robust marketing tools and analytics.
Why X-Cart remains a perfect choice for businesses to optimize their operations includes its exceptional features, such as:
E-commerce Hosting and Development: X-Cart ensures platforms’ agility and reliability by employing super quick solid-state drives (SSD) for speedy page loading. The tool significantly entails features like a dedicated IP address, regular data backups, PCI-compliant hosting, etc. It offers tailored platform development solutions to businesses, including automated platform updates and maintenance of thoroughly tested online stores.
Store Handling and Personalization Services: X-Cart further provides impressive support services to businesses, covering different aspects of customization and store management, such as software installation, log analysis, etc. It also facilitates easy personalization through Template Editor and Template Tweaker options.
SEO Benefits: The far-reaching tool improves search rankings and website traffic. Through practical content evaluation, customer analysis, and server optimizations, it promises businesses elevated visibility and drives organic growth.
Round-the-Clock Technical Assistance: Significantly, the tool renders timely support at every stage of businesses’ e-commerce journey. The prompt assistance allows companies to address challenges effectively, increasing efficiency and minimizing downtime.
3.3 Emporix
Offering compelling features for B2B, B2C, and D2C companies, Emporix offers an innovative commerce orchestration platform that helps businesses elevate their operations, enhance customer experiences, and make real-time modifications based on relevant data insights. With API-first design and cloud-native architecture, the tool notably induces considerable progress for businesses.
The key attributes of the forward-thinking e-commerce tool include:
Advanced B2B Capabilities: Through its composable architecture, Emporix effectively meets the challenging demands of the B2B world, offering solutions such as catalog management and personalized pricing. The tool further streamlines the quotation management processes and simplifies invoicing with its Purchase Orders feature.
Unified Multi-Channel Experience: With Emporix, businesses can leverage a multi-site platform to sell across diverse channels, administer all their online websites from a centralized location, and ensure separated customer data and configurations. Companies can also establish a single master product catalog while handling diverse offerings based on brand, customers, location, and availability.
Composable Solutions for B2B Wholesalers and Distributors: Catering to the diverse needs of the wholesale and distribution industry, Emporix offers ultra-modern solutions to companies for handling large-quantity transactions. Accordingly, the tool boasts excellent features like advanced quoting, pricing, and discount capabilities. It further automates processes and allows easy scalability.
Success Enabler for Technology-driven Start-ups: With its API-first strategy, the tool helps technology start-ups expedite their software development processes, manage their proprietary IP, and enhance the value of their offerings.
3.4 Elastic Path
As a game-changing headless solution, Elastic Path can easily integrate with businesses’ ERP systems as middleware. The platform boasts an API-based design, which renders considerable agility to companies in meeting present-day e-commerce challenges. Essentially, it operates without fixed templates and provides tailorable e-commerce solutions to firms, helping them gain from advanced commerce features and composable architecture.
The remarkable properties of Elastic Path include:
Greater Autonomy to Merchandisers: Elastic Path transforms traditional product and catalog management, allowing merchandisers to create various product setups without relying on the IT department and quickly catering to changing customer preferences.
Superlative Commerce Capabilities: The robust tool boasts excellent commerce capabilities, which companies can leverage to offer consistent pricing, manage product offerings, enable smooth checkouts, and provide unique shopping experiences.
Subscriptions Management Solution: With Elastic Path’s API-first subscriptions management feature, companies effectively streamline subscription-based services and extend uniform payment experiences across various geographies, establishing steady revenue streams and elevating customer trust.
Ease of Payment: Elastic Path optimizes payment processes and ensures the delivery of consistent payment experiences across various locations and brands, resulting in enhanced sales and customer satisfaction.
3.5 Kibo Commerce
Kibo Commerce affords exceptional software solutions to companies, helping them streamline core processes like customer handling, search functions, and inventory management. Using superlative composable technology, the promising tool ensures flexible deployment, decreased fulfillment times, elevated order value, and increased conversion rates.
The revolutionary tool, Kibo Commerce, comes with many significant features, such as:
Order Management and Dispatch: Kibo Commerce helps businesses coordinate and direct orders effectively, ensuring speedy fulfillment and decreased turnaround times. It optimizes delivery routes and inventory distribution, augmenting operational efficiency and promptly meeting customer demands.
Easy Inventory Tracking: Another crucial feature of Kibo Commerce is real-time inventory visibility, which allows companies to check their inventory levels across multiple channels and make well-informed decisions regarding marketing and purchasing strategies. The attribute also benefits POS systems, reflecting current stock levels and ensuring satisfying shopping experiences.
Multi-channel Pricing and Promotions: By employing the comprehensive tool, businesses can maintain consistency in promotional and pricing activities across varied sales channels, driving growth and ensuring an exceptional brand image.
Catalog and Subscriptions Handling: Kibo Commerce allows businesses to effortlessly manage product attributes, catalogs, and categories, structuring and modifying their product offerings according to market demands. It also streamlines subscription management processes, ensuring prompt fulfillment of recurring orders.
Unified Checkouts: The ingenious tool facilitates the integration of cart and checkout processes across various digital touchpoints. The unified feature helps businesses maintain substantial consistencies and limit card abandonments, securing frictionless shopping and high customer loyalty.
Intuitive Search Functionality: By proffering user-friendly search capabilities, Kibo Commerce significantly enhances customers’ navigation experience, promoting engagement and making it easy to find products, information, and services.
3.6 Cleverbridge
The next-generation e-commerce tool, Cleverbridge, enhances customer lifetime value (CLV) through compelling commerce solutions, empowering businesses to earn considerable financial gains. The tool guarantees frictionless transactions, boasting an impressive uptime and presenting businesses with effective solutions for finance automation, subscription management, global payments, etc.
The most prominent components of Cleverbridge include:
Subscription APIs Promising Speed to Market: With Cleverbridge, businesses can get their services and products to the market faster by employing innovative subscription APIs and documentation. Businesses can easily integrate subscription options into their offerings, simplifying development endeavors and speeding up time to market.
Integrated Payment Solution: Supporting multiple payment options and currencies, Cleverbridge ensures secure financial transactions, fraud protection, adherence to industrial standards, and effortless global expansion. The tool further accommodates various payment preferences, boosting user delight and conversion rates.
CLV Growth Engine: Inducing high customer retention, Cleverbridge’s CLV growth engine leverages AI-powered processes to help customer teams ensure high audience engagement. The tool achieves this by automatically reaching customers, effectively upselling, and renewing subscriptions.
Wide-ranging E-commerce Solutions: From transaction automation to renewal simplification, Cleverbridge helps companies optimize buying processes by managing administrative tasks, compliance measures, retention marketing, and partner management. This feature lets businesses focus on critical operations, enhancing sales functions and driving higher profits.
3.7 Vendasta
Catering to independent software vendors, marketing agencies, and media companies, Vendasta is a comprehensive e-commerce tool that allows reselling and rebranding online services to local business clients. Leveraging this leading-edge tool, companies can widen their service offerings, foster client relationships, and ensure profitable growth.
Some of the chief aspects of the forward-thinking tool comprise:
Easy Scalability: With Vendasta, users can easily automate repetitive tasks and optimize business operations. These merits allow them to manage a more significant number of projects and clients, ensuring sustained success in the long run.
Enhanced Product Offerings and Secure Transactions: The exceptional tool allows users to widen their catalogs by combining their products with premium market solutions. Furthermore, it leverages encrypted billing and payment processes to ensure safe transactions, gaining customer confidence.
Task and Project Management: With in-house fulfillment teams, Vendasta allows businesses to offload time-extensive tasks and focus on key operations. Its white-labeled communication feature further promotes easy interaction between clients and fulfillment teams, inducing successful project execution. Its impressive project and task management tools empower companies to organize, track, and prioritize tasks, streamline workflows, and decrease turnaround times.
Sales Intelligence: Businesses can benefit from crucial client insights by employing Vendasta, as the tool offers snapshot reports. These reports scan the web for complete operation data, permitting effective identification of growth potential, customization of sales pitches, and building client trust.
Personalized Marketing: The remarkable tool further automates marketing tasks and processes to optimize users’ marketing endeavors, ensuring the delivery of tailored content and messages to the target audience. It also allows for the smooth execution of email campaigns, elevating client engagement, and driving operational success.
3.8 BetterCommerce
BetterCommerce, a digital market tool, chiefly caters to retailers and D2C brands. It provides composable commerce solutions to users, offering high scalability and allowing them to adapt to shifting consumer demands quickly. With components like a PIM, CMS, order management system and engagement tools, it helps businesses secure excellent buyer journeys.
Promising high efficiency, the advanced tool boasts the following features:
Extraordinary E-commerce Capabilities: With BetterCommerce, companies can leverage a headless architecture to process transactions, manage product offerings, and deliver excellent shopping experiences to customers across multiple touchpoints. This effective selection of headless architecture helps businesses drive sales and yield financial benefits.
Centralized Product Data: The tool entails a splendid product information management (PIM) system, which lets users handle and publish updated product information across multiple listings, ensuring uniformity and preciseness across channels.
Agile Content Delivery: The tool uses a headless CMS and renders phenomenal flexibility in content delivery, allowing users to conveniently create, modify, and publish content across digital touchpoints.
Performance Insights: BetterCommerce notably encourages sound decision-making by providing crucial insights into customer behavior, sales performance, and marketing efficiency. Such insights further optimize businesses’ strategies and drive profits.
3.9 CommentSold
Harnessing the possibilities of video commerce, CommentSold is a pioneering e-commerce solution that boasts live selling technology and redefines customer shopping experiences. The tool offers users engaging virtual experiences and comprises prominent features like Shoppable Videos, Smart Meta Chat Automation, and AI-generated Videos, which enhance productivity, engagement, and profitability.
The top attributes that make CommentSold a preferred choice for businesses include:
Customized Solutions: With CommentSold, businesses can capitalize on tailored solutions to address present-day business challenges. These include advanced POS systems, marketing automation tools, and warehouse optimization.
Live Selling Feature: CommentSold empowers sellers to make excellent sales pitches. It allows companies to interact with customers through live videos, demonstrate products, and answer customer queries, inducing higher customer engagement and product purchases.
Advanced POS System: The forward-looking tool comes with the latest POS system, which manages in-store and online sales through an integrated platform, enabling smooth checkout experiences.
Inventory Control: Providing an all-inclusive inventory management system, CommentSold automates tasks such as dropshipping and wholesaling and allows businesses to focus on their strengths for augmented efficiency.
3.10 Virto Commerce
A pioneering tool, Virto Commerce increases customer retention by providing superlative marketplace solutions to businesses backed by training, consulting, and assistance services. This budget-friendly tool helps companies with their expansion pursuits, rendering solutions, such as Virto Commerce Cloud, Virto Marketplace, etc., and securing high effectiveness.
The principal attributes of Virto Commerce entail the following:
Support for Decoupled Commerce: Offering a modular architecture and support for headless commerce via API, Virto Commerce allows companies to easily customize different components without impacting the system’s core functionality. It facilitates the management of various channels within the same e-commerce ecosystem.
Capacity for Limitless Catalogs: The tool affords infinite catalogs containing myriad products. It allows companies to store product data in physical and online synchronized listings, securing tailored category structures and avoiding data duplication.
Customized Offers and Diverse Currency Support: With Virto Commerce, vendors can assess and control their offers, implementing personalized pricing per quantity, discounts, and sales terms. The tool significantly supports diverse currencies, helping businesses scale their operations without hassle.
Comprehensive Order Management: Virto Commerce’s Orders feature lets firms simplify their order processing tasks, providing them with complete oversight and notifications for quick order management.
4. In a Nutshell
The importance of e-commerce platforms in today's business world can hardly be overstated. From facilitating expansion to helping companies tweak their strategies, leading e-commerce platforms allow unparalleled growth and ROI enhancement. Notably, businesses employ top e-commerce tools, benefitting from unmatched customer experiences and high operational efficiency.
Furthermore, with emerging trends like mobile commerce, subscription-based services, voice-enabled shopping, and social commerce, the future of e-commerce holds substantial potential. These trends will transform the way customers buy products and promise further advancements in the sector. In particular, innovations like drone delivery and live shopping technology continue to gain traction, offering even more exciting opportunities to businesses, letting consumers make purchases from anywhere in the world, and driving boosted revenues for e-commerce companies.
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POS Solutions, POS Retail, Ecommerce Merchandising
Article | June 7, 2024
For any type or size of merchant, the point of sale (POS) is by definition a mission-critical system. In addition to being a basic tool for retail and companies to conduct business, today’s point of sale systems can also be profitably tied in with key operational solutions, such as inventory management, labor scheduling, and customer marketing.
Here’s How to Choose a POS System for Your Unique Business
Before we dive into how to choose a POS system, let’s look at why you need one in the first place.
A POS system does more than transactions. It's the beating heart of your store's operations, from inventory management and loss prevention to employee management, AR/AP tracking and more.
Small businesses of all types and across industries use POS systems:
Retail and consumer good stores
Liquor stores (within grocery stores and standalone wine & spirits stores
Tobacco stores and smoke shops
Grocery stores and markets
Convenience stores
Lawn & garden centers
Hardware stores
But different types of businesses have different POS system needs. POS systems’ importance makes selecting the one that’s right for your business a challenge.
Here are seven tips to help formulate the right questions to ask POS vendors as you narrow down your options.
Answer these 5 questions before you research POS systems
What features does your current POS system lack or do poorly?
This will help you prioritize your POS needs and ensure current pain points are addressed with your new POS system.
What type of POS hardware will you need?
From touchscreen monitors and cash drawers to receipt printers and pinpads, determining your POS hardware needs helps you know what to look for and get cost estimates from POS vendors.
What POS software, apps, and integrations will you need?
Your POS software is the brains of the operation. Be sure to identify specific functionality and app integrations needed.
What does your business growth plan look like?
This is an important one. You want a POS system that can scale with you as you grow. The last thing you need is to replace your POS system again because you've outgrown it.
What is your budget?
Every POS vendor you talk to will ask this question, so it's best to prepare for it. If you don't have a number in mind, you can use our Build & Price Tool to create your ideal POS system and see what it would cost.
Choose a POS system that makes checkout a breeze
Is your checkout process simple and easy for customers, or do you find that long lines and slow checkout speeds are holding you back?
You need to maximize the checkout space for an optimal customer experience. POS systems with a minimal footprint keep things simple for your employees, and can even allow you to have multiple registers to service customers.
The pace of transactions is a key factor as well. Employees must be able to quickly scan products or use smart, intuitive product lookup or keyed entries to minimize wait time. You can even use mobile devices connected to your POS system to augment your checkout capabilities.
Consider your inventory management needs
One of the biggest benefits of POS systems is their ability to automatically deduct sold items from inventory, making key measurements such as inventory on hand and item-by-item sales data far more accurate. However, if your business operates with a limited, relatively uncomplicated inventory – e.g. just a few hundred SKUs with little variation in size, style, or color – choosing a POS system with advanced inventory management capabilities will be a wasted investment.
Key questions to ask include:
How many items do you carry in each store?
Do you look at each item as a unique item or as a style?
How do you order inventory from suppliers if the item has varying colors/sizes? Do you need to see item attributes as a matrix?
Do other buyers/store personnel need to be able to fill in or look up on-hand information without visiting the store floor or calling other stores?
What merchandise information do you want to be able to view at your desktop?
Decide what additional functions you want your POS to provide
Even if your needs are currently fairly basic, that doesn’t mean they won’t expand as you grow. Consider additional capabilities you may want your system to provide in the future, such as:
Time and attendance/time clock
Sales reporting, broken down by associate, store, department, time of day, etc.
Customer marketing, allowing you to capture the customer’s purchase history and other data for future marketing, and customer loyalty programs.
Transfer systems, allowing associates to transfer merchandise between stores, and on-hand lookup, allowing each store to see at a glance what inventory other stores have on hand.
Gift cards, tracking gift cards sold and their redemption.
Identify the types of POS peripherals you will need
POS system hardware isn’t limited to the cashier’s touchscreen. Think about whether dual display screens, showing customers what they ordered to improve accuracy, or displaying ads to promote key items, are worth the investment. Compare thermal printers to ribbon printers: thermal printers use heat to print receipts so even though they cost more initially, retailers can save long-term on the ink cartridges required by ribbon printers.
Determine which POS security features your store needs
Security must be a key element of any POS system, from the basics (lockable cash drawers, cash drops, and password-protected access) to erecting firewalls around the POS system’s network to guard against malware attacks.
Retailers accepting payment cards must ensure their POS systems comply with the latest Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). Retailers doing a high volume of payment card business may want to consider using encryption, which protects customer data during transactions by creating a cryptographic key that denies access to anyone without the appropriate decrypting key.
Don't forget about POS reporting to help guide your business
We get it: reporting is not a "sexy" feature. But it is critically important. Sales reports, inventory and catalog reports, and customer history tracking are just a few of the key data points available in most POS systems to help you make smart business decisions.
When it comes to choosing a POS system, reporting cannot be overlooked.
Ready to Choose a POS System for Your Business?
Finding a POS system that meets your business’ current needs while also providing the tools for future growth can be challenging. Keep both short-term and long-term requirements in mind when evaluating different solutions.
You can find more must-ask questions and considerations to choose the right POS system in our Retail POS System Buyers' Guide. For example:
Local database vs. cloud: what type of software is right for your business?
What information do you need to choose a credit card processor?
The questions you need to ask to get past a POS system sales pitch
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POS Hardware
Article | July 28, 2023
Embrace the future and need of business operations with cloud-based POS systems. Experience unrivaled features such as unparalleled flexibility, scalability, real-time analytics, and more.
Introduction
Key Reasons for Businesses to Switch to Cloud-based POS System
• Accessibility and Mobility
• Flexibility and Mobility
• Scalability
• Improved customer experience
• Cost saving
Introduction
With constant evolution in payment technologies, businesses are constantly looking for innovative ways to streamline their operations and improve their bottom line. As a result, innovative payment solutions are increasingly playing a crucial role in enhancing their transforming and upscaling businesses. One such technology that has revolutionized the way businesses operate is cloud based POS systems.
A significant transition from traditional POS systems to cloud based POS systems has been witnessed in recent years. Businesses worldwide are increasingly deploying cloud-based point of sale systems to adapt to emerging payment technologies, improve customer experience, enhance payment security, and others.
According to a study by SalesForce, more than 20% of retail businesses currently use a cloud-based POS, and around 29% of businesses plan to deploy it in the coming future.
Key Reasons for Businesses to Switch to Cloud based POS System
Payment processes are presently propelled by connectivity and technological advancements, which have resulted in a significant impact on the payments industry. Consequently, it has become imperative for businesses to adopt point-of-sale systems powered by agile, cloud-based software to harness the full benefits of modern cutting-edge technology.
Deploying a cloud POS system can guarantee optimal customer experience to businesses while remaining aligned with the rapidly evolving technological landscape.
Here are the primary reasons why businesses should contemplate the adoption of a cloud based POS system:
Real-Time Accessibility
In today's fast-paced business environment, the ability to access real-time data is crucial. Cloud based point of sale systems allow businesses to access data from any device with internet access, enabling real-time inventory management, sales tracking, and customer insights. This real-time data accessibility empowers enterprises to make informed decisions, optimize operations, and improve customer experience.
Flexibility and Mobility
Cloud POS solutions are highly flexible, making it easier for businesses to adapt to changing needs and ecosystems. Leveraging a POS system, businesses can quickly and easily add or remove products, update pricing, and make other changes to their inventory. Furthermore, with the accessibility from any location, these cloud based POS systems enable employees/ staff to work remotely. These capabilities are especially useful for businesses that sell seasonal products, experience fluctuations in demand, or have multiple locations.
Scalability
With legacy POS systems, businesses need to invest in new hardware to expand their operations, which can be costly and time-consuming. However, cloud-based POS systems offer businesses the flexibility to scale up or down their operations without worrying about upgrading their hardware. In addition, businesses can seamlessly add new locations, products, and users without any hardware upgrades.
Improved Customer Experience
Cloud based POS systems for retail enable businesses to provide a seamless customer experience by allowing employees to access customer data from any device with an internet connection. This allows businesses to personalize their offerings, offer faster service, and resolve customer complaints quickly. The ability to access real-time data also enables businesses to anticipate customer needs and preferences, allowing them to provide tailored promotions and recommendations.
Cost Savings
Businesses need to invest in expensive hardware and software, as well as pay for ongoing maintenance and support while using a legacy POS system. Switching to a cloud POS system can result in significant cost savings for businesses. As these POS solutions require minimal hardware and software investments and often come with a low monthly subscription fee, businesses can save on maintenance and support costs, as these are typically included in the subscription fee.
Bottom Line
A cloud-based POS system with seamless integration offers an extensive business overview and can perform operations much more than accept orders and payments. Not only does it streamline services, but it also provides insightful data and simplifies day-to-day business management, allowing business owners to focus on development.
It is evident that combining day-to-day operations with cloud-based POS software is now a critical requirement for businesses. In addition, the technological evolution of these systems in recent years and the possibilities for continuous development have made point-of-sale data, inventory, staff, and payment management much easier for businesses.
Since the world is becoming increasingly digital, it is imperative that businesses adapt and adopt cloud based POS systems to remain competitive and relevant. Therefore, businesses should consider the benefits of cloud based POS systems and make the switch to ensure long-term success and growth.
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