POS Solutions
Article | February 15, 2024
You have to be living in a cave if you haven’t experienced e-commerce already!
No, we aren’t really bluffing when we say this. With a business model that is growing steadily at 23% year-over-year, aren’t e-commerce markets the place to be?
Further, to add on, 2020 has been a year like no other in recent history. The events of the coronavirus pandemic that marked its spread on a global scale, worked wonders in bringing us closer to e-commerce than we ever were.
The e-commerce industry was the backbone of humanity amidst the time of pandemic and uncertain lockdowns across different countries around the globe.
Considering the fact that e-commerce has been suited to the trend amidst the pandemic, let’s have a look at how the world’s largest democratic, India, which is also one of the hot spots for e-commerce giants, has kept up with its buying and selling during 2020.
Let’s get started!
The total “your order is placed successfully” notification so far:
Beginning its spree of three months, lockdown in the country was enforced in the last week of March. Being the innovators of ‘jugaad’(alternative way of solving or fixing a problem), Indian’s were prepared for the event, giving the e-commerce sites, a taste of dip with 2.40% on the overall orders placed (Yes, we should also consider the events of lockdown on courier facilities). However, this wasn’t it as the highest dip was about to come in April 2020, giving a 10% blow to the e-commerce industry.
While these were the lower points, the e-commerce industry has experienced a boom in orders placed after April, marking the highest for the year with July.
However, we are not done with the sales yet!
Wonder which particular segment was the king of sales amidst the entire pandemic drama?
Guess…
Seems like we Indians love our gadgets really well, yes, it was the electronics!
With ‘unlock 1.0’ in action, we had our carts prepared for checking out, the e-commerce industry in India witnessed a growth of 162%. However, this was just a mere aid to the losses as June faced a setback again!
Interestingly, September marked a change in the charts, making the highest number of orders placed in e-commerce platforms, marking a 43% spike in electronic sales.
How Indians sold in 2020!
2020 has been a year like no other (in both senses of the word). The extended lockdowns and social distancing helped our local kiranas (General Store) to share the platform beside some large enterprises, allowing businesses of all forms to adapt to hyper-local e-commerce.
Conclusion
Ecommerce has earned its rightful place as the most preferred shopping mode for us Indians. Thankfully, the markets have picked up with their pace, post the events of Unlock 1.0.
For any business, one of the best news that they can conclude the year with is the fact that consumers are no longer using digital platforms for their daily needs. Online platforms have earned their rightful place, making it the perfect time to depend on e-commerce business. Lastly, have also secured the 9th position in global growth.
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POS Solutions, POS Retail, Ecommerce Merchandising
Article | June 10, 2024
There is no denying the fact that being adaptable, smart, lean, and agile is the key to remaining profitable in today’s fiercely competitive retail space. And this requires retailers to stay technologically updated and upgrade payment solutions to offer the convenience and satisfaction customers are looking for.
To keep up with today's customers, businesses need modern payment solutions that enable them to respond quickly to changes in the market and make it easy to sell both in-store and online. This is made possible by cloud technology.
When it comes to B2B software as a service (SaaS), cloud point of sale (POS) software has transformed the retail business sector by providing greater flexibility, convenience, mobility, and scalability than ever before. Most POS software available today either already works in the cloud or is getting ready to do so.
Key Features Compelling Retailers to Migrate towards Cloud POS Solutions
Once thought of as tools only needed to keep track of sales records, POS platforms, especially cloud-based POS, have grown into powerful platforms in the past few years that can integrate a wide range of retail operations, such as marketing, inventory, data analytics, and accounting, among others. Here are some of the most important features encouraging retail stores to use cloud-based POS systems:
Real-Time and Centralized Inventory Management
Modern cloud-based POS solutions enable retailers to start selling online along with managing inventory after the product sale, return, or exchange of the product. It also provides reliable, accurate, and real-time information, allowing retailers to make smarter decisions, increase sales, and enhance communication for in-store and out-of-store operations.
Flexibility to Work from Anywhere, Anytime
This is a crucial feature. Using a cloud-based retail POS solution, retailers can access vital information from anywhere in the world, at any point in time. Providing convenience is second to none. Moreover, it can assist retailers in making more insightful and faster business decisions with access to warehouse activity, individual sales channel performance, sales, staff, and customers—and benefit from clear, actionable reports.
Manage Customers from Every Channel in One Dashboard
Today, retail consumers shop locally, digitally, and cost-consciously. What's important to note is that being omnichannel is not only about making sales in all channels, but also about providing shoppers with a smooth and seamless shopping experience. This means making it as simple as possible for customers to locate your online or offline store, buy from you, interact with your business, or even return some products. Cloud-based POS solutions assist retailers in having a centralized view of their entire retail business along with managing all sales, customers, logistics, replenishment, and inventory in a single, central cloud database dashboard.
Maximum Security and Reliability
Data security and reliability are both crucial features of cloud-based POS. Cloud-based systems are far more secure than on-premise server-based systems. In the case of on-premises POS, retailers are responsible for all the security measures, making data vulnerable to disgruntled staff or external hackers. Using cloud-based retail POS, the data is stored on the cloud servers equipped robust with firewalls and security systems, providing maximum data security to the retailers.
Final Thoughts
Following the industry's initial skepticism of this new development, every retail business is likely to shift towards cloud POS today or tomorrow. Hence, leading cloud POS companies are emphasizing on launching innovative solutions to cater to the demand for advanced POS solutions in the forthcoming years.
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POS Solutions, POS Retail, Ecommerce Merchandising
Article | June 7, 2024
Innovative POS systems with built-in advanced inventory management and secured payments to mandate their adoption by retailers.
For businesses and retailers, conventional cash registers have long been an important part of sales operations during the past few years. But today, the cash registers of even the smallest of businesses are attached to a computer through "point-of-sale" (POS) systems.
These novel solutions have garnered huge popularity over traditional cash registers as they not only ring up the sales but also provide crucial and real-time information about the customer and inventory. The importance of POS systems goes way beyond managing transactions at checkout counters across the retail industry.
Emphasis on Improving Customer Experience Demands POS Adoption:
With a growing fast-paced lifestyle, customers around the world are opting for faster, and more convenient shopping and billing experiences. Reassuring customers that their transactions are secure significantly increases satisfaction and customer loyalty.
Since novel POS systems assist in providing faster checkout, flexibility in payment options, highly secured payments, and a seamless billing experience, these POS systems are extensively being adopted by modern retailers.
According to a study, retailers across the U.S. lose nearly $45 billion, due to insufficient inventory in stock, and $224 billion, due to excess inventory. POS systems help in managing the inventory, resulting in declining losses by preventing excess or insufficient inventory. An estimate states that, an independent retailer with a $400,000 revenue can cut costs by nearly 10%, saving an average of $40,000 per year.
What Comes Next?
With technology getting better and new POS solutions like cloud-based, mobile, cashless payment, and others coming out, retailers are extensively installing POS solutions to make it easy for customers to pay.
For instance, Veras Retail and ACCEO Solutions Inc., an American company specializing in all types of electronic payment transactions, announced plans to install their respective payment middleware solutions and point-of-sale software solutions in National Stores locations across Puerto Rico and the U.S.
Hence, the growing focus on enhancing in-store customer experience and customer retention is mandating modern retailers to deploy POS solutions.
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POS Solutions
Article | December 15, 2020
Prior to the pandemic and quarantine, less than 8% of commerce was online. As of Q3FY20 eCommerce grew north of 14% of all commerce. So while the Retailpocalypse was in its last phase, physical retail still outsold eCommerce by at least 7:1.
The failure rate of crowdfunding campaigns is 85%.
The failure rate of eCommerce store owners ranges from 80 to 97%.
What if there were a way to bridge the gap between these three failure rates? What if we could bridge what people consume online with what they purchase offline before waiting for brain-computer interfaces (BCI)? In short what if we could bridge social and commerce? (Example use case.)
Mostly missing are the memorable, meaningful, measurable and monetizable responses from people interested in stories about beagles, princesses and pitbulls, pets, car repair, raspberry blueberry vinaigrette gyros, budget-saving techniques for holiday travel, getting stuck at airports in blizzards, rental cars and Cup o’ Noodles, My Fair Lady and @Instacart, dining out at the delicious Banana Leaves café, cooking kosher halal gelatin-free, blue #1 artificial dye-free egg nog flavored marshmallows, 50th anniversaries and chocolate ganache, adventures camping with youth groups, birdhouses built by kids, rainbow hair dye, artificial dye-free cakes DIY for your child’s birthday party, and Halloween gingerbread houses and Greek Mount Olympus costumes.
Other than ad revenue Youtube collects which most of it’s video posters see little of, monetizing the DIY craze has proven quite tricky. Ditto for Christmas shopping, smartphone accessories, buying a new luxury Subaru online with no salesman, how to get hard to find contact lenses and vitamins for kids, how Amazon often has thrift store prices on inventory thrift stores rarely carry, the challenges of buying clothes on Amazon that don’t fit but you don’t realize that until the clothes arrive, DIY car repair, funny car repair, glorious victory of car repair, diaper cakes and muscle aches, drones and honey scones, Triple A baseball and blue-tailed skinks, favorite foods, fasting, and Boston, fused vertebrae and buried treasure, where to buy school supplies when most stores are sold out, creameries and charcuterie,
Bridging social media with eCommerce has been the white rhino of many investors and start-ups for many years.
Instead of working toward such solutions, we have VC’s and stockholders asking about vanity metrics:
- How many people looked at your website? Instead of: How many people subscribed or how many purchased an item?-
- How many downloads per month does your app have? Instead of: How many of the people who downloaded your app have note removed it less than 30 days later?
- What’s your ad revenue? Instead of: How can your product capture or create more value?
In reply entrepreneurs answer these questions, they often present their increased spend on marketing followed up with vanity milestones:
“We’re using Google Analytics and similar providers to track every movement of the supply chain, to ensure when the purchaser’s journey is completed, there’s no delay in delivery. This will lead to more frequent purchases ideally of higher priced products, and…
We are pitching to Chipotle on Friday!”
This leads to concentrated research on Chipotle’s SWAT, followed up with an excellent pitch including a demo via Zoom.
The result of this pitch is usually:
1. The person loved the pitch and accepts your invitation to meet again with his/her manager next week.
2. The person you pitched to is not the decision-maker
3. The person you pitched to doesn’t quite understand what you’re pitching
4. The person you pitched to had 3 other projects due by COB and wasn’t fully present and listening to your 10-minute pitch
5. You provided too many facts too quickly, trying to build rapport
6. You shared how you’re product can reduce shrink, increase ROI, decrease costs, increase retention, and cure cancer. The person you pitched to doesn’t believe all those promises.
7. The person you pitched to is afraid of advocating change; the risk from change that results in lesser results can lead to negative repercussions. The risk of “business as usual” is minimal.
Forgotten by almost all eCommerce platforms and store owners are the facts that:
- People behave differently when they are observed (best behavior vs. average behavior). Despite this, we are seeing an incredible number of start-ups that offer to help track everything your customers do. “We’re Palantir for eCommerce” is essentially the ethos of these companies.
- The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwarz – too many choices overwhelm the person making the choice, to the point that no decision is made. If you don’t train your mind to buy what you want even if you have to look on pages other than Amazon and Google Shopping, you might end up buying the product you almost wanted.
- The concept of incentivized virality – when PayPal gave $20 to each person who referred another person who joined, and when DropBox offered free data storage to people who referred friends who joined – which Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh brilliantly detailed in Blitzscaling:
The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies.
So now each eCommerce platform tries to copy Amazon who built their model on the opposite of physical retail. Consider your last experience renting a car at an airport vs. Amazon:
- Do you want to refill the gas tank or would you like us to?
- Would you like liability only or more comprehensive types of insurance coverage?
- Would you like a GPS?
- Would you like to join our exclusive members club? etc., etc.
Adding to what @ElevateDemand said, “ B2B marketing is broken,” Raj De Datta, CEO and cofounder of @Bloomreach said, “The future of B2C marketing looks like B2B marketing,” Kevin Marasco, CMO of @Zenefits correctly said “marketing is going back in time from B2B to B2C” or person to person.
Smart speakers in every phone, tablet, laptop PC, TV, and car succeeded by BCI, which @Facebook and @Neuralink are pioneering, hold great potential. Until those products arrive or after their R&D phase, @Homemaide’s object recognition and image recognition models can provide the sorely needed bridge between Social and Commerce.
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