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Retail Business Review | Friday, February 25, 2022
As the POS technology evolves, retailers will have every opportunity to create an environment that offers customers products and enables a perfect customer experience.
FREMONT, CA: Digital evolution is one of the most important retail trendsetters as credit cards debuted in the 1950s. Like how credit card machines became popular in the past, an efficient POS system is an indispensable tool for any modern-day brick-and-mortar retail location.
As per a recent study, the POS terminal market value is expected to reach $98.27 billion by 2022, which is a 13.5% CAGR. POS systems, the center of smart decisions, are where the business logic and real-time business transactions face and a place where all the retail action happens.
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Therefore, the retailers need to know the emerging trends in POS technology to stay ahead of the competition.
Following are five POS trends to watch for in the future years.
1. Expand in mobile payments and tablet POS
With the egress of the digital age and its new technologies, cash and cash registers are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Shoppers have many options, from credit and debit cards to prepaid cards and contactless payments.
Consumers are now also making purchases through electronic apps that provide a variety of advantages without the involvement of cash. Cashless payments provide speed, convenience, guaranteed payments for the merchants, and security and transparency for both the consumers and merchants.
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Around 73% of the shoppers think they use less cash than in the past, and eight of 10 customers globally utilize tablets, smartphones, or various kinds of digital technology in the store as they shop.
About 82% of consumers say that they refer first to their mobile screens to find out more regarding any purchases they are about to make in the store. Tech brains such as Apple, Google, and Samsung permit mobile payments from smartphones, allowing users a more convenient way to pay. Implementing a tablet-based POS system, which can agree on mobile payments, traditional credit card transactions, and cash, can be helpful. Despite its diminishing reputation, it is not going away forever.
2. Cloud Technology
Currently, the digital environment is very critical. Retailers can induce their store transactions or sales data accessible swiftly from their smartphones, tablets, or desktops, no matter where they are. Here the efficiency of cloud-based solutions came into play.
POS software, services, and data are presented to the user on-demand from the service provider's servers. Another considerable benefit of cloud-based POS solutions is that the retailers can do everything, from easily accessing their data to upgrading the software across all the stores simultaneously.
The number of stores can be upgraded and upgraded at the same time within minutes, which aids retailers in handling the business better. In addition, cloud POS is offered as a service, and the new features can be developed and released by the provider faster than with the support of client-server POS.
3. Artificial Intelligence
AI plays a major role in benefiting the retail sector. 15% of the businesses are leveraging AI in their respective POS systems, and 31% are preparing to implement AI within a year, as per a survey by CMO by Adobe.
POS systems that employ AI can remind the companies to satisfy an order to refill stock, notify the businesses about the changing customer behavior, alert them on product trends, give recommendations on which engages the customers, suggest promotions to carry out, and evaluate the sales trends.
In addition, AI with POS systems can integrate all the payment methods—mobile apps, chat payments, social payments, and in-store payments. This supports offering a persistent omnichannel shopping experience.
4. Personalized Customer Experience
A major factor in today's highly competitive market environment is the proper and timely utilization of technology to enhance customer relationships while streamlining the proceedings of the retail establishment.
Personalization is the key element. 79% of consumers mentioned that they would only engage with a brand if their promotional offers were customized to how they interacted. In another survey, it was observed that about 91% of the consumers said they are likely to shop with conscious businesses, can recall, and give the right offers.
The POS capabilities are not limited to offering a better understanding of the financial workings of the business. It becomes critical to utilize the data more efficiently across all business areas, especially customer relationship management (CRM). The retailers who use CRM dashboards can efficiently segregate marketing and coordinate sales and promotions based on their interests and shopping habits.
5. Data and Analytics
Lastly, POS systems are gaining interest in the retail market. This is because they can provide a plethora of data and analytics that help retailers to make smarter and data-driven decisions. For example, to personalize, improve, and enhance customer experience, retailers must know who their customer is, which can be done by analyzing and monitoring data and analyzing them through POS.
The future of the POS system will support retailers in giving instant access to consumer data and robust analytics to help enterprises make intelligent, data-based business decisions. Furthermore, since the availability of the data, the retail enterprises can spot the comparisons and undertake the required tasks.
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