An online store is no longer an option but a necessity if a business wants to succeed. To meet customer expectations today, you need to offer a seamless buying experience from offline to online and vice versa.
Integrating a point of sale (POS) system into your eCommerce platform is crucial in making a seamless connection between the two business channels. This integration allows communication and data flow between the channels.
What is a POS system?
A point of sale system is merely a digital solution used by a business to process orders or transactions across multiple channels. It comprises a point of sale software for the online platform and a point of sale hardware for the offline store. This system enables businesses, like retail stores, restaurants, and many more, to keep running omnichannel commerce. It acts as a central hub, which is used for several operations like ordering, processing transactions, inventory management, and customer and staff management.
The POS software and hardware (like a cash register or barcode scanner) provide tools to accept payment via popular channels. They also analyze the health of your business. If you want to handle offline and online orders seamlessly, you must upgrade to an integrated POS system. This integrated version syncs your multiple channels and allows you to experience improved data analytics and well-organized inventory management.
The terms POS system and POS refer to separate things. POS is a general term referring to any place where a transaction can happen. For example, in the case of retailers, it is usually the area around their cash register, and for a café, it can be where a customer buys a drink. With the advent of cloud-based POS, which enables businesses to access their POS system from anywhere with a device having internet connectivity, your entire store becomes a point of sale. Thus, the point of sale system makes an area a point of sale with the help of the POS hardware or software.
How does POS bridge the gap between offline and online commerce?
If your customers cannot transition seamlessly between the offline and online channels, you may lose most of them. Today, customers want to switch between mobile and desktop before finalizing a product or want to make sure that their online research matches their in-store experience. To meet the growing demands and expectations of customers, businesses must offer an omnichannel shopping experience. A point of sale (POS) system accomplishes this task. It acts as a centralized hub for data from offline and online channels, assisting the sales staff and the customers.
Some ways in which POS effectively links the online and in-store platforms are as follows:
- Customers want to buy products at a time and place most convenient for them. A POS system allows it by enabling cross-channel purchases. Customers can complete an order in any way they like. For instance, they can place an order online and collect it from a store close to them; add items to an online shopping cart, access this cart at a retail store, and complete the order; or directly complete the order online.
- The online and offline data integration through POS also enables cross-channel promotions. For instance, you can send promotional codes to customers via emails redeemable at your retail store.
- The POS system is helpful in inventory management as it gives access to real-time inventory data across different channels. The customers and sales staff can, thus, check the product availability across all warehouses and online platforms on time.
- A POS solution also ensures a fast and seamless return and refund process. For instance, if a customer purchases a product online, he can return it at the store.
- Ultimately, with all the customer data gathered across different channels, a POS solution provides a unified and unique customer experience. There are several ways for customers to access, buy, and receive products.
Benefits of POS integration to business
Customers should have the same shopping experience, whether they purchase through your mobile app, your website, or your retail store. The eCommerce and POS integration bridges this physical and digital shopping experience, providing countless benefits to businesses. This integration is made possible smoothly by the DotPe POS solution. It is a one-stop-shop to meet all your business needs, from billing, inventory management, online orders to customer relationship management. Its numerous benefits make it a great option to be used.
- Sell at multiple places simultaneously
An advantage of the POS system integration is that you can reach your customers across multiple channels at once. This is possible because it allows all business processes to be managed centrally. Businesses can, thus, leverage omnichannel commerce and integrate their marketing initiatives, such as loyalty programs, across various channels. It also allows for seamless marketplace integrations, creating a centralized command for your business.
- Operational benefits
A well-integrated POS system improves the operational processes since having a holistic view of all processes and data helps you better analyze the glitches and streamline and simplify any complexities. This integration saves your time and effort to manually input data each time.
Particularly, millennials are inclined to a faster and seamless shopping experience where technology eases the transaction, for example, the convenient billing ways offered by POS systems.
- Better decision-making
Integrating a POS system with your online platform gives you all the customer data in one place, which leads to better insights into customers’ behavior across different channels. It allows the brands to make personalized recommendations and improves customer relationship management.
The data helps you make accurate and effective decisions and strategies. The centralization of data also avoids multiple errors and saves time, or else, you would need to track the data from different sources, which are prone to mistakes.
- Inventory management
The eCommerce POS integration allows you to keep an eye on your inventory and product availability in real-time across any of your locations. It avoids over-selling products and cutting your customers’ orders. This is helpful if you operate a ‘buy online, pick up in store’ model, as it assures your customers that their order is at the store.
- Customer experience enhancement
This integrated solution enables a business to offer a seamless experience to its customers. Customers can be provided with targeted discounts, special deals, and personalization, and can make payments in multiple ways with the help of the POS software. A POS system with an online ordering component allows the customers to purchase their desired products. Thus, this integration enhances customer satisfaction.
An eCommerce POS integration is, thus, the key to expanding your business by making the online and offline channels work in tandem. Its numerous benefits make it a great option to be used. While there are a number of OIS brands in the market, DotPe offer India’s leading and smartest POS system. Some of its primary benefits apart from the ones mentioned above, include the following –
- It can run on any hardware like Windows, Android, or any POS terminal.
- It is India’s only android based ERP system, which requires no laptop or PC.
- It offers an offline functionality that can store the data and sync when online.
- It takes data-driven decisions with powerful reporting and analytics, such as a holistic view of your sales, tracking every customer’s experience, etc.
- It offers dedicated account management, which helps you when required.
- It enables businesses to treat their customers like VIPs with the help of powerful marketing tools.
- Inventory management by tracking materials and supplies in real-time.
- Booking and table management
Visit www.dotpe.in for more details and stay tuned for our next blog!
