Since the online shopping boom a few years ago, physical stores have experienced unprecedented challenges with reducing in-store customers, decreasing profit margin and rising management costs. The ever-growing competition has put greater pressure on the retail industry, forcing retailers, as well as restaurant owners and hotel owners, to deliver a more satisfactory in-store experience to attract new and existing customers.
The concept of smart retail is introduced with the rise of the Internet of Things, and a smart POS system is a key role to play here. A modern point of sale system, or POS, can go beyond processing customer purchases. By synchronizing information from different sectors onto an integrated system, a sophisticated POS system can also help retailers to track customer behaviors, manage inventory, and generate sales leads.
How Can Smart POS Improve Experience in Physical Stores?
Modern Internet of Things technology empowers intelligent POS machines to facilitate the payment process, simplify retail management and seize business opportunities. Fibocom smart module series are able to transform a conventional POS machine into an interactive and multifunctional POS terminal. Using Fibocomsmart modules to enable wireless communications with different terminals and computation on the devices, the smart POS machine is now able to offer enormous benefits for offline retail. Let’s see how a POS machine embedded with Fibocom smart module can enhance retail business.
Enhance Payment Experiences
Despite that many stores adopted barcode systems to facilitate the checkout process, slow bank transactions and POS system failures still take thousands of dollars away from the retailer’s revenue. A smart POS system is able to utilize high-speed IoT connectivity to make a real difference in processing speed while securing transactions of financial and personal data. Instead of supporting bank cards only, the modern POS system also allows a variety of payment methods like electronic wallets on smartphones, QR scanning codes, and facial recognition. The flexibility of payment methods always allows buyers to choose a way that best suits their habits. In some applications,cordless mobile POS machines allow salespeople to approach customers proactively and help them make buying decisions. The ability to process payment and print receipts from anywhere in the store will help to ease the flow of people during peak hours by preventing long queue lines.
Improve Business Management
Modern POS system functions more than a simple checkout machine. Business data recording and performance analysis have already become entry-level features of a standard IoT-enabled POS system. Empowering by intelligent computational features, the POS system is able to generate diverse performance reports tohelp business owners manage accounting and taxing without professional knowledge.
A more advanced POS system can help retailers manage inventory, which has long been a pain point for retailers. By connecting the inventory scanner gun wirelessly to a POS system, product information will be shared to the cloud as soon as the store staff scan the barcode. Retailers can check product availability and location directly on the POS machine instead of switching between different systems. Synchronize inventory management with the checkout process will eliminate the needs to repeat manual inventory and avoid errors caused by manual crosscheck. Comparative inventory and selling data will also allow retailers to predict best-selling products in the upcoming period and prepare stock in advance. Indeed, a smart POS system can work with other terminals like the ordering systems in the kitchen as well as room service systems in hotels. By smoothing the information flow, it allows different business sectors to collaborate more effectively.
IncreaseCustomer Loyalty and Generate Sales Leads
A smart POS machine also shows its value in assisting retailers to gain more competitiveness. By allowing membership cards to be read on a one-stop POS machine, membership information including buyer’s contact information, mailing address, membership discount availability will be automatically popped up on the screen when checking out. This provides conveniences to both retailers and buyers, and will also help retailers grow customer loyalty in long term.
Passively waiting for customers will lead to loss of thousands or millions of dollars in potential revenue. An intelligent POS system enables customers to order or make purchases via an interactive touch screen. Through vivid images on the screen, retailers can promote its newest arrivals and discount inventories, pushing information right in front of its customers. The POS system is also able to send promotional messages to people who walk by the store. Ads on either touch screens or on customer’s smartphones can tailor to the customer's purchasing habits, delivering information that is more persuasive to the buyer instead of annoyingthem with unrelated matters.
Fibocom’sSmart Module
An intelligent POS system is one of themost complicated IOT systems which requires many wireless communications and complicated computing. Fibocom SS808 smart module is ideal for modern POS machines as it can provide high-speed wireless data transmission via LTE technology, as well as enable mobile computing on devices. Supporting a smart and open Android operating system, the module allows the POS machine to integrate with different software and terminals, enabling more functionalities like managing inventories, reading membership cards, making purchase orders and sending paperless receipts. The module, LCC+LGA packaged for easy patching. It supports long-distance communication modes such as FDD-LTE/ TDD-LTE and GSM and short-distance 2.4G+5G wireless transmission technologies like WIFI/ Bluetooth,meeting communication requirements under different scenarios like warehouses, kitchen, guest rooms, and in-store. In addition, the module has rich extension interfaces such as MIPI / USB / UART / SPI / I2C to be connected to various smart terminals such like touch screen, scanner guns, and etc.
