A customer walks into your store, finds what they want, pays, and walks out. Simple, right? But behind that one sale, a lot more may be happening.
Your POS records the transaction. Your payment processor handles the payment. Inventory needs to update. Customer information may be captured. An eCommerce platform may need the new inventory quantity. Accounting needs the sale. And if the order was placed online, shipping and fulfillment may enter the picture too.
For many retailers, those systems don’t always work together as smoothly as they should.
The Problem Isn’t Having Multiple Systems
Today’s retailers rely on technology for nearly every part of the business:
- Point of sale
- Payments
- Inventory
- eCommerce
- Shipping & fulfillment
- Accounting
- Customer marketing
Having different tools isn’t necessarily the problem. The problem starts when those tools don’t communicate.
That’s when employees enter the same information in multiple places, manually update inventory, export spreadsheets, check one system against another, or create workarounds just to complete everyday tasks. Those extra steps take time, and every manual step creates another opportunity for an error.
Connected Retail Makes the Entire Business Work Better
The idea behind connected retail is simple: the systems you use every day should work together whenever possible.
Imagine an online order coming in and inventory automatically reflecting that sale. Shipping information moving where it needs to go without being re-entered. Customer purchase history being available for future marketing. Payment information flowing through the appropriate processes. Instead of employees moving information from one system to another, technology does more of the work behind the scenes. The result?
- Fewer manual processes
- More accurate information
- Less time spent on repetitive tasks
- Better inventory visibility
- More time to focus on customers
Start With the Processes That Slow You Down
Connected retail doesn’t mean replacing every piece of technology in your business. Sometimes the biggest improvements come from looking at the processes your team performs every day and asking one question:
“Why are we still doing this manually?”
If your employees enter the same information twice, constantly export and manipulate spreadsheets, manually transfer online orders, or rely on complicated workarounds, you may have an opportunity to simplify the process.
Make More of the Technology You Already Have
NCR Counterpoint can serve as the center of a much larger retail technology ecosystem, connecting with solutions for eCommerce, payments, shipping, customer engagement, accounting, and more.
At Mainspring Retail Solutions, we help retailers look beyond the register and determine how their technology can work better together. Sometimes that means an integration. Sometimes it’s a configuration change. Sometimes it’s a custom solution designed around the way your business operates.
Because ultimately, technology should eliminate extra work, not create more of it.
How many systems does it take your business to make one sale?
If the answer feels like too many, it may be time to take a closer look at how they’re working together.
