Business owners such as yourself take pride in noticing the little things, including point of sale industry trends. An item on the shelf slightly out of alignment, garments hung in the wrong sizing area, or dust buildup on a display shelf. Even walking into big-box retailers or chain restaurants, you can’t help but glance around to see if there is any small tweak they use that could benefit your operations.
Staying on top of point of sale industry trends is something you already do, whether consciously or subconsciously. This enables you to stay abreast of rising trends in your own industry, but does any of this apply to the technology employed in your operations? It is important that you remain vigilant and proactively identify emerging POS technologies that could make a positive impact on how you run your business.
Know the Trends that You Need to Follow
How do you know which trends are worthy of closely following and which trends will be discarded with tomorrow’s recycling? Discovering and determining which emerging tech trends require that you pursue them deeper is overwhelming, to say the least. However, it does illustrate why you need to partner with a POS technology expert. Getting help in this area not only keeps you abreast of recent developments but gives you an edge at the time of implementation.
When you have an expert by your side, they will work to monitor both the evolution of your business and the developing technology in the POS marketplace. In this way, they can easily determine when and how the right technology should be introduced into your business infrastructure with a minimal negative impact on your daily operations. The nature of conducting POS upgrades in this way allows you to stay up to date without the growing pains of a sudden, drastic shift into a new solution.
It is still important to understand which of the emerging POS technologies you should be focused on, as this will help you in your relationship with your POS provider. These few industry trends bear watching, as their recent introductions have shown promising returns for the early adopters of this technology. This makes it easier for you and your POS partner to devise a plan for future growth while enabling you to remain ahead of your competition.
Using Next-Gen Payment Processing to Enhance the Experience You Deliver
Often, business owners take their payment processing for granted. They assume that their payment processors are always giving them the best rate, or that they are accepting the most recently introduced of payment types available to consumers. But unfortunately, neither is generally the case. In fact, many payment processors will charge you more to offer new, emerging services such as tap cards.
Taking control of who your payment processor is and how terms and conditions are molded is one of the most popular industry trends today. As cash usage by consumers continues to fall, the pressure on small business owners mounts for them to accept a wider variety of payment forms. This means that you will need to closely examine the terms by which your payment processor operates for you and make a determination of renegotiating, moving to a new processor, or risk falling behind industry norms.
The value of your POS partner will be realized just in clawing through the payment processing maze. Their in-depth knowledge of how payment processors work will allow you to navigate towards a flexible, modern payment processing solution that in the end leaves you in an advantageous position. You will discover the full benefits of accepting emerging payment types while reducing your dependence on cash transactions.
Omni-Channel is Not Just for Retail
The impact that omni-channel has had on retailers of all sizes cannot be understated. The revolutionary impact that the omni-channel business model has had on businesses of all sizes has been especially beneficial to smaller retailers. Presenting an ever-present storefront invites customers from a wider area to browse and shop, and places small retailers on more of an equal footing with Big Box competitors.
However, the days of omni-channel being associated with just retail are coming to end. Advances in POS technology, such as integrated appointment bookings and enhanced tablet apps, have advanced omni-channel into other small business sectors as well. Salons, liquor stores, QSRs, food trucks, and restaurants all can now introduce certain omni-channel elements into their daily operations.
The door swinging open for multiple business sectors to utilize omni-channel in their growth has also presented them with options they did not dream as being possible. The staff becomes more productive and better focused on the customers in front of them. Managing the books becomes an almost fully automated process, and inventory management is a breeze. And, the customers that frequent these businesses marvel over how personalized the experience has become.
Giving Customers Control Over Their Experience
The world of POS has matured to the point of presenting small businesses with the ability to create a personalized experience for each customer. Next-gen data mining, once the sole dominion of Fortune 500 companies, can now be had in the form of a cloud-based POS solution and accessed via an app. This presents business owners with analytical capabilities that were unthinkable even twenty years ago.
The true essence of hitting a home run with a customer is presenting them with full control over their experience. The variety of cutting-edge POS functionalities today has not only cleared the fences but has created a rapidly evolving and almost limitless field of options that were once seemingly off-limits to small businesses. By presenting customers with control over how they interact with you, they feel empowered to work with you and are enticed by the advanced knowledge they feel you possess about their needs and desires.
Letting Your POS Consultant Be Your Voice in a Time of Transition
Making a transition in how the backbone of your business operates requires a skillful touch. Making a decisive move towards an emerging technology can be beneficial, but only if it perfectly aligns with your processes and overall business goals. It is in this stage that a valued POS consultant will be your greatest ally.
They will work to develop a strategic plan for growing your POS platform along with your projected business growth. In the end, this leaves you with the exact features you need but without spending time and money implementing functionalities you will never use. You must gain confidence in your POS vendor, as they will be your voice of reason when making the hard decisions around what tech stays and what needs to go.
Helping your business to maintain a modern technology platform requires you to be observant not only in your own business but in the POS world around you. Regardless of if you need an entirely new solution, or are simply looking to add next-gen features to an existing solution, you will want the best POS consultant by your side. When talech is engaged, we work diligently at your side to create a POS infrastructure that will keep you ahead of the game for years to come. Contact us today for a free demo to see how talech can deliver concise technology to you.
