POS software is a very useful tool used by retail and restaurant businesses around the globe. Both retail and restaurant businesses have different demands and needs, hence the POS software vendors offer different versions and integrations for the businesses.
With the passage of time and development in POS technology new and advanced integrations evolve to support the modern demands of businesses.
These integrations helped businesses to improve their efficiency and working capability. In this article, we will discuss various integrations that helped businesses to enhance their work efficiency. Moreover, how these integrations are designed to create ease of use for employees and an enhanced experience for the customers.
10 POS Software Integrations That Improve Your Business
Every integration for the POS software is designed to improve business processes in retail and restaurant businesses. There are two different classifications in the integrations based on the business.
- Retail POS software integrations
- Restaurant POS software integrations
Each of these categories has different integrations that we discuss in this article.
Retail POS Software
Retail POS software is designed to work for retail businesses like marts, shops, shopping malls, brand outlets, and eCommerce stores. Retail POS software is specially designed to automate the sales process of retail businesses. Other than that the retail business uses retail POS software to provide a better experience to their customers. Some of the integrations that retail POS software has that benefit the retail businesses are:
- eCommerce integration
- Customer loyalty program integration
- Automated customer communication & marketing
- Artificial intelligence integration
- Payment integration
- Accounting integration
- Inventory management integration
Ecommerce Integration:
E-Commerce is a booming business idea that connects businesses around the group. Retail businesses benefit most from the eCommerce boom. POS software vendors develop integrations that can integrate eCommerce websites with the retail business.
With the help of that integration, businesses can keep records of their sales and can process payments through that integration. It helps retail businesses to keep records of their business through different means. This approach is called the Omnichannel approach, where businesses offer the same experience to the customers on different platforms.
Moreover, POS software that has eCommerce integration generates alerts for the relevant departments to process sales.
Customer Loyalty Program Integration
Engaging with customers is a lifeline for every retail business. For that business uses different approaches to earn a better yield from the customer’s engagement. A customer loyalty program is one of the most used approaches to engage more customers and satisfy engaged customers.
Here the question arises of what is a customer loyalty program and how its integration works along with the retail POS software to improve businesses. Customer loyalty programs offer different schemes in which a business offers different redeemable programs or promotional schemes which make people shop more.
For example, a retail store offers that above the purchase of 50,000 PKR you will earn 1000 points. These points can be redeemed to earn discounts. Or a business offers that upon the purchase of 10,000 PKR you will have a gift hamper. Using such approaches, retail businesses can attract more customers and engage existing customers.
To make and implement a successful customer loyalty program retail businesses must have an efficiency that can keep a record of sales and data for every customer. For that purpose, POS software has an effective customer loyalty program integration that can keep the customer loyalty program running seamlessly.
Automated Customer Communication & Marketing
Retail businesses have so many dealings to do in a day and to help them manage them they need a system. For that purpose, they use POS software to automate their sales. POS software automates the sales of retail businesses and helps them increase their efficiency.
There are certain things that modern retail businesses need to keep up with the rapidly evolving market dynamics.
Among those things, customer engagement or communication and marketing are major needs modern retail businesses demand. For that purpose, POS software vendors develop new integration that can automate their customer communication and marketing. The question is how?
This integration uses the customer’s data collected by the POS software and automates a communication sequence. The integration helps retail businesses send messages and emails to customers about new offers, promotional campaigns, and other information. Other than that the integration sends details like order confirmation, shipment status, and delivery details to customers in case the purchase is made through an online medium.
This integration helps retail businesses in saving the time and money they invest in manually handling the details and communicating to the customers.
Artificial Intelligence Integration
Artificial intelligence or AI integration is the most advanced level integration available to be integrated into a POS system. Only a few vendors have these integrations. AI integration is used by retail businesses that require a complex solution for their sales management. Another factor is that businesses that generate a large amount of data require AI integration to manage the sales data.
For small-scale retail stores, artificial intelligence integrations are used to do customer profiling, better product placement in stores, facial recognition, and offer a unique experience to the customers.
Businesses of all scales are using AI integration to help their business in any way possible. Today the world is leading to an era where AI is the major solution to most business problems, for that reason retail businesses are integrating AI integrations into their POS software for exposure.
Payment Integration
Payment integration refers to the payment processing mechanism that helps employees at checkout counters to process the sales. Before the integration of payment integration, the POS system did not have any payment processing integration that could process transactions through debit or credit card or through any mobile banking or mobile wallet; it only had a cash register alongside. The chances of error are so high in that old POS system.
Today, POS software is integrated with a payment processing system that can process transactions through all mediums. The POS software is connected to a card reader that can fetch the card details and process the payment into the business’s account. Moreover, the system generates a QR code that can process the transaction once scanned through any eWallet.
Moreover, any transaction performed online will be notified and processed through that payment integration centralizing all transactional data input. The fast execution of payment and lesser chances of errors increases the efficiency of the business.
Accounting Integration
The accounting module is another integration that POS software uses to keep the books of the business. For a business to run smoothly through the long run, it must manage its data efficiently. Among different types of data, the data regarding the accounts is very important. A good POS software is always integrated with an amazing accounting module that generates different reports and performs different calculations.
The accounting integration categorizes the data into different sets and creates different reports. It can also calculate margins, profits, and the cost of inventory. With the help of such integration, a business can manage its books without allocating separate resources. Moreover, this integration can generate reports of run time data, it means you can have monthly, weekly, daily, or even hourly reports of a business’s performance.
Inventory Management Integration
Inventory management is one of the primary things retail businesses do. Usually, inventory management is done manually, but with POS software and its inventory management integration businesses can manage their inventory without doing hectic manual reconciliation with so many errors.
The inventory management integration connects all the sources of ongoing and outgoing inventory. For example, a retail store sells fruit. The store receives its inventory (fruits) from a supplier, and the quality of every fruit is entered into the system once. After that with every sale, the POS software adjusts the inventory data. When the inventory level reaches the critical level it alerts the manager so that they can arrange more inventory. Some POS software can automatically order the inventory once it reaches critical levels.
This integration not only works with a physical store but also connects with the eCommerce website and adjusts the inventory with that. So this integration can cover cross-channel mediums.
Restaurant POS Software
Another primary user of POS software is restaurants. Restaurants use POS software to manage their sales. There is a bit of difference between restaurant POS software and retail POS software. The dynamics of both businesses are different. For example, the cost of a restaurant business is more complex than a retail business, secondly, inventory management is very versatile in the restaurant business, and last but not least customer experience is very important in the restaurant business.
The restaurant POS software has different integrations that help restaurants in keeping records of their sales and manage the sales seamlessly. In this article, we will discuss different integrations that help restaurants to improve their business.
Some of the noticeable integrations include:
- Tableside management
- AI integration
- Customer profiling
Tableside Management:
For restaurants, providing customers with the best experience besides the food is a very important thing. Restaurants use various models and techniques to offer a better experience to their customers. Customers demand swift execution of their orders, and fast serving, and they like to serve what they order. These are some fundamental needs of a customer.
To satisfy this need of customers restaurants use POS software. POS software that is designed for restaurants has different innovative features that make customers’ experiences unique.
Tableside management is an integrated POS software used to enhance their services. The Tableside management module is designed to manage all the tables at a restaurant in a very efficient and rapid way. It increases the table turn time to serve more customers. It also increases the efficiency of employees in serving customers. It decreases the hurry and panic in the dining and kitchen area.
Customers enjoy such experiences because people love being served quickly and without any hassle.
AI Integration
Artificial initiation is a very crucial integration nowadays not every POS software has this integration. Like retail POS software, it is the future of every business management solution. AI integration has different features or sub-modules that are very attractive to customers like:
- Voice ordering
- Facial recognition
- AI-driven customer profiling
Voice Ordering
Voice ordering refers to the ordering system that recognizes the voice of a customer or employee and takes orders over voice commands. This feature is a very futuristic concept and is used in developed countries. Customers love this idea and they enjoy this experience.
Facial Recognition
Facial recognition is another AI feature that enables the system to recognize faces. This system is helpful to employees as it helps POS software recognize the employees who are using the system to make data secure. It also recognizes the people in the restaurant and generates reports on how many people visited the restaurant.
AI-driven Customer Profiling
The facial recognition and voice recognition features of this integration help POS software create better customer profiling of the customer. The POS software automatically profiles the customers into different categories. That categorization helps restaurants in allocating their resources in an effective way. Moreover, it helps in marketing and product development also.
Customer Profiling
Besides the customer profiling that is driven by AI integration restaurants, POS software can also perform customer profiling and engagement. The feature collects data from customers and analyzes them to do customer profiling.
Customer profiling helps restaurants in managing targeted marketing campaigns. It also helps restaurants focus on different products that are developed to target that particular profile.
Moreover, it also helps restaurants communicate with their customers. Other than that the restaurant can send them marketing emails and other content through that data.
CISePOS, A One-Stop POS Solution In Pakistan
CISePOS is the #1 POS software in Pakistan, with customers all across Pakistan. CISePOS is integrated with all required features to improve the efficiency of the business.
With a team of professionals and developers who understand the demand of a business CIS continues to develop and upgrade its POS software into a better version that can solve more and more problems of the business.