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Point of sale is dead. Long
live ‘Proximity Commerce’!
Point of sale is dead, long live Proximity Commerce!
A thought provoking comment that will for sure be
looked on with some disbelief from elements of the
IT retail community; my prediction is that PoS as we know
it has no future and that within the next five years we will
see point of sale systems and traditional in-store payment
facilities be replaced with web based ordering and mobile
payments. The Commerce platform will sit at the centre
of this in-store retailing evolution largely because it is the
most appropriate system interface to take orders, service
customers, take cross channel payments and provide a
seamless, super rich browsing and buying experience. At
Reply we call this Proximity Commerce.
If any of you are in doubt of where we are heading just
take a look at the Apple Store, they have pioneered this
concept and despite large numbers of people contained
in relatively small spaces the customer experience is as
good as it can be on a Saturday afternoon when every
man, woman and child on the planet crowds together
to experience and purchase the latest iGadget. There
are two key driving forces behind this change, firstly the
pervasiveness of the e-commerce platform, particularly
leading platforms such as hybris whose vision is for
their interface to be used across every customer-facing
channel, underpinned by a single view of product, stock
and the customer. Due to the need for masses of complex
integration, costly and inefficient store retail systems will
become a feature of the past; they have no place in the store
of the future. The second driving force is mobile payment,
while still in its infancy here in the UK, abroad mobile
payments are gaining ground and are a common feature of
in-store retailing. We must understand that the nature
of retailing is changing; that consumers demand
more sophisticated services and demand them on
their own terms, whenever and wherever they are.
The next key battle ground for commerce
platform vendors will be in-store retailing. Many
already recognise this and are developing
solutions that will enable their customers to
replace traditional point of sale and legacy
store systems. However retailers decide to
solve the in-store internet retailing conundrum,
whether through deeper integration of their
advertorial
existing store systems and digital channels or through the
wider application of their digital and e-commerce trading
platform in-store, one thing is for sure; a well defined
business architecture that genuinely supports multi-channel
retailing is required FIRST. All too often we see significant
technology investments both in-store and on the digital side
yet the business architecture has not been well thought
through enough leaving customer, product and stock views
widely dispersed between various systems. Clearly I’m
stating the obvious but we are surprised that the technology
strategy and investment is made before the business
architecture is defined and in my view this is a costly and
painful mistake.
We are entering a brave new world in retail technology
and the rate of change is going to increase over the next
five to 10 years. Just a few years ago mobile was not
considered a sales channel yet today many retailers are
seeing well over half their traffic from mobile and tablet
devices and 30-40 per cent of sales; in some case much
higher. The retailers that best prepare for this change and
invest in innovation, particularly with in-store internet
retailing technology, are going to be the major beneficiaries.
Finally it is also a great opportunity to upgrade the legacy
IT estate with a more modern business and technology
architecture that will support customer demand in a 21st
century retail environment. We should embrace this change
albeit with care.
Mark Adams is partner at Portaltech Reply, a world
leader in e-commerce implementation and multi-channel
integration.
RS