Aussie resellers cash in as POS goes cloud and mobile

Customer connectivity

There’s a desire among retailers to tie the soft science of customer experience with hard sales data. An expensive jewellery store employs staff to walk around the store armed with iPads. They mingle with prospective customers, ask questions to determine their tastes, and record them in lead-capture apps.

These apps talk to the same database as the POS system so that an employee can recognise a regular customer and offer advice based on their past purchases, says Yamen Sader, director and principal consultant at Melbourne-based Sixtree, an enterprise integrator that uses an API approach to link disparate systems.

In order to work, front-of-house systems must connect to backend databases. Sixtree uses the MuleSoft integration platform to link RFID tags to the multiple supply chain, manufacturing and inventory systems used by larger retailers. MuleSoft operates to tie together off-the-shelf, custom, cloud or on-premise software.

Connecting disparate systems not only leads to automation, it gives retailers the option of trying new systems for different parts of the business. They can experiment with new loyalty programs or CRMs without having to overhaul the whole POS infrastructure.

The internet of things is making a welcome appearance in retail through the use of RFID tags. A large retailer can tag all their stock on the shelves and tie it back to their inventory management system. When the sales season starts up, the retailer just has to update the inventory database and the prices of all stock on the floor are automatically adjusted. Sader estimates that a store can save tens of thousands of dollars by eliminating manual prices. “When you are a retailer with a hundred stores, that’s millions of dollars in savings.”

Using MuleSoft helps customers avoid rip-and-replace upgrades. “We’re a big believer in creating ecosystems that work really nicely together without purchasing an off-the-shelf app. A lot of our customers can’t afford the risk or cost of ripping everything out and starting again,” Sader says.

The shift from silos to connected systems also opens the door to strategic services previously unavailable to retailers. The data flowing from point of sale to warehouse database is incredibly valuable but it’s usually ignored.

Sixtree has set up NoSQL datastores to capture the information and display it on real-time business dashboards with analytics tool Elastic. “That’s been one of the more tangible benefits for a lot of our customers. That data is normally locked down or not usable at all.”

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